Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)

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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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Education and Adoption Bill (Seventh sitting)

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Thursday 9th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Kevin Brennan]

I am grateful to the Minister for his response. If I am going too far, it is only because I have been asked to go too far by the Catholic Education Service, which has been working closely with the Church of England on these issues. I am sure that they will have listened intently to the Minister’s response to the amendment and my interventions. I am pleased that he has put on record the Government’s thinking and their intentions with regard to the responsibility to preserve and develop the character of a school, which he says is covered elsewhere. I am glad that he has taken the trouble to put that on record. We will ponder what he has said carefully and, if necessary, return to the matter at a later stage of our proceedings. I do not intend to press amendment 36 to a Division.

On amendments 37 and 38, the Minister’s example of Pear Tree school did not seem to indicate that a 21-day notice period would be unreasonable. He said that there had been unreasonable delays because the Secretary of State did not have at their disposal the power conferred by the clause, and that if they had had that power, they would be able to act much more quickly in the case of Pear Tree school. Amendment 38 would simply provide for a reasonable period of notice.

I do not intend to pursue the matter further at this stage, but it would be useful to know what is considered to be reasonable. I know that the Minister is well meaning in his wish to take action if a school requires it, as we all do, but this reminds me of something that my father used to say to me: “Come here immediately, if not sooner.” Although our desire to act quickly is commendable, we must be reasonable. People must have the opportunity to respond to action proposed by the state, and we are simply trying to probe the Minister on what he believes a reasonable period to be.

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

Twenty-one days is four weeks, which is nearly half a term. That is quite a long time in the academic year, so does the hon. Gentleman agree that we need to get things going pretty quickly?

[Kevin Brennan]

I have occasionally made the odd mathematical error while on my feet in the House of Commons, so I will not tease the hon. Lady about 21 days being four weeks, but I know what she means. I will interpret her remarks in a generous way by assuming that she is referring to working days, not that Government Members have always been so generous when I have made mathematical errors. I did get a grade A in my O-level which, according to the Minister, is at least a PhD in current parlance.

I take the hon. Lady’s point, but the purpose of amendment 38 is simply to probe the Minister on what he considers to be a reasonable period. I am not sure that we have found out the answer, but at some point I am sure that that we will.

Finally, I turn to amendment 37. As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), pointed out on Second Reading, the clauses on the powers of regional schools commissioners and the actions of Ministers really show the disjuncture in the Bill between the centralisation of power with Ministers and their appointees, and the Government’s professed desire to devolve public services out to the regions. The way forward ought to be a process of pulling together combined local authorities, as the Government envisage doing in other contexts as a means of devolving power. Some might think that that process is a means of cutting expenditure, but let us take it at face value as a means of devolving power around the country. The Bill is not an example of that. Even if regional schools commissioners have local headteacher boards that are entirely made up of academy heads and principals, that is not the sort of devolution of power that is required. Ultimately, the combined authority approach would be much better.

Education and Adoption Bill (Sixth sitting)

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Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Gibb]

If I had longer and had done more research, I could have done that. Perhaps my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South can help me.

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

I declare an interest: I am a governor at Milton Park primary school. We had a federation between the infant and junior school, and we have now become a primary school. We also have what some would consider a weak federation with Portswood, one of the leading schools in Southampton, which has been helping us over the past two years to reach “requires improvement”. Another form of soft federation is clustering of schools within a local authority, which has also worked very effectively.

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. She is a champion of education in Portsmouth. I have visited schools with her and seen her dedication and determination to help schools raise their standards. I pay tribute to her work in Portsmouth, not only on education but more generally too.

Amendment 29 seeks to expand clause 4(1)(d), which gives regional schools commissioners the power to require a school’s governing body to create or join a federation of schools as a way of improving standards. The amendment seeks to introduce an additional power to require a governing body to leave a federation, perhaps so that a regional schools commissioner or local authority can direct a governing body to leave an ineffective federation and join another if that is seen as appropriate. If an underperforming school were part of an ineffective soft federation, there are sufficient powers elsewhere in the Bill to enable the regional schools commissioner to require the school to leave the federation. If a school’s continued membership of a hard federation were likely to prevent improvements, the commissioner could issue an academy order on behalf of the Secretary of State.

