Teaching Assistants

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I agree with my hon. Friend and will, later in my speech, develop the point about the importance of teaching assistants assisting and teachers teaching.

I am in no doubt that we need great teachers at all levels of learning, each one equipped to deliver a modern education, based on an up-to-date understanding of developments in teaching practice, specific subject knowledge and the latest in educational tools and technology. However, a report from Reform in 2010 took this argument further—much too far, I would argue—when it suggested that Ministers should remove

“the various Government interventions into the cost and size of the teaching workforce”

to increase accountability of schools to parents and to strengthen management and performance. The report went on to contend that a natural consequence of that would be

“a fall in the number of teaching assistants, since the value of the rapid growth in their numbers it claimed, is not supported by the research evidence”.

To give some background to today’s debate, a significant increase in teaching assistants resulted from the 2003 workload agreement in England and Wales—an effort by the previous Labour Government to raise standards in schools.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this important debate.

Teaching assistants are an invaluable asset to youngsters on the autistic spectrum. What would be the likely impact in classrooms of a diminution in the number of people who are involved in that role and of those involved in their training and development?

[Alex Cunningham]

I have been amazed by somebody working with children with special needs; I will give that example later. Those people play a vital role and children with special needs in particular would suffer directly as a result of any reduction.

The aim of the workload agreement was simple: to allow teachers to teach. To do this, the agreement sought to lessen pressure on teachers by reducing the administrative bureaucracy and cutting teachers’ hours through the creation of new and expanded school support roles, including teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants, and providing extra resource and high-level support for teachers.

Teaching assistants now make up more than a quarter of the total school work force in England, with more than 359,000 in classrooms across England alone. The vast majority—almost 250,000—work in primary schools; almost 20% are in secondary schools; and 9% are in special schools. With primary schools spending £2.8 billion on teaching assistants and support staff in 2010-11 and secondary schools spending £1.6 billion during the same period, such support accounts for a large proportion of the annual education budget. It is for precisely this reason that the role and worth of teaching assistants have been in the public spotlight, particularly since questions were raised several years ago about the value for money that they provide.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham]

That is most certainly the case. It does not matter whether it is maths, English or anything else. If children with a particular need can get that extra attention with a teaching assistant, the results can be positive.

The claims made in both newspaper articles that I mentioned were based on assertions from Reform, which in turn were highly selective in the evidence used. For example, although it is true that the teaching and learning toolkit produced by a collaboration of the Education Endowment Foundation and the Sutton Trust suggests that teaching assistants have a low impact for a high cost, it is important to note that the toolkit also specifies that this judgment is

“based on limited evidence”.

The implication, of course, is that the sentiment should not necessarily be taken at face value, or at least not without some fairly substantial caveats.

[Lindsay Roy]

As a former head teacher and school inspector, I have direct evidence of the impact on positive discipline and effective learning. Is that not recognised anywhere in the report?

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend has me at a disadvantage. I do not have such detailed knowledge, but discipline is critical. Teaching assistants have a role in that because they are able to contain a child and give them the attention that they need.

The Education Endowment Foundation makes it clear that a simplistic reading of its evidence is decidedly unhelpful. To be sure, the toolkit also specifies that teaching assistants can have a positive impact on academic achievement, but that assessment was not given equal weighting by Reform. The Institute of Education’s research openly criticises the idea of cutting teaching assistants as being

“only based on a partial reading of the evidence”.

The institute says that cutting teaching assistants would

“do more harm than good for students, teachers and schools.”

It is sad when institutions pick and choose what they want from research and distort it to give a particular impression. In fact, the Institute of Education’s original research found that support staff can have a positive effect:

“there is more pupil classroom engagement in the sense that pupils are more on-task and less off-task”

when teaching assistants are in the classroom. If that were not enough, the research confirmed that the results

“were not attributable to pupil characteristics”.

The research also found that the results were not attributable to

“decisions made by TAs.”

Instead, they resulted from

“the way schools and teachers deploy and prepare TAs—factors that are out of TAs’ control”.

The report’s intention seems to have been to generate scaremongering headlines, rather than to address the real issues that affect teaching assistants, which I hope to do today.

Before I continue, it is important that we are clear that “teaching assistant” is something of a catch-all term. Teaching assistants carry out a huge range of responsibilities to support teachers, ranging from administration to face-to-face work with children, and I do not doubt that they form a central cog in the modern education system. Many teaching assistants, however, feel that their contribution to education is poorly understood and undervalued. With Reform’s scaremongering being picked up by the mainstream media, many now fear that Government cutbacks and the need to make savings in departmental budgets will inevitably lead to their role being earmarked for job losses.

Although I understand that the Department for Education does not currently have plans for nationwide reductions in teaching assistant numbers, I cannot imagine that my unofficial reassurances will provide comfort to those who see their role as being directly in the firing line. I am therefore sure that teaching assistants would welcome confirmation from the Minister that no plans exist to axe teaching assistants and other support staff through a centrally driven edict.

There is no doubt that the Government’s plans for the future role and contribution of teaching assistants are in need of clarification. Despite the crucial functions that they fulfil, clarity for vital support staff has been notable by its absence. For much of this Parliament, the Government have remained indifferent to teaching assistants and other support staff, rarely mentioning their roles in documents that detail future policy intentions.

