Free Schools

Ivan Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ivan Lewis (Bury South) (Ind)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck. I congratulate the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) on securing the debate and on her excellent job application. When the future Prime Minister is appointed, I am sure she will be given serious consideration after such a loyal speech.

I will devote my contribution to the urgent need for a new secondary school in Radcliffe in my constituency. Radcliffe is an old industrial town that was on the frontline of the industrial revolution. When the paper mills shut down in the 1990s, not only did people lose their jobs, but the town lost its sense of identity. That was made worse by the loss of its secondary school and a sense that it was failing to get a fair deal from the council in Bury or the Government in Westminster. If we are to truly give Radcliffe families hope for a bright future, it is essential that they get the school they deserve and were promised.

First, I agree with much of what my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) said about the Government’s ideological preference for free schools, which is predicated on a myth that keeps being repeated—that schools are subject to interference from local councils. That has not been the case for decades; in the real world, headteachers and governors run schools.

For a long time, the support provided by an excellent local education authority in Bury added value to school leadership and made a key contribution to raising standards. In recent years, the withering on the vine of the active LEA, especially the loss of expert advisers due to cuts, has contributed to previously excellent schools ending up in special measures or requiring improvement. I do not claim that all local education authorities were adding value to schools, but those that were should have been invested in, not effectively dismantled.

The fragmentation of the school system has led to a dearth of accountability, as my hon. Friend said, and has made no discernible difference to raising standards. Those who claim that new Labour is somehow to blame because it introduced academies are guilty of rewriting history. We created academies in communities where, despite extra funding and changes in leadership, long-term underperformance had blighted young people’s life chances. Our passion was to break the shameful and enduring link between social class and educational attainment that continues to blight the country’s success. I believe that breaking that link is the Government’s objective too, but forcing academisation on all schools and insisting that all new schools are free schools will not necessarily achieve that.

Despite those misgivings, I make no apologies for working with the council and the Government to develop a proposal for a free school for Radcliffe. Government policy means that we have a stark choice: a free school or no school. In those circumstances, I will work night and day to secure a secondary school through the free school programme.

I often state that the worst thing that has happened in my political career is the betrayal of the promise that Radcliffe would have a new state-of-the-art secondary school. It is a shocking story, and many lies have been told about how it came to pass, so I want to put the record straight. In 2009, Bury Council had three sites at its disposal: the former Radcliffe High School site, the former Coney Green High School site and the former East Lancashire paper mill site. A developer had agreed to purchase all three sites and I had secured £5 million from what was then the Department for Education and Skills to enable the proposed school to go ahead on the East Lancs paper mill site. Work on the school was ready to go.

The Labour leadership of the council was concerned that the Conservatives would take control at that year’s local elections and abandon plans for the new school, but senior officers assured them that a legal heads of agreement had been signed with the developer, which meant that nothing could prevent the school project going ahead. That turned out to be untrue and on taking office, the Tories suspended the school project. Without any consultation with affected parents, they proposed that Derby High School be relocated to Radcliffe; that proposal was ultimately rejected by parents.

The Conservatives then reduced the size of the proposed school and refused to proceed with the original funding package. In addition, they relocated Millwood School to one of the sites. They claimed that the school could go ahead only if the then Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme provided the funding, but they were fully aware that Bury would not become eligible for that funding for many years. The developer lost patience and walked away, publicly expressing his anger at the council’s conduct.

Meanwhile, the continued uncertainty and broken promises seriously affected student numbers at the existing Radcliffe Riverside School. Understandably, parents were voting with their feet and sending their children to schools outside Radcliffe. Having blighted the school, the then controlling group had the audacity to claim that there was no demand for a school in Radcliffe. In 2010, the incoming Tory-Lib Dem Government scrapped the Building Schools for the Future programme. In 2014, Radcliffe Riverside School closed due to dwindling numbers. The promise of a new secondary school had turned to dust, and worse still, Radcliffe now had no secondary school at all.