Amendment 30 seeks to introduce a new specific section to the power. That new section appears to introduce a new solution for an underperforming school, allowing the school to remain a maintained school but collaborate with an academy by becoming a member of an academy trust but not an academy itself. We do not think that is the right approach because it would lead to an unsatisfactory compromise. Simply being a member of an academy trust would not allow the maintained school to benefit from the strong governance structure of a multi-academy trust, from shared staffing or funding, or from being part of a robust line of accountability, which is a critical element of the academy programme. Maintained schools would be denied those benefits if we accepted the proposition in amendment 30 that maintained schools could simply become a member of an academy trust rather than securing enduring structural change. Given those explanations, I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West will not press his amendments.

Education and Adoption Bill (Fifth sitting)

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Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

“Councils’ powers of intervention in schools must also be freed from the restrictions placed on them by successive Governments. These stop them from acting quickly and decisively when issues arise in the interest of local children and parents. For example, even if Ofsted has rated a school as Inadequate, councils have to apply to the Department for Education to remove the governing body and replace it with an Interim Executive Board (IEB). The LGA therefore supports amendment 22 which would allow the local authority to take steps in relation to schools where, for example, standards and progress are unacceptably low. The steps which may be taken by a local education authority include the giving of a direction to the governing body or head teacher.”

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

If a school has been failing so badly, does it not suggest that the local authority is failing because it should have kept an eye on the school in the first place?

[Kevin Brennan]

I am making the point that local authorities are complaining that the current system restricts them from taking that action even more quickly. Through the amendments, we envisage that local authorities could act more swiftly. I will be interested to hear what the Minister has to say.

[Kevin Brennan]

I would not accuse the hon. Member for Portsmouth South of making a strange comment, but my hon. Friend is right; we could ponder whether a double standard is applied to local authorities and academy chains. There is certainly a double standard with regard to inspection, but we will come back to that. Alternatively, it might be an illogicality in the observation.

[Mrs Drummond]

We have already discussed the fact that 131 academies have been put into special measures. If we have managed to do that, local authorities have surely been failing if they have not been looking after their failing schools.

[Kevin Brennan]

We should all be concerned to ensure that any school, whatever its character, delivers on behalf of its pupils, and that these interventions take place. We support academisation as one means of school improvement, but we simply say that it should not be used exclusively as the only way to bring about school improvement.

I would welcome a much more level playing field in the debate on this. Now that 60% of secondary schools are academies—the Minister has pointed that out several times—the whole issue of school improvement in academies will become bigger and bigger. If the answer to a failing school is to academise it, we need to know in much greater detail what the answer ultimately is to a failing academy. That is going to be a live debate during the passage of the Bill and in this Parliament.

Amendment 23 relates to clause 3. New Members may be surprised to know that the way we do things in this place means that from time to time we debate amendments to other clauses if they relate to the amendments contained within a previous clause, but we may decide upon them at a later stage. At this point we are debating clause 3; although, technically speaking, it occurred slightly later in the Bill, it has been grouped here. It removes the requirement that the Secretary of State must be informed about a section 60A warning notice in order to probe why the Government think it necessary to legislate that the Secretary of State should be informed.

The National Audit Office report of 30 October 2014, “Academies and maintained schools: Oversight and intervention”, made it clear that the Department for Education does not know in any detail what is happening in schools. Perhaps there are times when it needs to get out of the way a bit and allow others who do know what is going on in local schools to do a proper job—that was the view expressed in the NAO report. That view is shared not only by Labour Members but by Conservative representatives at a local level, so it would be extremely useful to hear the Minister’s response to that and to our amendments.

Education and Adoption Bill (Fourth sitting)

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Thursday 2nd July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. We served together on that Committee in the previous Parliament. We held inquiries into leaving care and the quality of 16-to-19 care options and, indeed, a further inquiry into residential care. Previously, there was an inquiry into child protection. All those things are in the space that we are discussing under this aspect of the Bill and all will probably lend themselves to slightly fuller discussion under some of the other amendments. She is right to say that we should listen to what those who have left care have to say about their experiences. The experiences and life chances of children and young people who end up in the care system, whether they go on to be adopted or, we hope, into other forms of permanence, are affected very much, and for the same reasons. As parliamentarians looking to get this right for that group of children and young people, we should take every opportunity to listen to what children and young people and in particular, as she says, care leavers have to say.

