Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

The work load burden on teachers, which has been present for some time in this country, including under the Labour Government, is precisely the reason that we established the work load challenge. The hon. Lady will have seen the comprehensive and detailed plan that we published, which we believe will help over time to drive down the unnecessary work load of teachers.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

As a former teacher, may I say that teacher work load really matters? The 10% increase that was shown up in the work load survey, which the Minister published only after being hounded for some considerable time by the Opposition, is contributing to low morale and to a looming teacher training and recruitment crisis. The response from the Government that he mentioned has been roundly rejected by teachers, thousands of whom have taken the trouble to tell Ministers of the negative impact of Government policy on teacher work loads. Do we not need a new beginning for teachers, with a Government who take seriously the impact that work load pressures are having on teacher morale and on children’s learning?

[Mr Laws]

I would gently make two points. First, let us look back at some of what has been said by the teacher unions about the Government’s response. The National Association of Head Teachers said that it believes that

“the proposals for better planning and greater notice of changes are a step in the right direction. They could do a great deal to improve the quality of education”.

Secondly, I do not think the Labour party is in any position to give any lectures about Government communications with teachers. After all, the hon. Gentleman’s boss, the shadow Secretary of State, was recently contacted by one parent teacher group to ask about Labour policy and he replied with eight words:

“Stop moaning. Read the speeches. Do some work.”

That was the Labour party’s response—hardly constructive engagement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I congratulate him on his work to help us ensure additional places in his constituency. I confirm that under the previous Labour Government, £17 million was made available in his local authority area for basic need, and that has risen to £23 million in this Parliament. We have allocated another £9 million over the next two years, meaning that £32 million extra has been made available by this coalition Government for school places in my hon. Friend’s area.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Lib Dem councillors in Cambridge are calling this a crisis, and Tories in Surrey are saying there is a severe shortfall in places for next September. Bradford council says that it has a primary school places problem, and in nearby Leeds a secondary free school has attracted only 11 additional pupils this term. When will the Minister drop the ideological policy on primary school places that was adopted by his Tory master, and put parents and pupils first?

[Mr Laws]

We are putting pupils and parents first, and we are reversing a decline in primary school places. Under the last Labour Government, 200,000 primary school places were taken out of circulation, precisely at a time when the birth rate was rising. We will not follow such an irresponsible policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

We certainly do not want schools that seek to segregate members of the society that we have, but, as people in a liberal society, we also want to respect the right of many parents to have their young people educated in the way that they wish.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I welcome the new Education Secretary to her job. I also welcome back the Schools Minister, who has made the greatest comeback since Lazarus. I am not sure why we need two Schools Ministers, one in the blue corner and one in the yellow corner, but perhaps that is the reason.

One suggestion for the Education Secretary that I have received is that she should change the locks at Sanctuary Buildings to ensure that the former Education Secretary and his adviser Dominic Cummings cannot sneak back in after dark. However, she could help less affluent pupils immediately if she reversed her predecessor’s political instruction to Ofqual to end the AS-level link, which research shows helps them to obtain good university places. Will she signal a fresh start by reversing that decision?

[Mr Laws]

There are no plans to go down the route that the hon. Gentleman has suggested. We, as a Government, believe passionately that the final years of education for young people should be years in which they focus not just on examinations, but on learning. The problem during the most recent period of Labour government was that, in the last four years of education, too much time was spent taking exams rather than learning new facts.

Catholic Schools (Admissions)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Wednesday 30th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

There are two separate points. I sought to make the first point by addressing the question that my hon. Friend raised in his speech about whether it was possible to have a Catholic ethos and education in a school in which a large number of pupils were not Catholic. If he agrees that it is possible to retain that ethos, I welcome that. I come back to the issue of there being two competing rights in a state-funded school system: people’s right to choose to have their children educated in the way that they wish, and the right of taxpayers who live near state-funded schools to have some ability to access them despite the over-representation of people from the faith that the system allows.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister clarify the Government’s position on new voluntary-aided schools?

[Mr Laws]

I am coming to that, and I hope I will be able to get to it before the end of my speech. As a Catholic—this is a personal comment and not one that I make on behalf of the Government—I think that our faith is at its best when it reaches out to people beyond the faith, and I urge the Catholic faith in this country not to think of itself as providing schools to serve only people of the Catholic faith. Surely, in a society where all religions seem to be struggling to keep people engaged, faiths such as Catholicism should welcome the fact that many parents want their children to attend those schools even if they are not of the faith. I acknowledge that that is an issue for Catholic schools and the Catholic faith; it is not for me, but I think it should be considered.

Although I recognise that the Catholic sector has aspirations whereby it continues to have objections to our policy on admissions in faith free schools, I am keen that that the Catholic Education Service should continue to engage with us in discussing the matter. We remain committed to continuing our engagement with the Catholic Education Service on this issue, and we would welcome innovative ideas from it. For example, a free school that, in response to local demand, met the anticipated faith demand but had a capacity greater than that demand and thus did not exceed the 50% limit would still be eligible for funding. Such a school would help to provide additional school places where they are most needed and extend school choice to parents who might not be Catholic but nevertheless want a Church education for their children. I must be clear, however, that we currently have no plans to change the 50% limit. Given the fact that we have a very small number of Catholic free schools, I hope that Catholic schools will consider engaging further in that programme.