The previous Labour Government legislated for a school support staff negotiating body at the end of the last Parliament, but the body, which was intended to look after the pay and conditions of support staff, was abolished within the first year of the coalition as quangos were indiscriminately eliminated as part of a cost-cutting drive. Similarly, the Government have axed national funding for higher level teaching assistant training and have archived all the national teaching assistant and higher level teaching assistant training resources and guidance, with high-quality training for teaching assistants becoming just another victim of the coalition Government’s austerity package.

On that point, it is worth noting that early-day motion 753 had broad multi-party support, although not a single Conservative Member cared to add their name to the motion recognising the difference that teaching assistants make to the education and support of children in our schools. It is little wonder that stories suggesting staffing cuts are causing anxiety within the education profession.

Last year saw two separate days to celebrate the contribution of teaching assistants in classrooms across the country, and I understand that greetings card manufacturers got in on the act, too, to recognise the value that teaching assistants can add to education. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? Although I am sure that, in many cases, teaching assistants ought to be used more effectively, most contribute very positively to education, which is clearly evident in the best cases.

Mark Fielding, for example, is a teaching assistant from Salford who worked one-to-one with a year-11 pupil who has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. Rather than working in a class-based environment, Mark helped to transform the pupil’s attainment from predictions of Es in maths and English in November to achieving Cs in June. Similarly, Mark has worked with a group with behavioural problems to raise their opportunities. Many were expected to leave school with no qualifications, yet, after Mark’s interventions, all achieved at least 2 GCSEs at C or above.

Guy Smith from Richmond worked with a year-11 student who was involved in offending behaviour and substance misuse and whose attendance at school was dropping. By attending youth offending team meetings with the pupil and providing support in lessons and with homework, as well as offering a contact to speak about any problems the pupil was having and attending meetings with the pupil’s child and adolescent mental health services staff and social workers, Guy helped the student to achieve 5 GCSEs at A to C. The student is now on a business administration apprenticeship with Richmond upon Thames borough council.

Put simply, there is more to be gained from sensible investment in teaching assistants than there is from running down teaching assistant numbers or from abolishing the role altogether. Our recognition of teaching assistants is long overdue, which is only exacerbated by the recent run of negative publicity that has sullied their good reputation. Although days of celebration and recognition are welcome, we must continue to push for more. We need serious action to confirm and codify the role of teaching assistants in our education system and the functions that they can rightly be expected to undertake, not to mention the remuneration that they can fairly expect, to ensure that their contributions are fully recognised.

I consulted a number of organisations as I prepared this speech, and I well understand why Unison and the GMB, which between them represent the vast bulk of teaching assistants, are anxious about the future for those they represent. With teaching assistants not having the reassurance of a national pay scale, pay varies not only according to geographical location but between and within different school types. That results in great uncertainty for teaching assistants, with terms and conditions that are not readily comparable with others who may be expected to fulfil the same role elsewhere, which can be bad for morale and can potentially leave teaching assistants under-rewarded for their contributions.

Fortunately, school leaders, rather than the Department for Education, are responsible for employing support staff. School leaders have sought to recruit more teaching assistants, despite the Government’s negative agenda, with a 5.7% increase between 2011 and 2012. Some 95% of school leaders say that teaching assistants add real value in schools. In case there is any doubt, Ofsted, which routinely reports on the positive impact of teaching assistants despite not having an official remit for inspecting support staff, looks upon the role of support staff very favourably. For instance, Ofsted’s report last year for Gorringe Park primary school in Surrey reads:

“Teaching assistants are sensitive to pupils’ needs and offer good support and guidance to those who need extra help. Consequently, disabled pupils and those who have special educational needs achieve as well as their classmates and sometimes better”.

That is repeated in schools across the country.

Although I will not go into greater detail, the role of teaching assistants has traditionally been closely connected to our schools’ work with pupils with the highest level of special educational needs in mainstream settings—colleagues alluded to that earlier—in terms of both teaching and inclusion, which must not be overlooked. Largely as a result of the failure specifically to address special educational needs in initial teacher training, teachers have historically not been sufficiently prepared to meet the needs of the pupils who struggle most with learning and engagement. Teaching assistants have taken responsibility by stepping up to the mark in such instances. With reforms that will change how schools address the needs of students with special educational needs due in September, clarification could hardly be better timed.

With schools set to receive additional funding to provide better support for disadvantaged students, it is time that the Government clarified their strategy on teaching assistants, not only on how they are to be funded but on how they are to be trained and qualified to ensure that their contributions have the maximum impact on the education of the young people they help. At the same time, school leaders also need to be clear about the role and purpose they see teaching assistants fulfilling in their schools by defining the contributions that teaching assistants will make to learning. That means initiating specific opportunities for teachers to liaise with teaching assistants in advance of lessons, not only so they know what will be taught but so they are clear on what tasks will be undertaken, their specific responsibilities and the teacher’s expectation of pupils. That happens in many schools, but it needs to happen everywhere.

We must also ensure that teaching assistants are not deployed in inappropriate roles. They are not there to substitute for teachers on a temporary or permanent basis. They are not trained to take a class of 30 children or to prepare detailed lesson plans for a term, and they are not there to help the school stretch the budget by substituting for a teacher, even on the odd day. They are there to assist classroom teachers in helping to enhance the educational achievement of the pupils and to provide that vital one-to-one support that some children need to ensure they reach their full potential. We have to get the roles right, so that teachers teach and teaching assistants assist. We must foster an environment of openness and collaboration if we are to raise standards and rival the best education systems in the world.