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

May I make this point while we are talking about children and, in particular, adopted children? There should be some flexibility in relation to the visits by social workers after the adoption, particularly in the early days, because quite often the social worker’s visit creates the fear that they might be taken away again. We need flexibility on how this is done, which is why I will not support the amendment. There needs to be a wide variety of ways for local authorities to perform the function. I know from personal experience that children get very upset if they think that there will be frequent visits by social workers or there are laid down guidelines. I would like to see much more flexibility.

[Bill Esterson]

Yes, and I realise that the hon. Lady has her own experience of these matters. When social workers become involved, which from time to time is right and proper—I am sure that she was not suggesting otherwise— what is important is continuity and that relationships between children and social workers and between families and social workers are, as far as possible, built on a basis of trust and longevity. A breakdown in trust between children and adults is one of the problems that lead to challenges as children grow. Often, what one social worker or professional may say to a child is contradicted by subsequent events. It is very important—I know that the Minister is aware of these matters—

Education and Adoption Bill (Third sitting)

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Thursday 2nd July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Steve McCabe]

The amendment relates to the part of the Bill that asks the Minister about the arrangements that he proposes. I am inclined to the view that we should think of permanence as a continuum. As I recall, Mr Elvin in his evidence suggested there was a danger of elevating adoption to a superior role, perhaps with the consequence that other models were devalued. I would share that anxiety.

I said at the outset that this is a probing amendment; I have no desire to press it to a vote. I hope the Minister recognises that it would be helpful to hear more from him of what he thinks will constitute successful regional adoption arrangements. As I said earlier, I recognise his desire for maximum flexibility; I can see why he does not want to be pinned down to a blueprint. Could he say what, if anything, he rules out? What are the prerequisites for success, in his judgment? It would help if he could indicate the things that are uppermost in his mind.

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

We heard clearly from Adoption Link that there was not much in this from the adopter’s point of view. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that having regional organisations would be better? At the moment, variations in agency policy with different criteria are creating problems. Surely having regional organisations would give much more balanced criteria and enable more adopters to understand the criteria being put forward.

[Steve McCabe]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that intervention. Let me clear: I am not saying that regional arrangements are bad. I suspect there is a degree of consent across the Committee that the direction of travel is right. What I am querying—and is central to the point that she makes—is what are successful regional arrangements or consortia? What do they look like? What are the factors by which we should judge them? She rightly stresses the point made by Mr Leary-May of Adoption Link, that adopters often feel that they, of all people, do not have enough say or consideration in existing arrangements. If implicit in the hon. Lady’s intervention is the suggestion that new regional arrangements could take into account that adopters need to be given further consideration and support and more involvement, then she and I are on the same wavelength. I repeat that I am not opposed to regional arrangements; I think the Minister is on the right track. I want to ensure that his end product meets his aspirations. That is the purpose of this debate.

Equal Pay and the Gender Pay Gap

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Wednesday 1st July 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I speak from the nursery Benches here at the far side of the Chamber, but I am sure I shall graduate to the other Benches in good time.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) on her amazing and very moving maiden speech, and also on having four daughters, who have obviously been brought up very successfully. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle). He is not in his place, but I often visit Borough market in his constituency when I visit my daughter who is training to be a doctor at King’s college and is often at Guy’s hospital.

I am pleased to see that equality in my area, certainly as far as this House is concerned, is progressing. We have the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who is currently sitting on the Front Bench, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt), who is the first woman to be Minister for the Armed Forces, my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes), and myself, representing Portsmouth South. That is four strong women whose constituencies surround Portsmouth harbour, which is excellent. We also have seven female MPs representing Hampshire, which is almost 50%. We have a little more to do; we have another male to knock off his perch at some point.

We must keep driving progress outside this House as well. I would like the gender pay gap be much smaller in my constituency. At 22% it is fractionally above the average for the south-east region. We must look at how to close that gap, but we can only do that by boosting aspiration for all women to help them get better jobs, as well as equal pay for equal work.

