Academies Bill [Lords]

Ian Mearns Excerpts

Thursday 22nd July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Dan Rogerson]

I am talking about the funding formula. As we have been talking about different parts of the country benefiting in different ways, I thought it important to get on the record that my students were disadvantaged by that formula.

The amendment is useful in that it has prompted a discussion on these issues, but there are problems with it. I note in passing the phrase in proposed subsection (1A)(c):

“any other persons deemed appropriate.”

In yesterday’s debate, the Opposition argued that it was not sufficient to deem people appropriate and that the list should have been much longer, and included staff, for example, so a little inconsistency is apparent.

Putting that point aside, the problem with the amendment is that it is a little vague. Essentially, it relates to situations in which anyone in the local community might think that their school needs a bit more investment for a project, but no level of investment is specified. I can see how the amendment could kick in when a school has been identified by Ofsted and everyone else as needing drastic investment, but it talks about

“whether there are outstanding requirements for capital investment”.

Presumably, the consultation would leave it up to those who responded to a request to define what they deem to be “outstanding requirements”, so the amendment would effectively mean that if anyone said, “We want a bit more in our existing school for this”, no money would be provided. The amendment is intended to toughen up the criteria governing such requests, and I am tempted by that, but it is flawed because, in practice, it would act as a block.

I am sympathetic to some of the issues that have been raised, and I hope that the Minister will respond to them and clarify how local people may be reassured that the Government’s proposed capital programme will meet as many demands for improvements to existing schools as possible.

[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

I want to support the amendment and I am concerned about the implications of the Bill on the review of expenditure on capital programmes into the future. In my borough, five Building Schools for the Future secondary school projects have been cancelled very recently. The first one that I want to talk about is the proposed amalgamation between two schools, Ryton and Hookergate, which are on the western fringe of the borough and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson). That proposed merger was the result of prolonged negotiations regarding those two schools, and the cancellation is a matter of grave concern.

Hookergate—a school that has long served the communities of Chopwell, Rowlands Gill, High Spen and Greenside, as well as many smaller, isolated rural settlements—is sadly subject to a declining pupil population, and it was set to be amalgamated with a school a few miles to the north, in the town of Ryton, on a site that the local authority was negotiating for with several landowners in the area.

Ryton school serves a very broad catchment area, including Ryton and Crawcrook. It also serves communities on the western fringe of Blaydon such as Stella, and the areas of Clara Vale, Stargate and Emmaville. Indeed, the formal part of the consultation on the local authority’s proposal for amalgamation was due to start the day after the Secretary of State made the announcement in the House cancelling the programme.

Another school affected by the cuts proposal is Whickham comprehensive, a large, successful school with some 1,500 pupils in the town of Whickham. It serves surrounding villages such as Marley Hill, Byermoor and Sunniside. It is very popular, but it is in grave need of renewal, as it is in a 1960s CLASP-style building, CLASP being the consortium of local authorities special programme. It is also bursting at the seams, having suffered a fire in one of its blocks several years ago.

St Thomas More Catholic comprehensive school is very popular and successful, with high levels of academic achievement, despite the poor and cramped conditions on its site. The Joseph Swan school, named after the inventor of the incandescent light bulb, who lived in Low Fell in Gateshead, is a successful school serving the community of central Gateshead and Low Fell, where there are three Liberal Democrat councillors. It was to have its dining block and humanities area rebuilt, on the back of the highly successful rebuild of the school’s main body through the traditional capital programme of the late 1990s.

Government Members have criticised us for not investing enough in schools during the 13-year tenure of the Labour Government. In my borough, we had the five schools that I mentioned left to do, but Lord Lawson of Beamish school was rebuilt using the private finance initiative; Kingsmeadow comprehensive was completely rebuilt using PFI; and the Heworth Grange and Thomas Hepburn schools are at the on-site stage. I have to declare an interest: I am still nominally the chair of governors of Thomas Hepburn school. The steelwork is now being erected so that the school can be rebuilt. Numerous primary schools were rebuilt or refurbished through combinations of old-style capital spend and PFI.

The £80 million that was due to come to us as part of Building Schools for the Future included the opportunity to adapt four schools to ensure that they were able to offer inclusive education for children with special needs, where it was the choice of parents to include youngsters with SEN in mainstream schooling. That was part of the transformational aspect of BSF to which my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) referred. That additional SEN money that BSF talked to us about recognised the SEN review in our borough, and our ability to deliver; we could generate, according to the ready reckoner, approximately £10 million to invest in special schools, thereby completing our secondary school investment programme.

In Gateshead, we have built the angel of the north, a millennium bridge, and the Sage Gateshead concert hall and music complex, at which many Members from across the House have attended conferences. We have completed many capital projects, but what I am most proud of is the improvements in education for the children of our borough, and I hate the prospect of that improvement coming to a halt.

When the Secretary of State announced the axing of BSF, and when hon. Friends and I first raised the issue, Government Members accused us of feigning anger and outrage. After 27 years as a local councillor in Gateshead, and after a decade as the lead member on education serving the Gateshead community, I can reassure all Members of the House that I am not feigning anything. In particular, there is no pretence in my profound sadness that the much-needed continued investment in schools in my borough has been snatched away from the children who we all seek to serve.