[Lindsay Roy]

Is there not a role for the Government to be a catalyst to share good practice?

[Alex Cunningham]

There is always a role for the Government to share good practice, and that is why I hope they will define training for teaching assistants across the country.

As with teachers, one key measure that raises standards is promoting continuous professional development throughout a teaching assistant’s career. That will ensure that their knowledge and skills remain at the fore. That level of training and development will allow teaching assistants properly to deliver specific, high-quality teaching interventions to the advantage of teachers and pupils alike, whether that is specialist support for pupils with special needs, administrative support to teachers to ease the pressure or targeted interventions in other areas of learning.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) on securing this important debate. I know that he is a passionate supporter of the work of teaching assistants and the valuable and important contribution that they and others make. I also know that there are many across the House of Commons who support teaching assistants. Yesterday, I bumped into the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who is training to be a teaching assistant himself. I note that he is sorry that he could not be here to speak in this debate.

There were some aspects of Opposition Members’ speeches with which I was not quite up to date. I was in school after decimalisation came in, so I cannot relate to that experience. In fact, I did not actually eat school dinners at my primary school. There was a chip shop over the road, and the school provided a special lollipop lady to take us to the chip shop at lunchtime instead. So I did not avail myself of the services of the school dinner ladies at the time, but lollipop ladies were also an important part of our school infrastructure.

The Government value the important contribution made by teaching assistants, often in challenging circumstances, to the teaching, effective management and organisation of schools. We also value hugely the role of teachers and we recognise that teaching is the No. 1 factor in high-quality education systems.

[Lindsay Roy]

Given the Minister’s recognition of the valuable role of teachers and teaching assistants and what she said about the importance of this debate, can she explain why the seats opposite are empty?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am sure that it is because Government Members have every confidence that the Government are taking action on the issue.

We know that teaching assistants are dedicated to improving the learning and life chances of children and young people in our schools. I note that the number of teaching assistants has increased under this Government: the number of teaching assistants employed in maintained schools and academies was 97,000 in 2005 and more than 200,000 in 2012. It is not just the Government who value teaching assistants; we know that schools value the roles that TAs perform.

Teaching Quality

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Pat McFadden (Wolverhampton South East) (Lab)]

I very much welcome this debate and the emphasis that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has placed on teaching standards and quality. Teaching is a tough job, and those who devote their lives to helping children deserve our respect and admiration. I think we all remember the particular teachers who inspired us. I remember Jack McLaughlin, my English teacher at Holyrood secondary school in Glasgow, who taught me more about the love of words than anyone else I have ever met. So, good teaching can be inspiring, but poor teaching leads to lack of opportunity and to unfulfilled lives.

Just before Christmas, Ofsted produced its annual report. In it, a table shows the proportion of children in each local authority who go to good or outstanding schools. It shows that primary school children in my local authority area of Wolverhampton have a lower chance of going to a good or outstanding school than those living anywhere else in England. If that is not a call to action, and a call to arms, I do not know what is. Wolverhampton does have some good and outstanding schools, and some excellent, inspirational teachers. In places, it also has strong leadership that is intolerant of failure. As the Ofsted table starkly illustrates, however, it does not have enough of those things. That means that too many local children are not getting the education they deserve and are being denied the opportunity to make the best of their lives.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend explain why Ofsted has not intervened in that case?

[Mr McFadden]

I am coming on to what I would like from Ofsted in that situation. Nothing is more important for opportunity and social mobility than a good education. Mediocrity, low ambitions and a weary acceptance of failure cut off opportunity for young people. We need a strong determined response to this report and its verdict. What should the elements of that be? First, there is no point in shooting the messenger. We cannot confront a problem if we deny that we have one. We must accept the verdict and vow never to be in such a position again. Improving education standards should be accepted as the single biggest challenge facing the city. It should become a cause that unites everyone—schools, the local authority, the university, employers and the local MPs.

Secondly, we must set this discussion about deprivation and the attainment gap in the right context. There is an attainment gap. Of course teaching kids from a deprived background is tougher than teaching kids from homes full of books and with the social capital to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central referred.

It can never be right to blame deprivation for educational failure. There are plenty of areas in the Ofsted report with deprivation levels as high as, or higher than, Wolverhampton that have significantly better achievement. Apart from the Ofsted table, there is another more fundamental reason why we cannot use deprivation as an excuse—it absolves us of the responsibility to act. It writes off the children and gets everyone else off the hook, and that is a dereliction of duty to children who need, more than anyone, the opportunity that a good education brings.

I do not believe that children in Wolverhampton are any less able than children from anywhere else. They should never be written off or be told, as I have been told, that

“our black country kids are not that academic.”

I will never believe or accept that.

What are the other elements of a turnaround? We need good leadership. We know that the people who know best about turnarounds are the good leaders already in our schools. We need more of that, and we need the good schools to mentor the struggling ones to help them raise their game.

Ofsted

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard.