In understanding the importance of the 50% limit in ensuring that new provision Church and faith schools are also accessible to their local community, it is vital that we recognise the wider pressures on the schools system. Making sure there are enough high-quality school places for the growing population will remain one of the Government’s top priorities. The Department has allocated a total of £5 billion of basic-need money to local authorities between 2011-12 and 2014-15. That is considerably in excess of the amount for the previous Parliament. Local authorities and other schools in those areas have already created about a third of a million additional school places, and must continue to create such places in future.

The Department provides funding to enable local authorities to meet the demand for new places based on authorities’ forecasts of pupil numbers in their areas. The Government welcome Church and faith schools as part of the diverse and autonomous pattern of education provision in this country. We therefore provide for faith designation of both maintained schools and academies. A voluntary-aided school can seek to convert to academy status, just like any other maintained school, but a voluntary-aided school converting to academy status would convert under existing arrangements—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Local Government Association recently warned that there is a need to create 130,000 new places by 2017-18. It also warned that because of the Minister’s ideological insistence that these places have to be in free schools and academies, they will not be created where they are actually needed. On what evidence does he believe that community schools and local decision making are always bad?

[Mr Laws]

We do not believe that. Indeed, local community schools are expanding right across the country; the difference between the situation under this Government and under the previous Government is that they have the money to do so.

School Funding

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Thursday 13th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the statement and the small amount of notice we had of its contents.

There are growing pressures on education funding and demographic trends are dictating the need for more school places, with the National Audit Office reporting the need for an additional 250,000 places by next year. That has big implications for the allocation of education funding.

Ministers have shown a degree of complacency in addressing the primary school places crisis. In less than a month, parents will learn the outcome of their application for their child’s primary school place and we know that under this Government we have seen a doubling of the number of classes with more than 30 pupils and—do not worry, I will not take up 1,400 words, as the Minister did—a trebling in the number of primary schools with more than 800 pupils. The pressures are real, which is why it is so alarming that according to NAO data two thirds of all places created by the free school programme are being diverted from areas of high and severe need for primary places. In secondary schools, only 19% of places—[Interruption.] Government Members should listen to this—they should listen with their ears, rather than their mouths. In secondary schools, only 19% of places are in areas of need. That cannot be right, particularly on a day when another free school has gone into special measures.

We have to take any statements on finance from the Schools Minister with a pinch of salt, because he has form. He used to claim when in opposition that the pupil premium would be additional money in real terms for schools, but, as he admitted today in his statement, it is not additional money in real terms. What are the implications of the statement for the pupil premium and for non-local authority schools?

The idea of a national funding formula has merit, but it must be debated openly and transparently. The coalition has said that it is committed to a new national funding formula by 2015-16. Can we assume from today’s statement that this has been filed away in the drawer marked “Too difficult”, and that there will be no new comprehensive funding formula under this increasingly impotent Government?

The Minister claimed that previous Governments did nothing on this. That is nonsense. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has warned that a new national funding formula will have winners and losers. If Ministers are pursuing the national funding formula, they must do so in an open and transparent way and be clear about who will lose out. So can the right hon. Gentleman confirm—[Interruption.] Hon. Members are living in cloud cuckoo land if they think no one is going to lose out. Can the Minister confirm that there are no losers from this announcement because he has decided to leave the bad news for those he intends to hit with cuts, including his hon. Friends who are so voluble, until after the next general election?

If this is genuinely new money for education, it will have a Barnett formula consequential for the devolved Administrations, which I know will be of interest to all political parties in the devolved nations, including the Minister’s own party. Can he confirm that this announcement contains new money from the Treasury, and say how much the Barnett consequential of that new money will be for the devolved Administrations and how much he is taking from his existing budget? It was not clear from his statement how much is new Treasury money, and how much he is cutting from the schools budget to pay for this part of the announcement. I would be grateful if he clarified those figures.

The Minister said in his statement, “We are able to deliver this significant boost by using money from within our protected schools budget and because of additional money from the Treasury.” The House deserves to know how much will come from each source, where the money is being taken from within the protected schools budget and what the Barnett consequentials are. We learned this week that Ministers have been known to put the cart before the horse in devising policy, and only then to think how they might pay for it. Can the Minister assure us that this is fully costed and not simply another botched spending announcement from the Department for Education?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful, I suppose, to the hon. Gentleman for his response, but all of us in the House are still none the wiser about whether the Labour party supports the proposals I am announcing today. Perhaps there could be some indication of this from the Labour Front Bench. Do I take it from all those critical comments that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) proposes to send back the money we are going to allocate to Stoke-on-Trent—potentially £4 million to his area? We are unaware from the statement whether the Labour party supports these proposals. Or is the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) genuinely embarrassed that his party failed to deal with the issue of underfunded areas year in, year out, in spite of clear evidence of unfair funding throughout the country?

To come to the points that the hon. Gentleman did make, few of which were about the contents of my statement, I do not know how he has the nerve to accuse this Government of complacency over school place planning, when the amount of money that we are putting into basic need is many multiples of the amount that the previous Government put in. How can he talk about complacency when his was a Government who ignored all the forecasts of the Office for National Statistics from 2003 onwards and were taking out 250,000 primary schools places at a time when the population was increasing? That is behind many of the problems that we face in parts of the country today where Labour was closing down places when it should have been funding them.

