Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Lord Barwell(14 years, 4 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker
I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has taken that tone, because that was not the policy intention of the last Government or the previous Conservative Government. I am sorry to bore people who have sat through Committee proceedings for the past day and a half, because I have said this twice, but the policy objective—he may disagree with this—was not to close special schools. It was to ensure that people had the choice of being included in mainstream schools, if that was appropriate for them. That was the policy of the previous Conservative Government in the ’90s, as was absolutely right, and of the Labour Government until 2010, as was also absolutely right. I hope that it will be the policy of this Government.
Of course, that will mean that the number of special school places will sometimes go up, and sometimes go down. As long as that is done on the basis of having determined what is in the interests of the child, it should not matter, because it is the policy objective that is important. I tell the hon. Gentleman this: if there are 10,000 places in special schools—I do not know how many there are—and it was properly, and with parental agreement, felt that 3,000 of those 10,000 places should be in mainstream schools, I would be happy to stand at this Dispatch Box and say, “I support the reduction of special school places from 10,000 to 7,000,” but that is on the basis of need and individual choice, not on the basis of ideological diktat.
Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way; he was also generous yesterday. In answer to my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), he acknowledged and paid tribute to the fact that the Government have strengthened the law so that academies will have the same SEN obligations as maintained schools. Will he also pay tribute to how the new model funding agreement also strengthens provision? It provides the Secretary of State with the power to direct academies to comply with any SEN obligations that were not in the previous funding agreements.
Vernon Coaker
I tried to make that point at the beginning; otherwise, we would not make any progress. I said that there had been improvements to the Bill and that there would have been improvements in some of the documentation associated with academies. That does not change the fact that, when it comes down to it, the Government are not clear on what the funding arrangements will be, how they will work and the correct balance between centrally provided services and the academies.
As the Chair of the Education Committee asked, where do we draw the line and what is the balance between those issues? The Government have not given us any definition of what they mean by
“low incidence special educational needs or disabilities.”
In Committee, we have to tease out those sorts of issues from the Government, to ensure that the legislation that we pass in this Parliament is as robust and effective as it can be.
Academies Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Coaker and Lord Barwell(14 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Vernon Coaker
Of course outstanding schools can be trusted, but such schools have demonstrated that they already have all the freedom they need to be outstanding. Schools in areas of social deprivation or those suffering from educational underperformance should be allowed to operate in a way that, we hope, will raise standards. Evidence on whether or not the hoped-for and expected higher standards have been achieved is not as clear cut as one would like to imagine. I shall come on to deal with impact assessments in more detail later, but for any type of school, the impact assessments are quite wary about the evidence is terms of how much progress has been made in academies. All I am saying to the right hon. Gentleman—to be fair, he operates by trying to make policy on the basis of evidence—is that the evidence is mixed, so to plunge headlong into a massive expansion of academy freedoms without due regard to the evidence is not the right course of action for special schools or others.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman talks about a massive expansion, but surely the key point about this legislation is that it is permissive. Special schools and primary schools will become academies only if those schools themselves judge that they want to be academies. Does he not trust the judgment of those schools, their head teachers and their governing bodies?
Vernon Coaker
It is simply not the case that the hon. Gentleman’s Front-Bench team wants this to be a gentle expansion and not a big bang. The Secretary of State sees this as a flagship Bill. The idea is to try as hard as possible—notwithstanding the impact assessments—to expand the number of academies as quickly as possible. If we had been successful in the election and were still in government, we would have expanded the number of academies. Indeed, I had signed up to a number of them coming forward in September—some in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency—and my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) would have expanded the academies programme, as I said.
The issue is the model for the expansion. That is the difference between us. We will argue our way all around the different clauses, but this goes to the very heart of the debate. Our view is that we should concentrate on schools in areas of social disadvantage and educational underperformance; this Government’s view is to allow outstanding schools to fast-track to academy status with all the risks that that brings.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman will know that in London constituencies like mine, people in very disadvantaged circumstances often live right next door to fairly affluent areas. Why does he think that only poorly performing schools should try to improve? Why should satisfactory schools, good schools and outstanding schools not also try to raise their standards?
Vernon Coaker
That is a fair point. We want all schools to improve their standards. That is not my point. My point is that allowing only outstanding schools to let rip in this way is likely to cause problems. The hon. Gentleman needs to ask why the Bill does not specifically provide that outstanding schools should or must co-operate and reach an agreement with an underperforming school. As it stands, it is a permissive part of the Bill: it is a good thing to do; it would be nice if those outstanding schools did that. They should do so, but there is no “must” about it. I am not sure how this would work in respect of the programme motion, but the hon. Gentleman might like to consider tabling an amendment formally to require outstanding schools to partner other schools—special schools or whatever—that may be next door to them, but are not satisfactory and are not delivering the standard of education that they want. If he did that, I would look forward to considering whether we could support it.
Vernon Coaker
I agree.
We have serious doubts about the capacity of primary schools, and about what the costs will be, who will be leading the process, how it will be managed and so on. There are also financial implications. I have been told of a primary school in the west midlands—I think that it was mentioned in the other place—that recently developed serious structural faults. The local authority found the money to put the problem right, with a final cost of around £1 million.