The Minister of State will be relieved to know that I will not be referring to recent press reports about Ofsted. I am not here today to attack its methods or to call for its abolition—far from it. While I have the odd reservation, I am a big fan of Sir Michael Wilshaw and of Ofsted’s work. The issue that I want to focus on is Ofsted’s monitoring of the performance of local authorities in driving up standards in education.

The policy context is that under this Government, more and more schools are being freed from local education authority control. Thanks to the free schools programme and the Government’s dramatic expansion of the academy model, parents, teachers and head teachers are being trusted with the task of driving up standards in the classroom, rather than spending their time answering to local councils. More than half of secondary schools are in the process of converting to academy status, and I am sure that more and more schools and parents will want to take advantage of the freedoms that such status offers.

I can understand why the Government have pursued this policy so vigorously, as the success of privately managed, publicly funded schools is a global phenomenon. The OECD reported in 2012 that

“In general, privately managed schools tend to have more autonomy, better resources, better school climate and better performance levels than publicly managed schools”.

However, local authorities continue to run nearly half of secondary schools, nearly 85% of all schools and, obviously, the vast majority of primary schools. The head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw, said in a newspaper over the weekend that local authorities should continue to have a role “overseeing” free schools and academies. Local authorities will continue to be relevant and important to the standard of education delivered in Britain’s schools. However, that raises some key questions. How can parents and the public know what councils are actually doing to promote high standards in schools? How can the performance of local councils and their officials be assessed and judged? Are they doing the right things? Are they doing enough? Are they ambitious enough on behalf of their young people?

How can people hold local authorities to account? I would contest that that is not very easy. There are tables showing the performance of schools in a local authority’s catchment area, but those performance data can be affected by a number of other factors, such as the socio-economic characteristics of the intake. Issues with performance can also be masked by the performance of particular schools—I will say more about that a little later—including schools that are outside an authority’s control, and by the educational attainment of pupils from outside its catchment area. The questions therefore remain: how can people tell what local councils are doing to improve educational standards? Are they doing the right things? Is it enough, and are the people at the local education authority up to the job?

I was prompted to raise those questions today by the concerns that I and many of my constituents—and now also Ofsted—have about the performance of Reading borough council as the local education authority. I will not skirt around the issues or dress them up; I will just report them as they are. I hope that Reading LEA will listen carefully to my critique, which is based on the facts, and try to engage sensibly, rather than behaving in a knee-jerk, defensive and political way. I am willing to help it to reform and improve if it does the right things. At the end of the day, the key must be to improve the outcomes for children in LEA schools.

Reading has struggled for years to make consistent and long-lasting improvements to educational outcomes, thereby allowing many children to underachieve. Even at GCSE and A-level, for which the results are very good, its real performance has been masked by the excellent results from grammar schools, where around 90% of the children come from outside the borough. It strikes me that there must be something fundamentally wrong with an LEA that allows that level of educational underachievement to continue. Let me explain why.

Just before Christmas, the director of education, adult and children’s services at Reading borough council wrote to the head teachers and chairs of governors at all local schools, admitting that Reading’s key stage 2 results in reading, writing and mathematics had fallen behind those in almost all other areas of England, and were in the bottom five nationally. Reading LEA had the largest drop in the proportion of pupils reaching level 4 and above in the south-east region, and the third largest fall in performance in the country. The achievement of key groups, including some ethnic minority groups, those with special educational needs and those on free school meals, was also extremely poor according to the LEA’s director of education.

Inspection of local children’s centres has found them to be inadequate. In a damning judgment, Ofsted found children’s centres in east Reading to be “inadequate in all respects”, and is planning interventions to bring about improvements. To be inadequate in all respects takes some doing.

Earlier this year, the Minister wrote to Reading LEA, challenging it over the gap that has developed between rich and poor children’s performances, despite the huge Government investment through the pupil premium. Last year, the George Palmer primary school was removed from the LEA’s control and reopened as an academy due to its constant failure to improve its failing performance.

I have put my concerns in a letter to Sir Michael Wilshaw, and earlier this week spoke to Matthew Coffey, the Ofsted regional director. Ofsted has informed me that it was already concerned about Reading LEA’s performance because of the high exclusion rates in a number of schools; in fact, Reading was found to have the highest fixed-term exclusion rate of any local authority in England. The key stage 2 data confirmed Ofsted’s concerns, and on 5 October last year Mr Coffey wrote to the LEA expressing those concerns. Shockingly, Ofsted has told me that 5,000 of 13,000 pupils under Reading LEA control are at schools that are not considered even to be good. Surely a good school is the least that any parent and every child should have the right to expect. The situation suggests that Reading is an LEA that at best is allowing schools to drift, and at worst is failing to challenge inadequate standards properly.

Ofsted met with the LEA on 13 December, when it was made clear that if no improvement was seen, there was the option to carry out a focused inspection of the LEA. Although in reality it had little choice, I am pleased that Reading agreed to share tracking data for key stage 2 and targets for improvement. I also welcome Ofsted’s recent finding of improvement in Reading’s key stage 1 results. A further meeting to try to resolve some of the issues is due in March.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

I endorse the hon. Gentleman’s aspiration for every youngster to have a good school. Given that the quality of learning and teaching is a fundamental factor in raising attainment and achievement in schools, how can Ofsted and the LEA monitor that quality, especially where there are non-qualified teachers?