On the pupil premium, it is clear that we have protected, in cash terms, the settlement for every pupil, and the pupil premium is on top of that. I invite the hon. Gentleman to go to schools across the country, particularly to those in areas of high disadvantage, and try telling them that this is not extra money. It is making a massive difference in some of the most deprived schools. Furthermore, I can confirm that in 2014-15 the pupil premium will rise for primary schools from £900 to £1,300, and for secondary schools to £935. It will give schools thousands and thousands of pounds extra over a young disadvantaged person’s time in education to improve their educational outcomes, and I am very proud of that.

We have also made it clear that the right time to set out the national fair funding formula is when we have multi-year plans, so we can create a sense of certainty. We are not, as previous Governments did, simply kicking this issue into the long grass. For the first time, we are delivering the uplifts that will make a real difference in areas such as Cambridgeshire and the others that I have mentioned. If the hon. Gentleman wants to campaign on that, he is welcome to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Once again, I praise her resilience in campaigning on this issue throughout the long period of the Labour Administration, who ignored the issue. I am pleased that it is a coalition Government who are proposing to raise the amount of funding for Poole from just over £4,000 per pupil to £4,142, which would give Poole over £2.25 million of additional funding.

[Kevin Brennan]

The civil service is meant to be independent; this is outrageous.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, I’m sure he does.

[Mr Laws]

Labour Members are making a lot of noise, which reflects their embarrassment at the fact that this was a problem for years under a Labour Government and they did nothing about it. I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman does not like to hear good news, but I can give him some more good news for Suffolk, whose funding will go up by more than £9 million, from £4,241 a pupil to £4,347. [Interruption.] I am sorry that Labour Members cannot take this in a measured way or accept that we are doing the right thing to deliver fair funding.

[Mr Laws]

I am happy to confirm the figure that I mentioned a moment ago to another Gloucestershire MP, my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper). South Gloucestershire, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) correctly indicates, is one of the areas that have been underfunded for a long time. Under the proposals on which we are consulting, its funding will go up from the current £3,969 per pupil to an indicative figure of £4,217. That 6.3% increase is significant and I know that parents in my hon. Friend’s constituency will welcome it, even if the Labour party does not.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, shut up.

Educational Attainment (Disadvantaged Pupils)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Tuesday 25th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

I think there was some read-across, particularly in Manchester, where it worked better than elsewhere. I do not think the policy was given enough time. This Government were wrong to abandon that approach when they came in, in favour of a wholesale structural and cultural revolution, rather than looking at those key factors and attempting more effectively to replicate them. The system has been endangered by wholesale atomisation—the creation of this kind of Govian archipelago of schools across the country that are not well connected.

What the London challenge tells us—I sense sometimes that the Schools Minister may have some sympathy with this point—is that, while autonomy at school level is important, it should be provided within a collaborative system and a culture of collaboration, with highly qualified and well motivated professionals working together in the interests of all the children in that particular area. That was the lesson from the Ofsted report, which should be returned to and should become our mantra in trying to improve schools across the country. We should not simply rely on the idea that changing the sign at the front of the school and introducing academies and free schools will solve all our problems. It will not, and any intelligent analysis will show that.

We accept that we now have a variety of different types of schools, but let us re-introduce into the system the values of the London challenge that have been shown to be valuable in raising standards. That is not to say that everything from London is replicable across the country, due to many of the factors mentioned by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, but it is clear that they are key features of the London challenge that worked, and features of school systems in other parts of the world that show them to be a success.

I am conscious of time and I want to leave the Minister with time to respond, so I will briefly say a few more things. We have not heard much today about the importance of early years. I am not going to speak extensively about what the previous Government did on that; it has already been mentioned by other colleagues. We welcome and support—in fact, we proposed this—the extension of early years to two-year-olds. However, we need to do much more on that, and we need to have a much better offer for parents, particularly in relation to child care. We have already proposed a primary child care guarantee and extending free child care for three and four-year-olds from 15 hours to 24 hours per week. The Government ought to consider those proposals.

The pupil premium has been mentioned. Let us be clear: it was not really a premium, in the sense that it did not constitute any extra money in the system. When in opposition, the Schools Minister had said that there would be additional money—

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

indicated dissent.

[Kevin Brennan]

The Minister may challenge the figures if he likes. The premium constituted no real increase in the schools budget. I know that the Minister is an economist, so if he wants to challenge what I say, he can, but it is a fact. When is a premium not a premium? When it is a pupil premium. Nevertheless we welcome the focus on the most deprived children, and we need to talk more about how best to use what is in effect a ring-fenced part of the school budget to close the gap. There is no silver bullet for that, or for overcoming regional differences identified by the hon. Member for East Hampshire, but the factors I have mentioned are important, and teaching quality is essential. The Government are getting that wrong with their message about unqualified teachers, and we think all teachers should be willing to become qualified so that the profession can be valued, so that they are up to date with the best pedagogical methods, and so that they understand child development properly. Strengthening parents’ role is vital and we need to think about how best to do that.

We have not talked much about the social and emotional aspects of learning, but those are important for children, and especially those from deprived backgrounds. We need to give more careful consideration to approaches such as mindfulness for improving the attentiveness and emotional well-being of children in school. Those are important factors in a good education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

That is an important point. Some of the ways in which we now allocate funding for disadvantage go beyond the pupil premium. They include area-based methods and prior attainment, a factor that many local authorities use. It is not only through the pupil premium that we channel money into schools. However, I am serious when I say that we are keeping under review the question of whether in future we should have a different way of targeting money at disadvantage. The hon. Member for Gateshead raised the question of free school meals targeting, and whether that is sufficient. It is worth keeping other options in mind for the future beyond the current Parliament. I was interested in his comments about the Netherlands experience of targeting money towards children whose parents do not have strong educational qualifications. We should not assume that we have the perfect method for allocating disadvantage funding at the moment, and should seek constantly to build on what we do and improve it.

