Education Bill

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for instinctively knowing that I wanted to be called after the hon. Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy), who talks an awful lot of sense particularly about the English baccalaureate.

Today is an opportunity for us to discuss the principle of the Bill, which is why it is so disappointing that the first 52 minutes of the debate were about politics. A number of elephant traps were set to try to make the Labour party look as though it were the roadblock to reform, which is not the case.

The Bill raises important issues. It includes a shift from Whitehall to the classroom, but it also goes in other directions. It goes from local people, in the form of local authorities, to individual schools. Parts 5 and 6, in particular, relate to local authorities and schools admissions and they will remove the admissions role of schools adjudicators, increase the emphasis on academies and remove the requirement to consult on them. Also relevant are free schools, appropriate consultation and the disappearance of local admissions forums. All those issues point to a broad but consistent agenda that seeks to undermine the role of local authorities and each of us in our individual locations. We are losing the sense that we are together making decisions in our towns and cities about how we educate our young people. There are trade-offs involved and we should not seek to minimise them. This is our role in debating the principles behind the Bill.

There has been a lot of talk on both sides about the number of young people coming from a free school meals background and going to Cambridge. I came from a free school meals background and went to Cambridge, so I would have been included in the figures. Much as I am concerned about that issue, I am more concerned about the young people in my constituency who come from a free school meals background, or just above that line, and who are not achieving the results that they should. I went to a comprehensive school in Luton and when I left school in 1998, which is not so long ago, only one third of young people in my constituency were achieving five GCSEs at grades A to C—the kind of thing that would help them to get on in life. At the time of the last election, the figure was two thirds, so real progress was made under Labour.

I concede that much of that progress was made as a result of the arguments about whether we should have more choice and more autonomy in schools. We have two excellent academies in Luton, one of which started in my constituency and will shortly move into a new building. I do not want to undermine the ability of people to come in and turn around schools that are really struggling, but we should not pretend there is no trade-off in relation to the power of individual heads versus power being pooled, or to the sense that together we are educating our young people.

The situation in Luton illustrates those points very well. We had 11 Building Schools for the Future projects cancelled in the BSF cancellations. For us, the projects were not just about providing world-class facilities but about providing the additional capacity that we desperately need. We have a major issue with our primary schools: we have projected that we will need another 5,000 places at a cost of £76 million, but we will get only £4 million over the next four years. As a result of more providers coming in, there is a disjointed admissions policy and successful free schools and academies, will serve only to increase the gap. My concern is that we are squeezing provision and narrowing the options in places such as Luton about how to respond to the diverse challenges required in education. The choice is between academies and free schools or nothing. There is not even a chance to expand good-quality comprehensive education because no additional is money coming in and there is no scope for local people to step in, through the realms of the local authority, and choose what type of school is appropriate for them.

Last weekend, the English Defence League was in Luton and it raised the issue, once again, of community cohesion in our town. Education is about more than children achieving what they can in terms of grades and results. It is also about the kind of society that we want to create. If we want a comprehensive and mixed society in which people from different backgrounds come together, surely in a place such as Luton comprehensive education is the ideal. We have schools that are doing the work and want to expand, so why close them off and tell them that the only route is through free-school education? Schools are drilling down into more reduced catchment areas and the only route to expanding capacity is through academies or free schools. The slimmed-down admissions codes that are coming might make the situation even worse.

In his speech, the Secretary of State cast himself as a brave reformer and cast Labour Members as the luddites who refuse to adapt to a changing world, but that is not the case. I believe there is a move, which started under the previous Government and continues under this one, to put more power into the hands of individual head teachers and away from local authorities, which are tasked with the responsibility of together finding a response that is appropriate to their setting. We have to accept that doing that comes with a cost. If the very principle of the Bill is to suck power away from the pooling of heads, we will have a model for education that is prescribed, controlled and modelled. In Luton, the effect of the Bill will be to store up problems for the future and for that reason—for my constituents—I will not vote for it tonight.