A growing number of businesses in Portsmouth are led by women, particularly small and medium-sized businesses which they own and run. The Hampshire chamber of commerce and the Portsmouth Federation of Small Businesses are run by women as well, so it is an area where women are beginning to dominate, which is excellent.

In a city where the main source of employment was once the dockyard, a centre for heavy engineering and other trades traditionally dominated by men, we are making important strides—and I suspect that history is part of the reason why we still have a gender pay gap of 22%. Through the efforts of key employers such as British Aerospace and Airbus, a growing number of young people are going into technical and engineering trades, especially through apprenticeships. That is why I welcome the Government’s new initiative on the careers and enterprise company, which will show how young people can go into careers that have normally been dominated by men. A key aim of our university technical college will be to recruit students equally between the genders to drive this progress forward. Education has always been a main source of empowerment for women. That applies in industry, so the £10 million from the Government to help develop engineers will help. One of my daughters was going to go into engineering but has changed to medicine, and I would like much more proactive engineering courses for women, to make it much more interesting for them, so that they stick with it, rather than deciding to go into other careers.

We are backing all that up with our reforms to the childcare system, extending free access to it and helping mothers to get back into the employment market. I would also like greater recognition of the role of mothers and fathers who stay at home and look after the next generation. Their role is largely unrecognised, and we always try to push people back into work even though being at home looking after the children is equally important. Through my membership of the Select Committee on Women and Equalities, I look forward to working to find ways of encouraging and supporting all parents who stay at home to get back into work when they feel it is right to do so. Many of them lose confidence by being at home and find it difficult to get back the skills they need to return to the workplace. I ask employers to provide more flexible working opportunities for mothers and fathers who have taken time out of the workplace to bring up families. Employers should recognise them both in work and in pay, and give them the skills to get back into work, at whatever age they are.

Education and Adoption Bill (Second sitting)

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Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

Q 26 Do you think the Bill helps with or hinders other forms of permanence?

Hugh Thornbery: Looking at the legislation, I think it forces people to think about adoption, but it does not necessarily hinder the development of a broader approach to permanence. I say elsewhere that the Government are encouraging that in the paper they produced. It is quite difficult to think about how the same degree of direction as is contained within the clauses of the Bill could be applied to wider permanence. I think it is easier to focus that direction on a document. Whether that is the right thing or not is questionable.

Andy Leary-May: Could I add that local authorities that have decided to treat permanence holistically have already created permanence teams? For those local authorities, if they are required to form an adoption service jointly with others, that may create a separation.

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

Q 27 How do you think the local authorities will work in this regional way? Will it mean that they work better with and have better relationships with voluntary organisations?

Hugh Thornbery: The opportunity is there for better relationships because we will change the way that things are done at the moment. As I said earlier, there are varying degrees of willingness to work with the voluntary sector in different parts of the country. Local authorities and regions have different cultural approaches. I would hope that every region would be carefully considering who the potential constituent parts of a regional or sub-regional approach could be and fully involving them from the beginning.

The other critical thing, which I have not heard discussed at all and is mostly missing from everything that I read, is what adopters think about this. Inevitably, I would say this, representing so many adopters through our membership: what really struck me during Adoption UK, having had previous experience with adoption, is just how often I heard complaints about being ignored, not listened to or done unto. There is a risk of missing the opportunity of involving adoptive families, who are the ones who can tell us, from the best possible position, what is required, what good would look like, what does not work well at the moment and what would improve the quality in the future.

Andy Leary-May: On the point of what adopters think about it, which is very valid, we did a quick survey last week of the adopters using our system. About 600 responded. There was a lot more optimism for the changes that could be brought about through regional agencies among adopters than the social workers that responded to the survey. Due to the current issues within adoption, for adopters, a lot of whom have been waiting for a very long time and are desperate to find a family, there may be some sense of feeling that anything will create an improvement compared to where they are now.

I hark back to a point a little while ago about choice for adopters; that was a concern that I had and asked the people using our system about. It was interesting that 40% of the respondents said that, at some point, they had had cause to consider changing agency because of the experience that they were having. The ability to look to a different agency is important. If we lose that, we need to be careful that there is still some recourse for adopters at any point in their process if they feel that they are not being treated well.