The performance of disadvantaged pupils has improved across the country since the coalition Government came to power in 2010, and it improved before that. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals who achieve the expected standard in maths at the end of primary school has risen from 66% to 74% since 2010, and the gap between those children and their peers has narrowed by 4 percentage points. The picture is similar at key stage 4. The proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals achieving at least five A* to C grade GCSEs, including English and maths, has risen from 31% in 2010 to 38% in 2013. The gap between those youngsters on free school meals and the rest of the pupil population has narrowed. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire pointed out, however, the performance of disadvantaged pupils is different throughout the United Kingdom and throughout England.

[Kevin Brennan]

Does the Minister agree that one should not be complacent about such things? In England last year, the GCSE attainment gap widened in 72 out of 152 local authority areas. In 66 areas, it was larger than it was two years previously. In England as a whole, the gap was 26.7% last year, up from 26.4% in 2011-12, which means we should not be complacent.

[Mr Laws]

We certainly should not be complacent at all. We have a huge amount of progress to make in reducing the gap. In the previous year, 2012, there was a particularly large reduction in the gap at secondary level, so I am not surprised to see some push back against that in 2013. The trend is still clearly downwards, but there is a long way to go and I would like a much more rapid pace of progress than we have had in recent years.

A number of Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire, pointed out that progress in London has been more impressive over the past decade or so, as was said in the all-party group’s report, “Capital Mobility”, which was published at the end of last year. Disadvantaged young people in London are now more than 10 percentage points more likely to achieve five A* to C grades including English and maths than those in the next highest-performing region. The gap between disadvantaged young people and their peers is narrowest in London.

We need to ask, as my hon. Friend did, what the important factors in London are. He was able to put aside some factors that do not appear to be explanatory and to identify others that are significant, such as aspiration among young people in London being higher, for which there is some evidence. There is also a different ethnic mix in London, compared with much of the rest of the country, with a greater proportion of London pupils from high-performing ethnic groups such as Chinese, Indian and Korean. There is also important and impressive performance by many ethnically Pakistani and Bangladeshi children, who perform better than white children in London, but worse than white children outside London.

As is well known, London schools are better funded, but we need to be careful about drawing easy conclusions from that. Part of the headline difference simply relates to area cost. London also has above-average unemployment and deprivation, so it might be expected to attract higher levels of funding on average. As my hon. Friend pointed out, however, London has less experienced teachers and larger, rather than smaller, class sizes, although it has more sponsored academies, which have been making impressive progress under this Government and the previous Labour Government in raising attainment and narrowing the gaps.

My hon. Friend also mentioned Teach First. It is true that around half of Teach First graduates are in London. That is a hugely disproportionate share, but it reflects the fact that the programme started in London and that, to some extent, it is easier to find young people who after university want to be located in our biggest cities. I am delighted that Teach First not only has doubled in size since 2010 to become the country’s largest graduate recruiter, but will from next year be present in every single region of the country. I hope that will ensure that we get effective teachers teaching in schools throughout the country and not only in our largest cities.

It is worth pointing out, as a number of hon. Members have, that Teach First will only ever provide a minority of teachers in this country. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East invited us to think about what more could be done to develop the talents of the rest of the teaching work force. After all, we have around a third of a million teachers, and we need to ensure that we attend to all of them and focus not simply on the Teach First programme, important though that is.

We need to look at ways to get teachers to some of the most challenging schools and we need to allow schools to use the pupil premium in whatever ways are effective, including paying to attract better teachers to the more challenging schools. We know, however, that some people will not move around the country, for family and other reasons, and we have to be able to recruit good teachers throughout the country, in every single area and region. We cannot assume that teachers can be moved around.

In some local authorities, our schools are not doing well. For example, in England as a whole, just under 80% of schools are now good or outstanding, which is the highest figure since Ofsted began, but in 13 local authorities fewer than half of all secondary pupils are in such schools. None of those authorities is in London. They are clustered in Yorkshire and the Humber, in places such as Bradford, Doncaster, East Riding and Barnsley; and in the north-west, in places such as St Helens, Blackpool, Salford and Tameside.

In 14 local authorities, the attainment of free school meal pupils at key stage 4 is more than 10 percentage points below the national average for such pupils. In places such as Barnsley and Portsmouth, performance is appalling: only 22% and 23% respectively of children eligible for the pupil premium achieved five good GCSEs including English and maths, which is only just over half the national figure. Achievement for that group of pupils declined in 2013 in both places. In 12 local authorities, attainment at the end of key stage 4 for pupils eligible for free school meals was lower in 2013 than in 2010. That, too, is completely unacceptable.

Ofsted is addressing regional underperformance through its regional inspection arrangements, with focused inspections of local authorities and groups of schools. It is carrying out inspections not only of schools, but of school improvement functions. I welcome the chief inspector’s plans to ask challenging questions of local authorities and others about their contribution to school improvement. After each such inspection, the Department looks carefully at Ofsted’s conclusions. Where the chief inspector is unhappy with a response, we will take action as necessary.

