Education and Adoption Bill

James Berry Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

I feel bound to comment on amendment 11, because my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) made a persuasive case. I shall confine myself to these comments. I think that existing grammar schools should certainly be allowed to expand—two in my constituency want to do exactly that—but I do not think that going down the selective route beyond where we now are would be right for our children or, indeed, for our education system as a whole. For the sake of all children who go to school, we must ensure that the thousands of schools we have can become much better than they are now, rather than focus on just a few schools. Amendment 11 would lead us down the track of focusing on just a few schools.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

In Kingston and Surbiton, we have the two Tiffin schools. One is just outside my constituency, and one is in it. They are excellent examples of grammar schools, and I would certainly support maintaining them. Does my hon. Friend agree that schools can create a variety of educational models, albeit non-selective ones, within the free schools system? Those models follow the traditional academic grammar school route without the selective element, which is a successful way of preserving the grammar school ethos without the problems of selectivity.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for his very helpful intervention. That point justifies the free schools programme, which is all about bringing in choice and making sure that parents and staff can make decisions about their school, including about having a school of that type.

On that point, the shadow Minister quite rightly referred to what the New Schools Network has said about parent involvement. I have written about that in the past, and I am pleased that the idea has now been given more traction. On the particular proposal of empowering parents to take action about the leadership of a school, I would say that they should do so only if the very highest threshold is met.

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Given that background, it is important to raise another concern: the very widespread involvement of Conservative party donors in a number of academy chains. Indeed, four of the top 12 largest academy chains have links to the Conservative party through donations. David Ross, for instance, has donated over £250,000 to the Conservative party. He runs the David Ross Foundation which has 30 academies, incorporating primary, secondary, grammar and special schools, and is looking to take over more, especially if the Bill goes through. Alan Lewis, a major Conservative donor and vice-chair of Conservatives for Business, was also initially listed as a chairman of the Kings Science Academy, before that information disappeared from the public domain. The academy chain mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) is run by another Conservative party donor, Theodore Agnew. The trust is looking actively—some would argue aggressively—to take over more schools. Without rehearsing arguments for a different debate, it would be fair to say that there are serious local concerns about its accountability, particularly in reference to Ofsted.

[James Berry]

Is the hon. Lady seriously criticising these individuals, who are looking to assist in the education of young people, just because they are Conservative party members? If she is, I think this debate has got to a very sad state. I thought, when we were members of the Public Bill Committee, that both our parties were looking to further education opportunities for young people, not simply make cheap party political jibes and pot shots.

[Louise Haigh]

The Minister made the same point in Committee when I was raising these issues then. This is not an issue of Conservative party membership; this is an issue of transparency and serious conflicts of interest that have been raised by the cross-party Education Committee. It is not a cheap party political jibe, but one that has been seriously raised about parliamentary accountability and transparency, something Conservative Members are supposedly in favour of.

The Harris chain is particularly relevant, because it has sometimes been chosen as a sponsor by the Department against the wishes of staff, parents, and communities who have preferred other high-performing local options. That brings me to the Minister’s colleague, Lord Nash, who is another Conservative donor. He sits not only in the other place, but in the Department as Minister for Academies, where he is involved in choosing sponsors despite having been involved in specific academy chains. Frankly, there have been suspicions of political favouritism and intervention in these choices, and there are too few safeguards against them.

The vast majority of academy trusts are staffed by people working hard to address educational underperformance, but it is appropriate to ask, as the Education Committee did, what processes the Minister has in place to guard against certain trusts being given preferential treatment if, as we expect, the Government refuse to allow independent scrutiny. Indeed, the Clarke report, following the so-called Trojan horse affair, made a number of very significant recommendations which it appears the Government have yet to implement fully. Recommendation 7 stated that the Department for Education should consider urgently how best to capture local concerns driving the conversion process and review the brokerage system through which schools are matched with academy sponsors to ensure that the process is transparent and understood by all parties. The Government have previously claimed that all the recommendations have been implemented, but perhaps the Minister could comment on how the Bill fulfils them. What we are hearing from education professionals is that in some cases school leaders will go to the Department with recommendations for a preferred sponsor for their school, only to be overruled by the Department.

That brings me to new clause 4, which is intended to put the voices of parents and the local community at the centre of any decision to choose the identity of an academy sponsor. Apart from questions about the principle and pace of the academy programme, there will be questions about the identity, values and track record of particular academy sponsors for particular schools. Labour Members simply do not understand what the Government have to fear from the voices of parents, teachers, governors and support staff. We consult those groups constantly, and we value their input extremely highly. Indeed, the head of the National Association of Head Teachers argued, very wisely, in a blog ahead of today’s debate, that

“removing the right to consultation and engagement with local communities, in my experience, tends to alienate and promote opposition where previously the local community was neutral.”