[Mrs Drummond]

Q 28 Going on to adopters, what do you think about the support for them? Are you quite happy that there will be enough support for the child and the adoptive parents if people are adopting from another region quite a long way away?

Hugh Thornbery: All the evidence we have is that support is patchy, inconsistent and, overall, not good enough. Julie Selwyn’s excellent research, “Beyond the Adoption Order”, which was published last year, highlighted for all of us the fact that, while adoption is generally a very good thing for children, too many families are struggling with extreme behavioural issues and the like.

The implementation of the adoption support fund has been an incredibly important step for what it provides, for adopters seeing the Government recognising that there was a need, which I do not think was properly recognised before and, as was mentioned previously, the pupil premium in schools. There is still some way to go, and I note with interest an amendment to the Bill that would aim to achieve a duty to provide. For my members, a duty on the local authorities to assess a child’s needs on request then not translating into a duty to provide to meet those needs is still lacking. If addressed, that would help us, particularly with the matching of what we term “hard-to-place children”, who we know will have long-term, enduring needs.

Opportunities are also missed and more could be done by way of education, which is the top topic raised with us by and discussed among members. I would have liked to have seen in the Bill the opportunity for extending the role of the virtual school and the virtual school head to include children adopted from care, as well as looked-after children. Some local authorities already do that voluntarily and it has been working extremely well, but we would like to see that extended. There is still a shortfall by way of support, although there have been significant improvements over the past couple of years.

Andy Leary-May: For me, support, more than matching, is probably the biggest area of potential improvement that agencies have in coming together and collaborating. We talked earlier about the barriers that exist to one agency placing a child with an adopter from elsewhere. One barrier is how the policy and practice and provision of support can vary between the different agencies. To the extent that a placement may happen within a larger regional area, if there were one agency that had a larger range of specialist services because it had come together and if those support services could be shared within a bigger area, that would be a positive change, but there would still be the issue of the placements that happen in neighbouring regions and how support might be provided between those placements.

[The Chair]

Thank you very much. I will call the last Member to ask questions in a minute. What you are telling us is very informative, but can you be slightly more concise? We have very few minutes left.

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[Peter Kyle]

Q 87 I was talking about coasting schools.

Lord Nash: I think you had a bit of a crossed wire between you.

[Mrs Drummond]

Q 88 It is really good that schools are moving to “good”, and I can see that it is going to carry on. Can you see a point at which we only have “good” or “coasting” schools, because every school has got to “good”? “Coasting”, as I see it, describes schools that are doing well but could do even better.

Mr Gibb: I do not follow the question, sorry.

[Mrs Drummond]

Q 89 I am saying that if schools are moving to “good”, we can probably get rid of the other categories—“adequate” or “failing”. Can you see a time when you would just have schools that are “good” or “coasting”?

Mr Gibb: The ambition of this Government and the previous coalition Government is not to have any failing schools. Every local school should be a good school for parents to send their child to, and measures such as this help to deliver that. These structural reforms will be combined with what we are doing with the curriculum to raise standards through more rigorous and knowledge-based GCSEs and what we are doing in primary schools with reading. There are 100,000 more six-year-olds reading more effectively today than in 2010 as a consequence of the phonics reforms. With the Shanghai maths scheme, we are taking the approach adopted by the most successful educational jurisdiction for maths. We are trying to learn from that system and bring it to this country. All those things are designed to ensure we have the best education system we can give to young people. That must be the right ambition for any Government.

[Louise Haigh]

Q 90 Given the evidence we have heard today, should not the definition of “coasting” be based completely on value added and measures such as progress 8, rather than the threshold proposed in the regulations?

Mr Gibb: There are two issues: one is for secondaries and the other is for primaries. The issue for secondaries is that as time goes on, and as we move to progress 8 next year, it will be just based on progress, and we will have a different measure for coasting and for the floor. There were concerns about being retrospective. We do not want to go back and change our approach for looking at floor standards. We are taking the same approach to coasting for 2014 and 2013 as we took for the floor, but we are raising it up from—

Education and Adoption Bill (First sitting)

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Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Louise Haigh]

Q 53 But given that progress 8 is not due to come in until 2016, is it right that it should measure schools back to 2014?