I welcome the undertaking given by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday to meet the borough’s MPs and discuss this issue. I hope that at that meeting he will reassure us that the Building Schools for the Future programme for Gateshead has a future and has not been sacrificed on the ideological altar of investment in academy school buildings or new free schools for other, more favoured parts of the country.

In that vein, I was struck by the suggestion made by the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, on the BBC last week that he would use his influence to lobby on behalf of places such as Liverpool, Sheffield and Newcastle—all places where the Liberal Democrats have had a significant foothold in local government representation. I hope that the Government will demonstrate transparency and that such decisions on school funding are made on the basis of fair criteria rather than behind-the-scenes deals.

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[Ian Mearns]

I have experience over the years as a local authority representative and also a school governor, and I have come across all too many children whose parents do not even know that they do not have aspirations for their child. Particularly in deprived communities, many parents, and consequently their children, accept the lot they are given. They have a stoicism, and also a lack of understanding about how the systems work and how they could make things better. Because of that, they do not have the fortitude or understanding to pursue improvement for their own child, and in such a scenario who will look after the child’s interests in respect of these independent academies?

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[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. SEN is an emerging story—we all know that. The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), with her vast and important experience, made those points as well. That complicates the situation on statementing.

It is not just a question of parents getting a statement, but of what happens when they do. That is just as problematic. I have seen in my postbag cases where a statement has been provided but its consequences are not deliverable for the child. We must remember that provision through local authorities is not as perfect as it ought to be.

We need to consider what happens in academies—that is what the amendment is all about. We already have governors in schools, and they are very important. Governance performs a valuable function in ensuring that schools perform properly, reach appropriate targets and deliver the high-quality education that we need. In the schools of which I have been a governor, we have had a governor specially responsible for special educational needs.

[Ian Mearns]

It is a legal requirement.

[Neil Carmichael]

Yes, and such accountability is necessary and good, and we will find it in academies. Of course, we have to ensure that not only is there a legal requirement for such governors, but that they do their job and ensure that SEN provision is properly maintained, promoted and delivered in their academy or school. I suggest to my hon. Friend the Minister that we need to consider that as the Bill takes its form.

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[Neil Carmichael]

I am not sure whether it was a speech, but the point is interesting and we should look into it. Of course, the Minister has already promised a Green Paper on the wider issue of SEN, so we should discuss that matter. I thank the hon. Gentleman for a point well made, but I believe that thus far, academies are delivering proper provision.

This matter has already been discussed in the House of Lords, and Baroness Wilkins, in an effective performance, produced two changes to the Bill. One is that the Secretary of State can intervene if special educational needs are not properly provided for. That is a sensible step and a provision that is broadly welcomed.

[Ian Mearns]

A cumbersome aspect of that is that the Secretary of State’s office could be inundated with individual cases of parents who feel that the special educational needs provision for their child has not been tackled effectively.

[Neil Carmichael]

That is also an interesting point, for which I thank the hon. Gentleman.

The Bill is essentially a good measure. It provides for more academies, and we support that because we believe that good leadership, good management, flexibility and less intrusion from local authorities will deliver a higher standard of education. Of course, that must include provision for special educational needs.

We have been promised a Green Paper on special educational needs. The time to discuss the subject is when that is published. A constant theme of the past two or three hours has been the lack of satisfactory provision for special educational needs throughout the country. There are pockets where it is not good enough and delivery that needs to be improved. As long as that is the case, we cannot be satisfied, and we must therefore endeavour to improve the overall provision for special educational needs.

--- Later in debate ---

The hon. Member for North West Durham talked about the hard-end drift—perhaps it will be called the “Glass drift”—and said that even when money goes in, it somehow drifts away. That must be because of the pressures within the system: the way human beings work—those who do the jobs that she did in the past, parents and people in schools—leads to money not going where people want it to go. It is therefore not enough for Ministers to wish the right outcomes—all hon. Members wish the right outcomes. Rather, they must show that they understand the engineering of the system sufficiently to deliver them. We are dealing with the most vulnerable of our children, and we cannot have an already bad situation made worse inadvertently by Ministers in a hurry who do not have sufficient explanations. I am sure that that is not the case, but I would hate to think it was. We should not be blinded by the desire to appear to be acting if we are doing the wrong thing.

[Ian Mearns]

Having worked in the system and taken a number of cases to education appeals panels, I have often seen a situation in which council officers think they are doing the right thing by the system by refusing parents what they want, because they believe that other provision is nearly as good but less costly. Does the Chair of Education Committee accept that if parents want provision that costs tens of thousands of pounds a year, allowing that provision incurs an opportunity cost to the system and other children within it?

[Mr Stuart]

There is always an opportunity cost and people always have to make judgment calls. We need to know who makes those calls, what the pressures on them and their incentives are, and their accountability. It all comes down to that, and understanding what the accountability mechanisms will be if there is a much-increased number of free academies.