[Mr Wilson]

As we all know, a debate on that subject is taking place this afternoon in the Chamber. Unqualified teachers have been used very successfully in both private and public sector schools for many years. I see no reason to try to change the current arrangements.

Let me explain the significance of the poor key stage 2 results I mentioned. Key stage 2 is an assessment of the attainment of primary school pupils. Although six of the eight secondary schools in Reading’s catchment area are now academies, only five out of the 31 primary schools are. Poor performance in primary schools means poor performance in the schools that Reading borough council runs. That suggests that the council, in its stewardship of the schools, is hindering progress, rather than fulfilling its legal duty to promote higher standards. Ofsted is concerned that the attainment gap between pupils receiving free school meals and the rest is getting bigger at primary school level, even though in secondary schools—most of which have left LEA control—the data are getting better and the gap is narrowing.

That situation must not be allowed to continue at the primary school level. I suggest that in the LEA there is a lack of ambition to challenge, and a lack of will and desire to take the decisions necessary to make real and lasting educational change. There is a culture in which failure in local schools is too easily accepted and excused. For a long time now, I have noticed a lack of aspiration for some groups of children, and a lack of will to challenge the notion that some children from difficult areas and chaotic homes are too challenging or damaged to be helped.

The LEA’s poor performance and attitude have forced me into a much more active role regarding local schools than I ever envisaged when I first became MP for Reading East. The local authority has termed that interference, but it would be a dereliction of my duty to my constituents not to intervene. Of course, I was conscious of Reading’s lack of consistent progress in schools when elected in 2005, but I could not immediately put my finger on the reason for it. When I did, the Government were resistant to making the necessary changes and to challenges to the educational orthodoxy.

That changed in 2010, when academies and university technical colleges got rocket boosters, free schools were introduced, changes were made to the curriculum, and help was made available to poorer pupils through the pupil premium—a policy on which I agreed with the Minister long before my party did. That gave me the tools to start bypassing an LEA that was at best coasting and at worst failing. It meant I was able to be a focal point for setting up a new UTC, which challenged other schools to up their game and LEAs to invest where there was inadequate performance.

The coming of that UTC encouraged the neighbouring LEA, Wokingham, to invest in Bulmershe school. Recently I helped another school from the neighbouring authority to get behind setting up a new free school for 11 to 16-year-olds. Maiden Erlegh free school will enable its mother school’s outstanding DNA—the standard that parents want for their children—to be delivered in my constituency. It was announced last week that it will open in 2015.

[Lindsay Roy]

Why does the hon. Gentleman think that there is a lack of aspiration in the local education authority?

[Mr Wilson]

Because, as I think I have explained, it is failing to take the necessary decisions to ensure that the gap between rich and poor local children is properly closed.

I am disappointed with Ofsted for not noticing what was happening, and for allowing Reading to bump along the bottom for so long, failing a whole generation of children. Ofsted should be a catalyst driving long-lasting change and improvement in local authorities’ performance, as it has been for many schools across the country. Local authorities have a legal duty to promote high standards in schools and among other providers, so that children and young people achieve well and fulfil their potential. It is welcome that Ofsted has restarted inspections of local authorities’ performance, but Ofsted will not inspect every local authority and will not undertake a fixed cycle of inspections; rather, inspections will be made where key indicators give rise to concern.

My questions for the Minister are these. Given that Reading LEA’s lacklustre performance has been apparent to us for many years, is he concerned that there are other LEAs across the country that are quietly failing to meet their responsibilities? Could they slip through the net like Reading? Will he commit to reviewing continually other Ofsted procedures for inspecting local authorities? Are those procedures sufficient and effective? Will he give a commitment that where Ofsted finds that a local authority is not doing enough to promote high standards, its recommendations will have real teeth and the situation will not simply be allowed to continue? With specific reference to Reading, will he give a commitment that he and his Department will keep a close interest in developments in Reading, and make it clear that if there is no developed and credible plan of action soon to improve performance radically in the LEA’s schools, they will ask Ofsted to carry out a full inspection of Reading LEA?

I am a huge supporter of this Government’s academy and free school policies—I believe that they will be seen as being among the signature achievements of this great reforming Government—but we must not turn a blind eye to the hugely important role played by local authorities. They must be subject to challenge, just like schools and teachers.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your guidance, Mr Havard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson) on securing this debate and making his points so clearly. I am pleased that he is doing what is important for Members of Parliament: not only acting as a cheerleader for local schools when that is justified and right—it is important to recognise and praise local schools’ success—but serving as a challenger when there is weakness and underperformance. Sometimes it is tempting for Members of Parliament to do the easy bit but not to confront the challenges, which is not always popular or welcome among some people in the schools system and local authorities. What my hon. Friend is doing is right for his constituents and for parents and pupils in the area. I am also pleased to hear about the wider role that he has played in seeking to improve educational opportunities for young people in his constituency.

I join my hon. Friend in putting on record my gratitude to Ofsted for the work that it does in inspecting schools and local authorities. I said a week or so ago at the North of England education conference that I thought Sir Michael was the best chief inspector of schools that we have ever had. All of us in the Department for Education are extremely grateful to him for the work that he is doing and believe that Ofsted is a very professional organisation that should be welcomed by all parties.

[Lindsay Roy]

Can the Minister explain why Ofsted does not have a systematic approach to inspecting local authorities, not just to bring about improvement but to share effective practice?