Malcolm Trobe: What they are having to do—I have a concern about the measure that will be used in 2014 and 2015, because that is essentially an attainment measure. We have our concerns that you have not got a consistent measure. When progress 8 or an alternative version is in place for three years, you will be measuring progress over the three-year period, but we have concerns that what you essentially have is an attainment measure for the first two years, to deem whether a school is coasting or not in those years, and then the progress measure does not come in until the third year. So an element of caution needs to be urged in the first year.

We support what is in the notes: a very clear statement that academisation is not considered the first step in coasting schools. It is looking at the work of the regional schools commissioner. However, that highlights the capacity issues. You might ask Tim Coulson later about the capacity of the regional schools commissioner to look at the context of schools that, under this measure, particularly in the early stages, are designated as coasting because of the nature of the ’14 and ’15 indicators.

Richard Watts: If I may say so, I think there is a real danger about the risk of clashing accountability systems. I can think of one school in my patch that probably falls under the coasting definition as published last night but has had two successive outstanding Ofsted judgments and is the most popular school in my borough for people to send their children to. It would not command public confidence for that school to be described as coasting. They have people queuing round the block to get into it. I feel for heads in circumstances in which they can be judged as outstanding twice in a row and then be condemned as coasting under these things. More definition is needed to work out the priorities within the accountability system and to send a clearer set of messages to schools about what is expected of them.

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

Q 54 You have commented a bit, but I ask each member of the panel: which criteria would you use to identify a coasting school?

Richard Watts: I would be happy with an Ofsted measure. If we have Ofsted for a reason, we should respect its judgments. If we are saying that Ofsted needs serious reform, let us get on and reform it. If we have a schools inspectorate, it should be respected to some extent. It has to be about more than just progress. My borough is traditionally a highly deprived area that has seen very high levels of progress, but we are still not getting the final results. Employees never ask what your progress measure is; they ask what your GCSEs are. We need some measure of final result.

Emma Knights: I think we are in huge danger of over-complicating our accountability system. Schools are held accountable in so many different ways. I agree that layering this on top of Ofsted seems the wrong solution. We need to sort out Ofsted if we do not think that it is telling us what we need.

The real thing that will improve schools regards capacity in the system. Those of us who want to improve schools should all be worried about that. We have not talked about the regional schools commissioners and their capacity. At a time when the Department is having to undertake cuts, is there enough capacity in the system to identify these schools and work with them to improve? That is the real problem that we all face.

I cannot tell you how much governing boards want to recruit fantastic headteachers. That is what we want to do and that is what will change our schools. We are not getting applications from fantastic candidates in a lot of parts of the country. That is the real problem that we need to worry about, rather than layering measure upon measure and increasing the fear in schools. We think that one reason that some school leaders are not coming forward for headship is because they are already scared and drowning under the accountability system. We need to seriously change the culture.

Sir Daniel Moynihan: Going back to Richard’s point, there clearly are schools that are judged to be outstanding and have parents queuing round the block. The problem is, that if the children in them are not making the amount of progress that similarly good schools elsewhere are making, it is not wrong to jolt the school and possibly upset parents by saying, “Hang on a minute, these children are being short-changed. In other places—look at those—they are doing much better.”

[Kevin Brennan]

Q 55 But does not that tell you that the school is not outstanding in the first place?

Sir Daniel Moynihan: It could well do. Some 80% of schools are judged to be good and outstanding. What is intriguing is that, in some of those judgments, there are schools with enormous gaps between pupil premium and non-pupil premium children. That cannot be right. How can a school be outstanding with an enormous gap there? A number of schools with those judgments from the past have very low value added, so there are issues to be looked at.

Progress has to be the driver. Progress alerts you to a school; you have to look at it in a bit more detail to judge whether it is coasting or not. You would have to look at destinations to find out where those children are going: what kinds of universities, apprenticeships and jobs they are going to, and what attendance is like. Progress is the first stop but you have to look at other things to get the picture.