That history matters because some people promote the narrative that the council has neglected Radcliffe and does not care about its future. Some of the most vocal promoters of that view were members of the controlling group that blighted and then scrapped the school. They ought to hang their heads in shame for their hypocrisy and failure to stand up for Radcliffe when they had the political power.

I and the council leader, Councillor Rishi Shori, have made it clear that a new secondary school must be a top priority for the town and the entire borough of Bury. To that end, we had a highly constructive meeting with Education Minister Lord Agnew in April. I place on record my thanks, which I ask the Minister to pass on, for his guidance and understanding about why Radcliffe should be a priority. He made no guarantees about what would happen in the future, but he understood the importance of a new school as a driver of change in a disadvantaged community.

We are in the process of selecting a suitable partner, as required by the free schools programme, and will submit a funding bid to the Government in the autumn. We are confident that we meet all the relevant requirements specified by the Government and, crucially—the predominant issue in terms of being successful—that we can demonstrate future demand for student places.

My vision remains the same: a new secondary school at the heart of a revitalised Radcliffe community that offers the highest educational standards and is a key hub for intergenerational community activities. Radcliffe is the destination of choice for many people seeking affordable housing with good transport links in the vicinity of Manchester and Bury. The new food-based events at Radcliffe market and the council’s investment plans for the town centre are positive steps forward. I would also like there to be a new focus on heritage and cultural regeneration in the town as a key driver for its future. As we host the cricket world cup, few are aware that the great West Indian cricketer Sir Garfield Sobers spent the early years of his career playing for Radcliffe cricket club, or that Radcliffe was the birthplace and family home of Danny Boyle.

The new school promised in 2009 is long overdue. I hope the Minister will assure me that the Government will continue to work with me and Bury Council to make the Radcliffe school happen and create a renewed sense of hope and optimism in the town. Radcliffe is an almost classic example of towns that are close to cities that have benefited from our country’s growth in the last 30 years that feel left behind, and that they have not benefited from the economic growth. Delivering the school is absolutely essential to turning around the perception of many that the community has been forgotten and left behind. The school is not only important in raising educational standards; it is the key to the community’s future sense of identity and regeneration.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to have you chairing our sitting today, Ms Buck. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman) on securing the debate and on an excellent opening speech on the future of free schools. I commend her commitment to the free school programme. She has been heavily involved in setting up and running Michaela Community School in Brent.

The shadow Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane), has reiterated Labour’s policy to politicise the running of schools, to remove academies’ autonomy, which is key to the raising of standards, and to abolish the free schools programme. That will be hugely damaging to academies and free schools and to academic standards, and it should alarm the teachers and headteachers of the 8,000 academies and nearly 500 free schools in this country. Similarly, Labour’s policy of abolishing SATs, the key accountability measure for primary schools, would be a hugely retrograde step and would again undermine the drive for higher standards in schools.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Fareham said, Michaela Community School in Brent was rated outstanding by Ofsted in 2017. Inspectors commented on the “exceedingly strong” progress that pupils make and on their

“powerful determination to achieve as well as they can”.

We want every child in this country to have access to a world-class education, regardless of their background. Thanks to the free schools programme, extraordinary schools such as Michaela are changing what is thought to be possible and raising expectations across the country. I congratulate my hon. Friend on the Michaela Community School trust’s success in the most recent free school application round, announced last week. As she said, the proposed new school will open in Stevenage, where there is a need for new, quality secondary school places. Michaela Community School in Stevenage will replicate the ethos of the existing Michaela school in Brent, with a focus on traditional academic subjects and on teaching the value of self-discipline, excellent behaviour and responsibility for one’s own development. I wish the trust and my hon. Friend every success during the next exciting phase of establishing the school.

I hope my hon. Friend will allow me to begin by outlining how free schools such as Michaela are making a real impact on the lives of pupils across the country. All around the country, the Government have built the foundations of an education system through which teachers and headteachers control the levers of school improvement and parents exercise choice, taking power away from local education authorities and handing it back to local communities.