[Mr Laws]

There is a systematic process in place for inspection of local authorities. I will come to that later in my speech. For the time being, though, it is right to mention that the authorities on which the chief inspector is concentrating most are those with the weakest performance. Clearly, he could be going to other local authorities, and indeed he would be the first to recognise that spreading best practice is important. That is something that Ofsted seeks to do, but for the time being, it is targeting its scarce resources, which must also be applied to 23,500 schools and lots of early years settings, at the weakest performing local authorities, which I think is the right thing to do.

I would like to say a few things about the national context of underperformance, and then I will talk in detail about the particular issues in Reading that have been raised by my hon. Friend. As I said recently at the North of England education conference, improving our education system is the biggest long-term challenge we face as a nation. We are making progress. Last week, the results for secondary schools were published, and they show that the number of state-funded schools classed as underperforming in relation to floor targets is now 154 out of 3,200 secondaries, down from 195 the previous year. Those figures are a credit to teachers’ professionalism and hard work, and they mean that the number of pupils being taught in underperforming secondary schools has fallen by 50,000 since last year and by almost 250,000 since the coalition Government was elected in 2010.

Nevertheless, there is much more to do, as my hon. Friend has made clear. Attainment in many schools is still too low, and we have a long way to go in narrowing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and other pupils. There is also wide variation between different parts of the country, as he mentioned. Our vision is of a school-led system where improvement is driven from within, with the very best teachers and school leaders modelling excellence in practice and working in partnerships to build capacity and raise standards across the system.

The national leaders of education programme enables head teachers of Ofsted-rated outstanding schools and their staff to use their skills and expertise to support schools in challenging circumstances and improve the quality of teaching and leadership. There are three NLEs in Reading. Alongside that, the local leaders of education programme enables head teachers of Ofsted-rated good schools to work outside their own school to provide support to another head teacher and their school. There are five LLEs in Reading. In addition, the Teach First programme now places nearly 5,500 teachers in schools in challenging circumstances. The programme started in inner London and will, in the year ahead, be for the first time a genuinely national scheme in all regions of the country.

I am particularly grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing to my attention the situation in Reading. I will raise it, as he has done, with the chief inspector when I see him next week for my regular stocktake, and will mention this debate. Reading is currently ranked 111th out of 150 local authorities in Ofsted’s latest table for percentage of pupils attending a good or outstanding secondary school, and 116th out of 150 local authorities for percentage of pupils attending a good or outstanding primary school. The 2013 results for pupils at the end of primary school, in key stage 2, show that Reading has dropped significantly below the national average of 75%. Reading now stands at 69%, a drop from 73% last year. Those figures are disappointing. I note, however, that in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which includes primary schools in both Reading and Wokingham local authorities, the key stage 2 percentage is 73%, which is close to the national average.

[Lindsay Roy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Laws]

I will make a little more progress, and then I will give way.

At key stage 4, the percentage of pupils in Reading achieving five or more good GCSEs rose from 60.7% in 2012 to 63.6% in 2013, which is above the national average of 60.6%. Reading contains two selective grammar academies, as my hon. Friend will know, which have contributed positively to those results, but its non-selective schools, which on the whole continue to improve, have also played their part in that achievement. Reading East constituency averages significantly above the national average for key stage 4, at 75.2%.

The area has five primary academies, three of which are sponsored, representing 18% of the total number of maintained primary schools in the local authority. Most of those have been open or with their sponsors for a year or less. All have deep-rooted performance issues dating from their LA-maintained days. My hon. Friend will know that half the borough’s secondary schools are already academies. I understand that the only sponsored academy is now starting to make good progress following a slow start. Again, that school had many deep-rooted issues that the sponsor had to address when they took it over. In all cases, the Department is working with the sponsors and academy trusts concerned to ensure that rapid improvement is made and sustained over time.

I would like to mention briefly disadvantaged performers and the pupil premium, which my hon. Friend highlighted. In the 2013 key stage 2 tests at the end of primary education, 58.8% of pupils eligible for free school meals achieved the expected level in reading, writing and maths, compared with 77% in 2012. Again, those are disappointing figures. For all other pupils, 78.8% achieved the expected level in reading, writing and maths, compared with 77.9% in 2012.

[Lindsay Roy]

Can the Minister explain why Ofsted has apparently been so tardy in intervening and it has required the intervention of the local MP to bring the matter to the fore?

[Mr Laws]

Ofsted looks at 23,500 schools across the country. It has a huge number of early years settings and other, wider responsibilities beyond the schools. It has recently, under Sir Michael’s leadership, taken a far more thorough and proactive approach to local authorities, picking out the local authorities that it is most concerned about and beginning in a proper and proactive way the process of inspection that should have been taking place a long time ago, including under the previous Government.

Results for primary schools in Reading show that the percentage of pupils, both those on free school meals and their peers, who met the expected standard has gone down between 2012 and 2013. The results for free school meal pupils dropped from 54% to 52%, and the results for their peers dropped from 77% to 74%. At key stage 4 nationally, the proportion of free school meal pupils achieving at least five good GCSEs has risen from 34.6% to 37.9% in 2013. The gap between those pupils and their peers has now dropped to 26.7 percentage points, compared with 27.4 percentage points in 2011, which is welcome. In Reading, the picture is of rising attainment but the gap has widened. The percentage of free school meal pupils achieving the standard has risen from 31.9% in 2011 to 35.1% in 2013, but the rise for non-free-school-meal pupils has been greater than that, so the attainment gap has risen from 28 percentage points to 35 percentage points. In our view, that is not acceptable.