Education and Adoption Bill

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Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), whose powerful speech made a big impact on me. I would have liked to talk about adoption, but I will concentrate on schools today.

I welcome the new categorisation of coasting schools. Having worked as a lay Ofsted inspector, I know exactly what those sort of schools look like: schools that are not stretching every child and are happy to just reach the minimum level. I have been rung up by parents asking me why their very nice primary school has been classified as inadequate, and why their great teachers were not doing as well as they thought they were. Schools would be classified as inadequate because bright children were getting level 4 rather than level 6, and other children were getting level 3 when they should have been getting level 4. It is these schools that have been classified as inadequate. They were not failing their children completely, but they were coasting and not doing a good job.

[Kevin Brennan]

The hon. Lady, a former lay inspector, raises a very interesting point. When she was inspecting a school, would she have been able to give it a good or outstanding rating, but still find it to be coasting?

[Mrs Drummond]

No, under the old system it would be a failing school if it was coasting. Nowadays, it would be seen as an inadequate school. In terms of terminology, coasting is much more acceptable to parents, teachers and schools. A school cannot be said to be inadequate when children are still learning to read, write and do mathematics but are not doing as well as they should be doing. That is how I see a coasting school, but I know we are going to develop this. I have some concerns about how coasting schools will be evaluated. The Secretary of State said that they would be evaluated on the basis of more data, but I should like that evaluation to be widened slightly to include Ofsted inspections. Perhaps there could be mini-inspections to ensure that all the data were available.

Let me give an example. We consider the school of which I am a governor to be a rapidly improving school, but its current level is “requires improvement”, and the local authority sent us a warning letter last year because we had missed the overall target by just 1%. It was the maths that had let us down. However, the children have made very good progress throughout their time at the school.

Nearly all the children arrive at a level that is well below the average, and a large number are eligible for free school meals. Last year we had several level 6 results, and many level 5s. One reason for our not achieving higher results was the fact that children covered by our autism provision were included in the results. Children with special educational needs find tests very stressful, and often do not meet national standards in any event. I should like to see much more provision for such children, whether they are included in the overall results or treated differently. I should also like to see a completely different system of assessing, in particular, children with autism. Other children arrived during the school year speaking English as a foreign language, and it is difficult for teachers to raise such children to national standards. I should like to see a much more holistic approach to the categorisation of schools.

There is a new curriculum and assessment system, and schools are still settling down and working out how the new levels—exceeding expectation, at expectation or below expectation—will operate. The Department needs to help schools with those new levels, which are still quite confusing as schools develop their own methodologies. It is right for them to be able to do that, but no clear national guidelines have been provided. The results of school evaluations often hide the true picture, and I ask the Secretary of State to ensure that they are fair.

I agree that schools must become academies if their local authorities are weak. Portsmouth City Council was deemed to be the sixth worst authority in the country in this context, and during the 10 years the Liberal Democrats were in control, there was very little political will to improve educational standards. That has begun to change over the past year, under the new Conservative administration.

In many instances, when Portsmouth schools have become academies, children’s education has improved. I mentioned the Charter Academy in my maiden speech. In five years, its GCSE pass rate has risen from 3% to 85%. The local authority wanted to shut down the school, which is in an area of great deprivation, but fortunately the old head teacher saw its potential and brought in Ark Schools, which I consider to be one of the pinnacles of academy provision. I am pleased to learn that it has recently taken on some primary schools in Portsmouth as well. I recently visited Ark Ayrton with my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools. The head teacher of the primary school that it took over was extremely reluctant to allow the school to become an academy, but was forced to do so. She now says that it was the best thing that she could have done, that she wishes that she had done it a long time ago, and that she is receiving incredible support from Ark. Ark Dickens has taken over another school in my constituency—again, in an area of great deprivation—and I look forward to seeing a difference in children’s education there.

I have spoken before, outside the House, about the poor performance of my local authority. I agree with the National Union of Teachers that it should be the job of local authorities to assist schools, but where they are failing, we need an alternative, and free schools are providing that alternative. I am grateful to academies for giving some of the children in Portsmouth the education that they deserve, along with aspiration and the tools that will enable them to realise their ambitions.