In the case of the Isle of Wight, we issued a direction under the Education Act 1996, which required the local authority to enter into a strategic partnership with Hampshire to tackle its weakness in school improvement. We will not hesitate to intervene again where local authorities fail in their Ofsted inspections on school improvement and where they fail to improve swiftly or to rise to the challenge.

We are keen to see local authorities and sponsor groups on the front foot, taking the initiative, rather than waiting to be challenged by Ofsted or the Department. We are heartened to see initiatives breaking out in many parts of the country to lead improvement in schools, such as “By schools for schools” in Greater Manchester.

We are targeting schools and local authorities where the attainment of disadvantaged pupils is unacceptably low. I recently wrote to 214 schools—115 primary and 99 secondary—with the poorest value-added progress among disadvantaged pupils. I will shortly be writing to the schools, local authorities, dioceses and academy sponsors so that they may provide additional challenge.

A number of Members mentioned the importance in a system of autonomous schools of having more school-to-school support to ensure that we spread best practice. That is extremely important and something that the Department takes seriously. Teaching school alliances and peer support networks can be effective in raising standards. Currently, 345 teaching schools cover around 4,800 other schools. In September, the Secretary of State announced an expansion to reach a total of 600 alliances by 2016. I have seen for myself—in Redditch, for example—the importance of such arrangements and what the alliances can do for work on school improvement.

We also need more national leaders of education in those parts of the country in which they are in short supply, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire mentioned. We need a programme to support our best leaders and deputy leaders taking up posts in parts of the country in which there are large gaps and weaknesses in educational attainment. That will not necessarily suit everyone, because many people have family and other commitments to keep them in particular places. Many are willing to move, however—people with high aspirations, who might have already improved their schools and be willing to attempt it elsewhere in the country. From September 2015, the talented leaders programme announced by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister will start by matching 100 head teachers with underperforming schools in areas that struggle to attract and develop outstanding school leaders. In these ways, we hope to spread the improvement that we have seen in areas such as London to the whole country.

Kings Science Academy (Bradford)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

I will come directly to that point in a moment. The EFA’s financial management and governance report and the Secretary of State’s warning notice have also now been published. We insisted that Kings science academy address identified failings urgently. While its internal evidence gathering continued, we confirmed the repayment sum at £76,933. We also sought confirmation that the disciplinary process was being taken forward. It is right that the relevant funding is being recovered from the academy in full, as it always will be if an academy or free school is unable to demonstrate that funding has been used for its intended purpose.

We believe that the Kings science academy, under the leadership of Mr Bowers, is making steady progress to address the weaknesses found in financial management and governance. That increased confidence is not just a result of the monitoring visits carried out by the EFA. We have evidence from KSA’s externally audited accounts for 2012-13, which were received on time, unqualified, and report the auditor’s comments on improvements in financial control and governance.

Let me turn now to the reporting of evidence to the police. The administrative error made by Action Fraud, which wrongly categorised the Department’s evidence in April as an information report rather than a crime, is deeply regrettable, as my hon. Friend made clear. Significantly, Action Fraud has apologised for the error. We do not believe that there is any fault with the way in which the report was made by the Department.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister briefly give way on that point?

[Mr Laws]

I will not give way, because I have so much to cover. I hope the hon. Gentleman will excuse me.

Before April 2013, any evidence of fraud found by the Department would have been reported to the relevant police authority. Action Fraud was established from April 2013 and since then has been the correct organisation with which to engage. The KSA situation was the first occasion on which the Department had needed to contact Action Fraud, so it made a further check with West Yorkshire police on the same day—25 April—to confirm that the report had been made in the right way. I put it to my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East that if there had been an attempt at a cover-up, it is unlikely that that check would have taken place.

In September, we made a further check with Action Fraud, which told us that the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau had assessed the case and decided not to take it forward. At the time, it seemed clear to us that the information regarding an alleged fraud had been correctly provided; it had been assessed and the case was not going to be progressed further. We know now that the case should have been passed by Action Fraud to West Yorkshire police for investigation, but the decision to investigate lies with the police, not the Department for Education.

I am sure my hon. Friend shares my wish to ensure that such a problem does not happen again. The Department’s internal audit and investigation team has now met Action Fraud and the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to review and refine the processes for reporting fraud in future. We have tightened the procedures through which any future reports will be made. We will use Action Fraud’s online system. We will retain our own copy of the report we make and follow up within five working days if we have had no response from Action Fraud or contact the police.

As my hon. Friend knows, the police made an arrest in connection with the case on 9 January this year. Kings science academy wrote to parents on 10 January to confirm that the arrested man was Mr Raza, the principal, and that he would not be returning to the school, at least until the investigation was completed and finalised. Beyond that, it is not appropriate to comment. The parameters of the investigation are, quite rightly, for West Yorkshire police to determine. Until such time as the investigations are concluded and a determination regarding the case is reached, it would not be appropriate to release further information on that matter.

I shall now turn to the matter of Alan Lewis’s role at Kings science academy. On 27 September 2011, the academy told the Department that Mr Lewis would be chair of governors from 1 October 2011. The Department was informed on 24 October 2012 that Mr Lewis was not the chair and that Dr Asim Suleman would be chair of governors from 25 October 2012. We learned in December 2012 that there had been no chair of governors in place between October 2011 and October 2012. That was clearly a completely unsatisfactory position and totally unacceptable. Not to have a properly constituted governing body is a demonstrable failure to comply with the funding agreement. It is one of the issues identified in the EFA’s review, and one that the academy quickly addressed.

