Qualified Teachers

Jonathan Reynolds Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The Chairman of the Select Committee is right once again. This is a policy for generating unemployment for excellent teachers in the state sector and giving the wealthy—those who have the advantage of the cash that enables them to pay for an independent education—the freedom to benefit from them. It is also important to recognise that the freedom to employ whoever a head teacher believes to be important and capable of adding value to education is essential to the academies and free schools programme.

It is important that Opposition Members are not selective in their use of evidence when they talk about academies and free schools, because academic results are improving faster in sponsored academies than in other schools, and the longer schools have enjoyed academy freedoms, the better they have done. In sponsored academies, open for three years and taking advantage of the freedoms we have given them, the proportion of pupils who achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths has increased by an average of 12.1 percentage points. Over the same time, results in all state-funded schools have gone up, which is good, but only by 5.1 percentage points.

We are clearly seeing academies and free schools generating improved results for the students who need them most. More than that, free schools, overwhelmingly in the poorest areas, have been backed by Andrew Adonis and Tony Blair. Andrew Adonis said that free schools were essentially Labour’s invention and Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister, backed them, saying that they were a great idea, explicitly because they were

“independent schools in the state sector”.

He backed them because they had all the freedoms of great independent schools, like University College school and others, to do the right thing for their students.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Not for the first time, there is a lack of logic in what the Secretary of State is saying. If unqualified teachers are doing such a good job and are so able, why would they find it so hard to achieve formal qualifications?

[Michael Gove]

If they are doing such a good job, why would the hon. Gentleman want to see them sacked? As far as he and those on his Front Bench are concerned, the only way in which someone can be a good teacher is if a single piece of paper is conferred on them. We believe that the right person to decide who should teach in a school is the head teacher, not the bureaucrats.

Another point that it is important to remember—I shall be explicit about this point, which was hinted at by the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central—is that there is a difference of opinion between the two coalition parties about the future of the policy on academies and free schools. It has been a success so far, one in which we share, and I pay tribute to the Liberal Democrats for supporting it.