Queen’s Speech

Lord Harris of Peckham Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Harris of Peckham (Con)]

It is very important that we get every child in this country a good education because they get only one chance. I thank the late Baroness Thatcher and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for giving us our first chance of a CTC, at Crystal Palace in 1992. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, under whose leadership we opened 10 academies. I am proud to say that nine of those are outstanding and one is good, in Peckham. I expect the school in Peckham, sometime this year, to get an outstanding rating. I also thank the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, for allowing us to have another 15 schools by September 2013 and 10 more this September.

I would like to mention all our schools. Some 44% of the children receive free school meals. Our school at Crystal Palace, which we opened in 1992, previously had a pass rate, with five As to Cs including English and maths, of only 9%. Over the past 14 years, our average has been 92%. On two occasions it was the most improved school in the country. From 1995 to 2000, it went from a 9% pass rate to a pass rate of 54%. It then went from 54% to 92%. When we took on the school, it had only 350 students; today it has 1,500. This year we have four students going to Oxford and Cambridge. It is the most popular school in the country with over 2,000 applicants for 180 places. This gave me the confidence to open more schools; so today we have 27 academies—16 secondary, 10 primary and one referral unit.

I would like to say a few words on the referral unit. It is for children who have been expelled. Instead of putting them on the street and leaving them alone, they come to this school. We opened it in September last year and it had 30 students. Of those 30 students, we have now got 27 back into the normal state schools. It is not just from our schools but from all the schools in the Beckenham-Bromley area. We are proud of that. I am also very proud that the Government have made us expand the school so that we will be taking 60 children from this September.

We have had 12 Ofsted reports on our 16 academies in the past two or three years and have got nine outstanding ratings and three good ones. As for the three good ones, we have had two of those schools only since September 2012. Some 75% of our academies have a rating of outstanding compared with the national average of 20%. All our academies, except one, were failing when we took them on. Last September, 80%—or 465—of our students progressed to university. Some 5% deferred and had a gap year for one year. Some 10% went to a Russell university.

Why did I get involved with primary schools? It is important. Our school at Purley had 1,000 applicants for 180 places in 2012. Of those applicants, 16 had a reading age of six to eight years old, or year 2 to 4. Within a year they were put back into their normal classrooms, and today they have a reading age of 12. That is why we wanted to do more primary schools: because the more primary schools we did, the more chance these pupils would have when they got to secondary school. Of the primary schools that we have taken on, nine were failing or in special measures. In the past year, one of those schools, at Peckham, which is a free school, had an Ofsted rating of outstanding in every department: four grade 1s.

Noble Lords have probably heard of the Downhills School, which caused everyone such trouble in Tottenham, and which caused me and my shops a lot of trouble personally. I am proud to say that, within less than a year, this school has been assessed as among the 20% most improved schools in the country. This week we will receive an Ofsted report and I will be very disappointed if we do not get a “good” rating, and there is a chance that we will get an “outstanding” one.

We are very proud that in September we will be opening a school called Harris Westminster, which is linked with the Westminster School and will be a sixth form for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. Over 50% of the students will be getting free meals. We are very excited about this school. We will eventually take up to 500 students, and in two or three years’ time we will have 600. They will have a first-class education, helped by the Westminster School. We are proud of that. It will be chaired by the chair of governors of the Westminster School, the Dean of Westminster. I thank him very much for all the work that he has done to help make this happen. Our chief executive, Sir Dan Moynihan, is one of the best chief executives who I have ever worked with. Finally, I thank our principals, teachers, support staff and governors for making our group so successful and helping to give children a better chance in life. Our motto is, “All Can Achieve”.