Alan Lewis’s other connection is that his company, Hartley Investment Trust Ltd, leases the site to the school, as my hon. Friend indicated. The site was secured for Kings science academy at £295,960 per annum, after an independent valuation. Due to the related party involvement, Treasury approval was sought and provided before final decisions were taken. If any hon. Members have any points to make about the police investigation, they should make them as soon as possible to the police.

Qualified Teachers

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan]

We would have to clear up the Government’s mess and think about what the time frame should be, but without giving anyone the sack, we would require all teachers to achieve QTS in a reasonable time, and unlike this Government, we would negotiate and consult.

The Schools Minister can believe that teachers should not have to be qualified and profess that view in the House of Commons with impressive conviction one week, and then believe that teachers should be qualified and say so with equal conviction the next week. It is a remarkable, but not unique pathology, at least not in science fiction, because there is a creature in “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine”, which I am sure the House is aware of, called Odo the Shape-Shifter, who can alter his shape according to circumstances—for example, by appearing to be a human—until the end of the day, when he dissolves into a bucket in his natural gelatinous form in order to rest, ready to emerge the following day in whatever shape is deemed necessary by the circumstances. I say to the Schools Minister: that might be okay for a science fiction character, but extreme shape-shifting does not constitute statesmanship.

It need not be like this. I told the Schools Minister last week that, having performed a careful textual exegesis of the coalition agreement, I could find no reference—not one reference anywhere in the document—to the Liberal Democrats agreeing to allow unqualified teachers in our schools. I wish more Liberal Democrat MPs were here for this. It is not in the coalition agreement. I have some experience of dealing with Liberal Democrats in coalition, having helped to put together the Labour-Liberal Democrat coalition in the Welsh Assembly in 2000, when I worked for Rhodri Morgan, and I can tell the House that the idea of their agreeing to something that was against their own strong beliefs and the professed beliefs and policy of their own leader and which was not in the coalition agreement would have been unthinkable. It is, therefore, simply a mystery to me—and it must be a mystery to them too—how they were dragooned into supporting this policy and into rejecting an amendment that would have put this right and put policy in line with Liberal Democrat policy. The policy was not part of the coalition agreement, but obviously the result of some backroom deal between the Schools Minister—

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

indicated dissent.

[Kevin Brennan]

Oh, the right hon. Gentleman is shaking his head, so he is not responsible. We would like to know who is. It is a bit of a mystery. Some mystery character from the Liberal Democrats and the Education Secretary did a deal to introduce a policy that was not in the coalition agreement and which was against Liberal Democrat fundamental beliefs and principles. Why, then, did they agree, and will they now support our motion, which endorses their professed policy and does not breach the coalition agreement? If they do not, no one—not least parents and teachers—will believe a word they say about education at the next general election.

Teacher Training and Supply

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Brennan]

Once again, Ministers would do well to heed my hon. Friend’s words.

Should properly trained and qualified teachers be required at all? The Secretary of State says no, in academies and free schools. The Deputy Prime Minister says yes, as we learned this weekend, along with the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary and Environment Secretary. We all want to know what the Schools Minister says. I know that he has a first-class degree from Cambridge—

[Mr Laws]

A double.

[Kevin Brennan]

A double first-class degree! I hope that he will not choose to engage in sophistry in his answer. Heaven forfend that he would.

I want to wipe the slate clean after the Minister’s remarks in the House last week. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friends, but I think that the current situation is beyond satire. I have thought about it, and I cannot quite do it. They can look at Nick Robinson’s blog on the BBC website tomorrow if they want to see an attempt at satirising the position in which the Schools Minister finds himself, but I will not check it.

Will the Minister give us a clear answer today? Does he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, his party leader, that teachers in academies—which are now the majority of secondary schools—and free schools should have a teaching qualification or be on a path to acquire one? I will give way now. Does he want to take this opportunity to say that he agrees with his leader?

[Mr Laws]

indicated dissent.

[Kevin Brennan]

There was a deafening silence in response to that invitation, as the record will show.

[Mr Laws]

I have 15 minutes.

[Kevin Brennan]

I have six. It will only take a second to say yes.

I want to help the Schools Minister out of his painful position. I have here the coalition agreement. It is a much spoken-about but rarely read document. I have performed a careful textual exegesis of the document, which says many things about teaching and schools. I accept that the Minister’s party is pledged to support what the agreement says about teaching; it signed up to the agreement, after all. I know, having been involved a little bit many years ago in helping to set up a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the National Assembly for Wales, that they will want to try to stick to what they have agreed in the agreement. However, unless the Minister intervenes on me to tell me that I am wrong, I cannot find any mention at all of a commitment to allow free schools and academies to employ teachers without a teaching qualification or a pathway to one.

The Minister is not twitching to intervene to tell me that I am wrong. I am sure that he will refer to the coalition agreement in his speech on whether the commitment is in there, but as far as I can see, it is not.

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for his kind words for the shadow Secretary of State and the former shadow Secretary of State, which he gave in his usual courteous way at the beginning of his statement. I also thank him for advance sight of the statement. Labour will study closely the details of the changes he proposes, and if it transpires that they will incentivise rich, broad and balanced curricula in our schools, we will welcome them. There are, however, some important tests that the changes must pass.

