“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Lord Austin of Dudley Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Ah—I call my University of Essex contemporary, Mr Ian Austin.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The PISA figures actually show that we are going down the international league tables as standards among our competitors rise much more quickly than here in the UK, so it is an absolute tragedy that the Secretary of State spends so much of her time on partisan bickering and a dogmatic obsession with structures. The best way—the quickest way—to improve standards in our schools is to focus on leadership, and that is what she should be giving all her attention to. Will she take the £1 billion that she was going to spend on forcing every school to become an academy and use it to recruit and train a new generation of brilliant headteachers?

[Nicky Morgan]

May I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read, or re-read if he has already done so, chapter 3 of the White Paper, entitled “Great leaders running our schools and at the heart of our system”? We do not need to divert money because we have already set aside money for training headteachers and supporting their great leadership. If he wants to talk about our rankings in the international league tables, he might like to consider that between 2000 and 2009 England’s 15-year-olds fell from seventh to 25th in reading, eighth to 27th in maths, and fourth to 16th in science. If he thinks that performance when his party was in power was good enough, he should have another think.