Those figures illustrate that although the national picture is positive, all schools and local authorities need to improve so that we can finally start to break the link between poverty and future life chances. To ensure that all schools are equipped to do that, we have spent, as my hon. Friend acknowledged, almost £4 billion on the pupil premium so far, with another £2.5 billion planned for next year. The rate for primary school pupils will rise significantly next year to £1,300 per pupil per year, and the rate for secondary school pupils will rise to £935. I want to ensure that that will be used appropriately and make a difference. Ofsted has a key role to play in ensuring that schools use the pupil premium for its intended purpose, and on an evidence-based basis.

I am pleased to report that this year only one school in Reading received a challenge letter from the Schools Minister urging better support for their disadvantaged pupils based on their recent results. I was able to write to two schools commending them on their excellent performance and encouraging them to support other schools. If my hon. Friend has not seen those letters, I will make sure that he receives copies so that he knows which schools I am talking about. I look forward to hearing how the high-performing schools are helping to spread best practice.

Local authorities have an important role to play, together with national Government, in leading the delivery of our ambitions for improved education. Where local authority maintained schools are underperforming or failing, early intervention and swift, robust action are required to tackle failure. Statutory guidance for local authorities, “Schools causing concern”, makes that clear. I understand that Reading has issued five warning notices to primary schools since 2009 with the aim of securing improvement, and I encourage LAs such as Reading to continue to make full use of their statutory intervention powers where they consider that maintained schools are not doing enough to bring about improvement. The statutory guidance is also clear that academy status with the support of a strong sponsor is often the best way of securing lasting improvement in those circumstances.

In cases such as Reading, local authorities should focus their main school intervention activity on the schools that they are responsible for. Good LAs should work constructively with all local schools, but academies are ultimately accountable to the Secretary of State for Education, and local authorities should raise any concerns that they have about academy performance directly with both Ofsted and the Department for Education.

Education and Health

Lindsay Roy Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As I am sure the Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood, knows—[Interruption.] Forgive me, I should, of course, have said the shadow Secretary of State. How sweet those memories are. As the right hon. Gentleman the shadow Secretary of State knows, the Department provides about £16 million every year to reimburse teachers for the cost of that membership. I believe that that £16 million is better spent on the front line. If he believes that the money is better spent on the GTCE, perhaps he will say so in his forthcoming remarks.

As well as getting rid of that bureaucracy, we will reform other bureaucracies. We will reform Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, so that instead of inspecting schools on the current 29 tick-box criteria, it will examine just four: the quality of teaching; the quality of leadership; pupil achievement and attainment; and pupil discipline and safety. We also want to free outstanding schools from inspection, so that more time and resources can be devoted to helping others to improve. The absurd practice of “limiting judgments”, whereby great schools can be ranked as “poor” because of clerical errors, will end, and inspections will be driven by an in-depth look at teaching and learning, rather than by the current endless paper chase, which deprives classes of teacher time.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Secretary of State on his appointment to a very challenging Cabinet post—it is becoming more challenging by the minute. Does he accept that a key factor in improving attainment and achievement is the quality of learning and teaching? Why would any graduate be able to opt out of a teaching qualification, given that, in my experience, some of the most gifted academics are not the most gifted pedagogues? Is this not a dilution that could have a negative impact on standards and quality?

[Michael Gove]

That was a beautifully read question from the hon. Gentleman. As we know, he is a former headmaster of some distinction—indeed, he was headmaster of the school that the former Prime Minister attended—so I shall listen to what he has to say. It is crucial to ensure that we have high standards of teaching and learning. As I pointed out in a reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), we are taking steps to ensure that we improve the quality of both recruitment and teacher training—that is central to our reform programme. That is why we will expand Teach First, institute a new programme called Teach Now and invest in continuous professional development to ensure that those who are currently in the classroom—they are doing a fantastic job—have the opportunity to enhance their skills and accept new responsibilities.

It is because we want to attract more talented people into the classroom that we will also remove the biggest barrier to people entering or staying in the teaching profession; we will focus relentlessly on improving school discipline. We will change the law on detentions so that teachers will no longer have to give parents 24 hours’ notice before disciplining badly behaved pupils. We will change the law on the use of force and enhance teachers’ search powers so that they will be able to prevent disruptive pupils from bringing items into school that are designed to disrupt learning. We will change the law to enhance teacher protection by giving teachers anonymity when they face potentially malicious allegations, and we will insist that allegations are either investigated within a tight time period or dropped. We will also change the law to ensure that heads have the powers that they need on exclusions, and we will ensure that there is improved provision for excluded pupils to get their lives back on track.

I hope that the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Lindsay Roy), and others who believe in protecting teachers and ensuring that we have good standards of discipline and behaviour, can support all those measures. I take it from his headshake that we have his enthusiastic assent. In addition to improving discipline, we will strengthen our exam system. We want to have fewer and better exams. We want to reverse the trend towards modularisation, reduce the role of coursework in certain subjects and ask universities to help us to design new and stretching A-levels that can compete with the best exams in the world.