Anyone watching last week’s “Educating Yorkshire” will have seen the extraordinary efforts that teachers go to—sometimes including risking their health—to help pupils pass their GCSEs. It is sad that these days that is sometimes known in Government as “gaming the system”. How will the Minister ensure that the new arrangements will allow teachers to help pupils of all abilities to achieve their best, and can he be sure that they will not throw up their own new perverse incentives?

The Labour party, backed by the CBI, is committed to ensuring that all young people continue to study maths and English to 18, although so far the Government have failed to support Labour’s plan. Will the Minister think again about that? As the participation age rises to 18, and with challenges for us all in the OECD report, does he not want all young people to continue studying maths and English to 18? We also need more detail about how the changes will impact on technical and vocational education which, once again, seems to be a bit of an afterthought. He referred to progression post-16, but why are the Government watering down the important requirement on schools to ensure that young people are ready for the world of work, through the provision of work experience and independent careers advice and guidance?

The central problem with the announcement is that parents, pupils and teachers no longer trust the Government not to tinker. When it comes to accountability measures, the Government behave a little like the badgers, moving the goalposts halfway through the school year. Will the Minister guarantee that the proposal will not be subject to the mood swings of the Secretary of State and his infamous friend Dominic Cummings? Parents, pupils, teachers and head teachers are livid about the latest knee-jerk announcement via the press, when pupils are already preparing for exams and only days away from the deadline for exam entry, that only first entry into GCSE can be counted in the school accountability measure. If the badgers are moving the goalposts, Ministers are changing the rules in the middle of the match. Will the Minister promise to meet with heads to discuss their concerns about this change being implemented in such a way?

Will this change to the accountability system make any real difference to children if their schools are vulnerable to—I quote the Secretary of State’s special adviser— “disastrous teaching” and “fraudulent activity”? That is the view of Dominic Cummings, who says that it is inevitable, because of the lack of grip the Secretary of State has on his free schools policy, that some will fail for those reasons. That is what he said.

We are already seeing the fruit of that failure in the scandal at Al-Madinah school in Derby, which left 400 children without schooling for an entire week and whose approach to women staff and female students has caused such controversy. What will the right hon. Gentleman do to ensure that school accountability extends beyond today’s measure and includes ensuring that all taxpayer-funded schools have qualified teaching staff, are monitored for financial fraud, have proper child protection measures in place and are adhering to basic British values of tolerance and respect for all, regardless of gender, sexuality or religious belief?

[Mr Laws]

I think I welcome the shadow Minister’s response to our statement. By the end of it, it was difficult to know whether he was supporting the statement or not. We will come to that in a moment. I think I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s relatively cautious approach because, from him, I take that as a sign of support, whereas from other people it might qualify as anything other than that.

I hope the hon. Gentleman will accept that we have taken time to get this right. Nobody can accuse us of rushing into the proposals. After all, we announced a consultation in this area in February. We have taken a great deal of time to get our proposals right. We have listened very carefully, including to the Chairman of the Select Committee, to a lot of the mathematics, to organisations that made representations, and to hon. Members on both sides of the House. As a consequence, the Secretary of State and I have changed the proposals that we first made. We have moved away from a threshold measure to a greater extent than was originally planned, precisely because of the perverse incentive effects that the hon. Gentleman talked about, and we think we have now got the balance right between having a proper accountability system and ensuring that that system embeds the right incentives. By having a number of key measures, we will ensure that it is not possible to game one of those and ignore all the other things that matter.

The hon. Gentleman is right that we need to encourage young people who have not mastered maths and English at 16 to go on studying those subjects, and we have announced a new core maths qualification beyond the age of 16 to ensure that young people have the opportunity to do that. We have also, through our 16-to-19 accountability consultation, paid a great deal of attention to the incentives that educational institutions will have to keep young people on course after the age of 16 and to create the right incentives. The destination measure that I have talked about today will give all educational institutions an interest in the qualifications that young people secure not only at age 16, but beyond that.

On the issue of early entries for GCSEs, I do understand that this has been controversial, but the hon. Gentleman will understand that we must pay attention to the serious warnings that we have received from Ofsted and others about the scale of increase of early entry. This summer almost a quarter of maths entries—170,000 entries —were from young people who were not at the end of key stage 4 study. Ofsted said that it found no evidence that such approaches on their own served the best interests of students in the long term. Indeed, Sir Michael Wilshaw has said that he thinks early entry hurts the chances of some children, who are not able to go on to get the best grades that they are capable of.

On future uncertainty about these frameworks, we hope very much indeed that we will be able to secure support from across the House for the proposals that we have made today, and I take the hon. Gentleman’s comments as a modest step in that direction. However, in terms of getting certainty about the degree of cross-party co-operation, it would be helpful if he could clarify some of divisions that there are now on his own side about some of the key issues. For example, one of the measures that we have said we would publish is the EBacc, and we believe we should continue to do so. The former education spokesman for the Labour party opposed the EBacc and said that it was at best an irrelevance and in some cases distorted young people’s choices. The new spokesman for the Labour party said that he supports the English baccalaureate. We want to hear from the Opposition some clarity about Labour’s position on these issues; otherwise, that will be a source of confusion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point because the Government are not only allocating much greater capital for basic need, but have changed the funding formula for distributing this money so that where there are pockets of basic need in areas that were previously not recognised, we are reflecting that fully in the distributions.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State was reticent last week when Sir Michael Wilshaw launched Ofsted’s report on closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children attracting the pupil premium. Was that because Sir Michael Wilshaw advocated Labour’s proven policy of greater collaboration between schools to raise standards rather than the Secretary of State’s desire for privatised schools for profit of the kind that have been such a failure in Sweden?

