Free Schools

Debate between Ivan Lewis and Nick Gibb

Wednesday 19th June 2019 Westminster Hall

[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.

Relationships and Sex Education

Debate between Ivan Lewis and Nick Gibb

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Nick Gibb]

I will come to that in a moment.

The Church of England’s chief education officer, Rev. Nigel Genders, said:

“If adopted, these guidelines will equip schools and teachers to help children and young people gain the skills and knowledge to understand and value one another within a pluralistic society.”

We have had similar support from the Catholic Education Service.

All schools, whether religious or not, will be required to take the religious beliefs of their pupils into account when they decide to deliver certain content, to ensure that topics are appropriately handled. However, it is of course vital that, by the time they become adults and participate in British society, pupils understand, respect and value all the protected characteristics in the Equality Act 2010. The Department trusts schools to make the right decisions about what and when they teach their pupils about topics, including equalities.

[Mr Ivan Lewis]

I thank the Minister for giving way. He is one of the Ministers that I think many of us in the Chamber massively respect due to the way he tries to do his job. I warmly welcome what he said about health education in our schools. We have had two tragedies involving young people in my constituency recently, and there is a growing awareness of how vital it is to teach mental wellbeing, particularly among young people, given the challenges they face.

However, who in the Government is responsible for assessing the cumulative impact on religious freedom of relationships and sex education, the regulation of private schools, and Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government guidance on schools’ integration duties? Religious freedom is cast aside all too often in our society. That question is particularly important in circumstances where Ofsted takes a different view from a school. The guidance states that schools should be able to teach these things in a way that is consistent with their religious ethos, but who does a school consult when making decisions about what it is able to do in a way that is consistent with its religious ethos, without Ofsted intervening and making—certainly in some cases—inappropriate decisions?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman raises some very good points. We take these issues extremely seriously. We continually meet religious groups from right across the spectrum to discuss these very sensitive issues. He raised the issue of Ofsted. In common with other curriculum areas, Ofsted will not make a discrete judgment on the delivery of relationships education or RSE, but the proposed new Ofsted framework continues to set out the expectation that inspectors will consider the spiritual, moral and cultural development of pupils as well as a broad and balanced curriculum when informing the judgment of a school. We are of course in discussion with Ofsted the whole time to ensure that it enforces these rules in a sensitive way that reflects the religious background of the schools it inspects.

We have been clear that parents and carers are the primary teachers of these topics, and that these subjects are designed to complement and reinforce the role of parents by building on what children learn at home. That is why we have retained parents’ ability to request that their child be withdrawn from the sex education elements of RSE should they wish. I assure my hon. Friends the Members for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and for Bolton West (Chris Green) that the draft guidance preserves that parental right but also reflects the rights of a young person who is competent to make their own decision.