Just as we plan to learn from the rest of the world in order to improve our exam system, so we will learn from the rest of the world in order to improve our school system. In America, President Barack Obama is pressing ahead with radical school reform on the model that we believe in. He is attracting more great people into teaching, demanding greater accountability for parents and welcoming new providers into state education. He has insisted on having more great charter schools—the American equivalent of our academies—to drive up attainment, especially among the poorest. He, along with other reformers, such as the Democrat Education Secretary Arne Duncan, the Democrat in charge of New York’s schools, Joel Klein, and the Democrat in charge of Washington DC’s schools, Michelle Rhee, wants more schools like the inspirational Knowledge is Power Programme—KIPP—schools, which are raising attainment in ghetto areas. Such schools are founded by teachers and funded by public money, but they are free from Government bureaucracy. They operate in neighbourhoods where, in the past, most children did not even make it to the end of high school. Now, thanks to these KIPP schools, a majority of these young people are going on to elite universities. These schools have a relentless focus on traditional subjects and a culture of no excuses, tough discipline and personalised pastoral care. The schools have enthusiastic staff, who are in charge of their own destiny and work hard to help every child to succeed. Such schools are amazing engines of social mobility, which is why we need more like them in this country.

That is, in turn, why we need to expand and accelerate the academies programme and why we are reforming state education to help groups of teachers, charities, philanthropists and community groups to set up new schools. It is also why I have been determined to give professionals more scope to drive improvement by inviting all schools to consider applying for academy freedoms. We have invited outstanding schools to lead the way.

I believe that heads and teachers, not politicians or bureaucrats, know best how to run schools, which is why I am passionate about extending freedom. Since I issued my invitation last week, I have been overwhelmed by the response. In less than one week, more than 1,100 schools have applied for academy freedoms, more than half of which are outstanding—626 outstanding schools, including more than 250 outstanding primaries. More than half the outstanding secondary schools in the country have applied, and more than 50 special schools have expressed an interest. That is a vote of confidence in greater professional autonomy from those driving improvement in our schools—inspirational head teachers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

Once again, my hon. Friend makes the sort of constructive contribution that I know will make our encounters over the next few years things to cherish. I say to him that it is across the board, whether under Conservative, Liberal Democrat or Labour-led local authorities, that schools want to embrace freedom. Many of them want to do so, not because they resent or are critical of local authorities, but because they relish the additional autonomy and freedom to disapply parts of the national curriculum, and because they want to work in partnership with existing schools. I want to encourage that sort of partnership, between our two parties and between academies and local authority schools. That is why I have requested that every outstanding school that acquires academy status takes with it an underperforming school on its journey, so that the process of collaboration, with the best head teachers driving improvement, continues, and so that schools can use academy freedom and head teachers can use additional powers to ensure that every child benefits.

In addition to asking that of outstanding schools, we will ensure that the academies programme delivers faster and deeper improvements in deprived and disadvantaged areas. Many more of our weakest schools will be placed in the hands of organisations such as ARK, the Harris Foundation and other academy sponsors best placed to drive improvement. We will also ensure that parents have more information about all schools, so that pressure grows on schools that are coasting to improve, and work in partnership with local government, from Essex to Cumbria, empowering strong local authorities to continue to drive improvement. Most importantly, as I have pointed out, we will target resources on the poorest. Our pupil premium will mean taking money from outside the schools budget to ensure that those teaching the children most in need get the resources to deliver smaller class sizes, more one-to-one or small group tuition, longer school days and more extracurricular activities.

[Lindsay Roy]

Apart from outstanding schools, special needs schools and some failing schools, what are the criteria for acceptance to the academy programme?

[Michael Gove]

Schools must demonstrate that the acquisition of the freedoms will help drive attainment for children in that area, and that it will also work for other schools.

This is a comprehensive plan to ensure that our state education system is the best in the world, and it is informed by what is happening across the world. Sadly, in the past 10 years, we have fallen behind other countries: we have slipped from fourth to 14th in the world for the quality of our children’s science; from seventh to 17th for the quality of their literacy; and from eighth to 24th for the quality of their maths. We cannot go on like this. While other countries accelerated their reform programmes in the past three years, we went into reverse. In the past three years, the outgoing Government added thousands of pages to the bureaucratic burden faced by schools. They robbed academies of vital freedoms and tried to abolish traditional subjects such as history and geography in the primary curriculum. They created an inspection regime that stifled innovation, failed to take proper action against extremism in the classroom and prevented teachers from searching for disruptive mobile devices and hardcore pornography on so-called human rights grounds.

The previous Government did make progress in certain areas. The former Secretary of State published his own cook book, “Real Meals”— two, in fact—which was distributed to every school in the land. In the words of the Speaker, when opening the debate on the Queen’s Speech, I have “obtained a copy” for the better understanding of the House. Right hon. and hon. Members may wish to read it during our deliberations this afternoon to get a better understanding of just what he was doing for much of his time in office. Certainly, time spent familiarising oneself with his recipes will not be wasted. I am sure that many of us will be captivated by the eye-watering sight of his mighty muffins in full colour on these pages. I have to say that the shadow Secretary of State certainly has a beautiful set of buns. May I congratulate him for striking a blow against elitism with his cook book? For the first time in history, a socialist Government’s response to poor achievement was, “Let them eat cake.”