Another example of where the local authority often steps in is on the matter of fires on school premises. How would that work under academy status? The Department for Education advice states that it would expect schools that had become academies facing such problems to take out loans. How could a small school possibly afford to do that? What does the Minister imagine would happen in those circumstances? How would the repayments be made? Who would get the loan in the first place? How would that operate? Most primary schools rely on the local authority to pick up the costs of redundancies and employment tribunals, as well as the legal costs associated with challenges on accidents. The school would not necessarily be able to find the cost of the insurance to cover those things.
Again, the Department for Education’s own website states that, for most schools, the cost of insurance will be between £60,000 and £100,000. The cost of purchasing legal and personal advice commercially needs to be taken into account. How would that work? What will happen with all that? Are we going to have another advisory committee to look at all those details, as we did with special schools, before we get a proper answer? The problem for primary schools is that all these are unanswered questions. Many primary schools are on holiday now, yet some of them are supposed to be opening in September as academies. How is that going to happen? What is going on?
A great deal of work has been done over the past few years, by others as well as the Government, on managing the process of transition from an early years setting into the first year of primary school. The review of the early years foundation stage announced by the Government over the last week or two will not, I trust, represent the reversal of much of that good work. The reality is that there are overlapping responsibilities between early years settings, the children’s trusts—the abolition of which would cause great concern for Labour Members, but I know that Ministers are either considering or proceeding with it—and a number of child care and early years settings sited with primary schools. How is that supposed to work? What happens with all of that—child care, nursery provision, early years provisions—in relation to primary schools? Will there be separate applications to convert separately? Do they stand alone? Will it work differently for a primary school, a nursery and an infant school? Again, I have seen no explanation of that. In many ways, I am concerned not so much about the ideology as the practicality. In the rush to get the Bill through, many practical issues have not been thought through and, frankly, Ministers do not have the answer to them.
Thousands of primary schools—some small, some big, some in rural areas—are involved, but where is the evidence for this change coming from? As I stressed in the debate on the last group of amendments, the crucial evidence that Governments often publish on their Bills is the equality impact assessments and the impact assessments. All members of this Committee will have seen and read those assessments, but there is not a word about primary schools in them—not a word. How, then, are we supposed to judge? This is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Where is the evidence base for this Academies Bill, when there is nothing in it about primary schools? How can any hon. Member look at the evidence base and decide whether the Government’s proposals are acceptable?
Conservative Members seem to think that the idea of primary schools becoming academies is great, but their new Government effectively said, “We do not believe that policy should be made without evidence,” so where is the evidence?
Vernon Coaker
Let me finish the point, and then I will, of course, give way.
It is the same with the equality impact assessments. They relate to existing academies, which are all secondary schools, so there is nothing in them about primary schools. Yet this is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Frankly—although I am going to say this gently to the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, as we get along—this is not good enough. For all of us to look at the evidence for or against this Bill and to analyse, discuss, debate or disagree with it, and to say what has been missed out of it or what should have been included in it, we require an evidence base—but there is no evidence in it. We are told that if conversion to academies goes ahead, the GCSE results will be 1.5% what might have been expected if the schools had not converted. What on earth has that got to do with primary schools? This is a very serious point and at some stage the Minister will have to answer it.
Vernon Coaker
I will give way to the Minister in a moment, but to his hon. Friend first.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman said that he had approved an all-through school in my constituency. Where was the evidence base for the primary section in that application?
Vernon Coaker
As I said, what happens is that a problem is identified and an attempt is made to deal with it. It became apparent that there were a number of exclusions, and I could have stood here and not drawn attention to that, opening myself up to exactly the point that the hon. Gentleman has, correctly, made. The rate of exclusions in academies was too high, and we wanted to do something about it.
It is clear that one way to deal with that issue is to include in the Bill a requirement to conform to measures such as admissions codes and the legal frameworks laid out on exclusions. In doing so, we would give much more legislative clout to achieving the things we want to achieve. I have given examples—the changes to the model funding agreements on admissions and on exclusions—that demonstrate that the Government are saying, “Trust us, we will do all this through the model funding agreement.” Through these amendments, I and my party are saying that we do not believe that that is sufficient and that such a provision needs to be included in the Bill, which is why we tabled these amendments.
Gavin Barwell
The hon. Gentleman is trying to make the case that the exclusion rates are higher in academies, and is comparing them with the whole of the maintained sector. Is it not true that research published by his Department when he was a Minister showed that exclusion rates in academies are no higher than the average rates for their local authority areas?
Vernon Coaker
I was quoting earlier from point 20 in the equalities impact assessment.
Let me try to make some progress. This set of amendments is extremely important. Allowing outstanding schools to fast-track to becoming academies raises all sorts of questions and concerns right across the Committee. What will it mean for admissions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” What will it mean for exclusions? We are told, “Trust the funding agreement.” Grammar schools are to become part of the academy world. We are told, “Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selection. Don’t worry, it won’t mean more selective places.”
It is clear from the answers we have been given and the evidence before us that grammar schools becoming academies will lead to more selection. It is clear that, without its being made explicit in the Bill that there is a requirement to abide by the various codes and the legal framework in respect of exclusions and admissions, over the next few years we will see an expansion of selection and of exclusions from the intakes into certain schools—or, more likely, non-admittance—and a more socially exclusive education system. We all want increased attainment and our young people to achieve the very best they can, but we cannot do that by creating what this Bill in effect creates at its heart: a two-tier education system.