A key part of the Government’s reforms has been the free schools programme. The programme was established in 2010, with the first free schools opening in 2011. The Government invited proposers to take up the challenge of setting up a new school, and groups who were passionate about ensuring that the next generation is best placed to face the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead came forward with their ideas and plans to make that a reality. Indeed, my hon. Friend was one of the very early pioneers of the programme, and Michaela Community School Brent was successful in only the second round of free school applications.

We now have 446 open free schools, which will provide around 250,000 places when at full capacity; 122 of 152 local authorities now have at least one free school in their area, and we are working with groups to establish a further 285 free schools. The free schools programme has provided a route for opening innovative schools that do things differently, and successfully opened schools that local authorities would not have commissioned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) rightly pointed out.

Of those open free schools inspected by Ofsted, 84% have been rated good or outstanding, with 30% rated outstanding. That is a significant achievement, and I congratulate the proposers and teachers for their dedication to ensuring the success of their free schools and their pupils. Furthermore, in 2018, four of the top 10 Progress 8 scores for state-funded schools in England were achieved by free schools: William Perkin Church of England High School in Ealing, Dixons Trinity Academy in Bradford, Eden Girls’ School in Coventry and Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School in Blackburn.

The latter two schools were opened by Star Academies, which has grown through the free schools programme from running a single school in the north-west to running 24 schools across the country, made up of nine academies and 15 free schools, with approval to open five additional free schools. Of the 10 free schools that have had Ofsted inspections since opening or joining the trust, all have been rated outstanding.

All these successful schools teach a stretching, knowledge-rich curriculum. Each takes a strong approach to behaviour management, so that teachers can teach uninterrupted. I have seen at first hand Michaela school’s commitment to high academic standards, showing what it is possible to achieve. I urge Opposition Members to visit some of those free schools, particularly Michaela or the Tauheedul Islam Boys’ High School, to see for themselves before they cast judgment on a hugely successful programme.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Henley for his kind comments; Europa School UK is a classic example of how the free schools programme empowers innovation, such as by teaching through a European language other than English. As he says, standards at the Europa School UK in Culham are very high indeed.

The hon. Member for Bury South (Mr Lewis) said that the academies programme has led to more schools being put into special measures and requiring improvements, but the opposite is the case. In 2010, when there were just 200 academies, 68% of schools were good or outstanding; today, that figure is 86%.[Official Report, 25 June 2019, Vol. 662, c. 7MC.]

[Mr Ivan Lewis]

Although the Minister and I have differences on some of these issues, I have massive respect for the work he does in his capacity as an Education Minister, and I think that view is shared across the House. If I may just correct the record, that is not what I said; I said that the removal, in the Bury context, of the local education authority’s role in supporting improvement in school standards, especially through specialist, highly qualified advisers, has contributed in that Bury context to schools that were formerly outstanding becoming in need of improvement or inadequate. That is what I said. I never said that the academies programme had led to the deterioration of those schools; I said that the removal of the local education authority, which in this case was excellent, adding value to schools, headteachers and teachers, has contributed to a deterioration in the performance of those schools.

[Nick Gibb]

I thought the hon. Gentleman had said that was the case at a systemic level, right across the country, and not just in Bury. I thought he had said that the reduction in the school improvement department’s capacity in local authorities had led to an increase in the number of schools in special measures and requiring improvements. If he did not say that, I will withdraw the remarks, but the truth is that there are fewer schools either in “requires improvement” or in special measures than there were in 2010, despite—or, in my opinion, because of—the fact that we have such a large school improvement change.

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his clarity and for his kind words about the Minister responsible for the schools system, Lord Agnew, and his understanding of the problems facing the town of Radcliffe in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I can assure him that we will continue to work with him on that particular issue.

We have approved schools with links to other institutions, such as the LIPA Sixth Form College, inspired by the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts, which focuses on acting, dance, music and sound technology and was recently judged outstanding in all areas by Ofsted. In addition, in September 2012, we opened the London Academy of Excellence, a selective free school sixth form in east London, which was set up in collaboration with seven independent schools.