Education and Adoption Bill

Helen Whately Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. We are talking about taxpayers’ money, so where are the transparency and accountability on expenditure? Why are parents and pupils at failing academy schools less deserving of fast and effective state intervention than those in the maintained sector? The Labour party believes every child should have a good education in every classroom and opposes this ideological protection of certain poorly performing schools.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I am baffled, because the hon. Gentleman has mentioned several things in the Bill he supports yet he is unable to support measures to speed up improvements to failing schools.

[Tristram Hunt]

The question is: what is the best mechanism for dealing with improvements to failing schools? The hon. Lady is new to this House, but I urge her to read the Select Committee’s report, because if she did, she would find that the evidence behind it is a lot more complicated than she suggests.

There is nothing in this Bill to deal with coasting or failing academy chains.

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

I congratulate all hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches this afternoon, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), whose constituency I know well.

The education section of the Bill is primarily about accelerating school improvement. In the verbal jousts across the Floor, I fear that we sometimes forget what or who we are talking about. I ask hon. Members to imagine their own child attending a failing primary school. Their child might be failing to learn to read and write, but perhaps nobody does anything about it. Perhaps no one notices or seems to think that it matters. That goes on for two or three years, the child gets further and further behind, and may never catch up. Then it is too late, and the child becomes one of the one in five children who leave primary school unable to read and write properly.

Over the last few years, the Secretary of State and her predecessor have made bold decisions to put into practice what the research tells us works in education systems around the world. They have increased transparency and accountability. They have increased the focus on the quality of teaching and the calibre of teachers and school leadership. Huge progress has been made in making teaching a more attractive profession. For example, for three years in a row, Teach First has been the top recruiter of graduates from elite universities, and a royal college of teaching is in the pipeline.

Hundreds of schools have more autonomy through the academies and free school programmes, and it is autonomy that gives good school leaders and their staff the chance to innovate—the key to success in the very best school systems around the world. Head teachers I have spoken to tell me how much they value the extra autonomy that their school being an academy gives them. Around the country, struggling schools are being helped to turn around, whether well-known examples such as King Solomon Academy and Durand Academy in London, or less dramatic but equally important improvement stories, such as the Abbey School in my constituency. With so much going in the right direction, what matters now is ensuring that every school is part of it. If a school is failing its pupils, there is no time to lose, because each day, term or year a child is in a failing school is another opportunity lost in that child’s education.

Although the Government are right to give extra attention to failing schools, we must not overlook schools that are doing well. My constituency has many good and outstanding schools, but the area suffers from below average education funding. While some schools around the country receive £8,000 or so per pupil, most of my schools receive half that amount. They have made savings, including making staff redundant, and one school is now facing the choice of which of three modern languages —French, German or Spanish—to drop. If we aspire to excellence in education, we should not have schools facing such choices. I welcome the Secretary of State’s assurance last week that the funding formula will be reviewed, but I press her to ensure that that happens as soon as possible and, while the review is being carried out, that help be considered for financially struggling schools to tide them over.