[Mr Laws]

I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is talking about. This Government are encouraging schools to collaborate; this Government are encouraging partnership; this Government are promoting national leaders of education; this Government are going to introduce something that their predecessors did not—tables of similar schools so that schools can learn from each other.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree. My hon. Friend will be aware of the additional capital announced by the Secretary of State at the beginning of March for all areas of the country, not only for new build, but to improve the existing school stock.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Thousands of parents are desperately anxious that their child still has no place at primary school next year, and others will be taught in larger classes further away from home. Will the Minister explain to those worried mums and dads why the Government are building two out of five of their flagship free schools in areas where there are already enough places?

[Mr Laws]

I am delighted to explain the priority school building programme. Unlike its predecessor programme, it prioritises those schools in the worst need, and I am proud that it is doing so, in contrast to the previous scheme, Building Schools for the Future, which did not do so. On the issue of primary places, I caution the hon. Gentleman not to lecture this Government when his Government ignored the warnings of the Office for National Statistics and eliminated 200,000 primary school places.

AS-levels and A-levels

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Tuesday 16th April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

I will make more progress before giving way again to the hon. Lady.

Some critics of the linear A-level have cited a link between the introduction of modular A-levels as part of the Curriculum 2000 reforms, which the hon. Member for Cardiff West, the shadow Schools Minister, mentioned earlier, and widening participation in higher education. However, the major increase in HE participation took place in the early 1990s, before the introduction of modular A-levels in 2000. Universities continue to work hard to widen participation and ensure they are opening their doors to students from all backgrounds, and I am confident that they will keep doing so when the new linear A-levels are introduced. Indeed, in many cases they need to do much more to offer those opportunities to young people, particularly from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Government intend to work in partnership with some of the universities, particularly those that have poor rates of access, to try to target those youngsters who should be gaining access to some of our best universities, but are not doing so.

Making the A-level linear does, of course, have implications—the hon. Gentleman raised this point earlier—for the current AS qualification. My ministerial colleagues and officials have been talking to and working with school and college leaders and universities to understand precisely the concerns that he set out so clearly to ensure that we can address them.

As we move to fully linear A-levels with exams at the end of the two-year course, the AS-level will remain as a qualification in its own right. It will continue to be available as a stand-alone qualification to be taught over either one year or two years, but the marks from it will obviously no longer count towards the A-level. Longer term, our ambition is to develop a brand new AS qualification that is at the same level of challenge as a full A-level, but for the time being that is for the future.

From 2015, the AS-level will be decoupled as a stand-alone, linear qualification and will remain at the same level of challenge as existing AS qualifications. That means that schools and colleges can decide whether to teach the AS-level over one year or two years. If schools and colleges decide to teach the AS in any given subject in one year, that would give them the opportunity, which I think the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) was seeking—it is a valid concern—to co-teach the AS and the new A-level together, if that meets the needs of the students and if it is a sensible way for those institutions to ensure that they can deliver education for all young people who want to access both A-levels and the AS.

We want to preserve the AS so that students can study a fourth subject in addition to their full A-levels. We know that universities consider the AS a valuable qualification to provide that breadth, which a number of hon. Members mentioned. We also know that some universities use the AS in their admissions processes, although most place more emphasis on GCSE results and predicted A-level grades, as well as looking at a range of other information, including personal statements, academic references and, in some cases, admissions tests and interviews.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Laws]

I will make this one point before giving way.

Most universities do not use AS results as the main basis for making those decisions. Indeed, in some subjects GCSE results can provide a better prediction of degree results across all universities than AS results. Students who have very good GCSE results from schools where the general pattern is for below-average GCSE attainment also have real potential to progress at university.

[Kevin Brennan]

If the Minister continues with his proposals, AS-levels will be available for universities to use as evidence in only one subject, instead of all the subjects that the young person is studying. Although we could do with more research, he knows that there is powerful research evidence that suggests that AS-level is in fact the best predictor of how young people will do at university. [Interruption.] He can shake his head, but his own university’s research suggests that AS-levels are the best predictor—far better than GCSEs, and far better even than university admissions tests. I have the research here. I thought he had read it, but obviously he has not.

[Mr Laws]

I repeat the point I have just made: the majority of universities do not use AS-levels as the main basis for making such decisions. Indeed, we know that, in some subjects, GCSE results provide a better prediction of degree results across all universities than AS results.

[Kevin Brennan]

What’s your evidence?

[Mr Laws]

I am happy to send the hon. Gentleman the evidence.

Examination Reform

Debate between Kevin Brennan and David Laws

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, that was the second or third of the four confessions we heard from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman today.

[Kevin Brennan]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Laws]

In the spirit of interventions set by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, of course I will give way.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure the Minister is grateful to his right hon. Friend. Does the Minister recognise these words?

“There has been a breathtaking rise in performance in education since 1997. Inner London was a basket case pre-97; ninety per cent of students were failing to get decent grades at 16 back then. The improvement’s been astonishing, dramatic, unbelievable.”

They were his words in February 2010.