Free Schools: Educational Standards

Lord Hill of Oareford Excerpts

Thursday 10th January 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Hill of Oareford (Con)]

My Lords, next door there are 150 people repeating the same six things at great length. Here, there may be fewer of us, but if we recognise that we are talking about the education of our children, I think we are talking about something rather more important for the long-term future of our country, and there is also much more chance of us hearing something new.

It is a great pleasure to speak in the same debate as my noble friends Lord Nash and Lord Agnew. Between the three of us, for better or worse, you have the history of the free schools policy in government since 2010. It is a particular pleasure to speak alongside my noble friend Lord Harris, who has done more personally and directly to help children in our country than the rest of us put together.

When I think back to my first meetings with officials in the summer of 2010 and I look at where things stand today, it is undeniable that this policy has made a lasting difference. It was not introduced by coercion but, certainly initially, bubbled up from below. That element of permissiveness and experimentation in the free schools policy motivated me most.

Like the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, I have never believed that structure is more important than people. I never argued that academies or free schools would automatically be better than local authority schools simply because they had a different structure. I never suggested that free schools were guaranteed to succeed, although I certainly believe that if you delegate responsibility and trust people more, more of them are likely to succeed.

I was always clear, too, that some were bound to fail, but given the system-wide failures in our education system that we inherited, I felt that giving people more responsibility, allowing them to respond to local needs and encouraging them to challenge the status quo was a risk worth taking. If you look at the overall results, as well as some of the individual success stories we have heard today, I still think that that was the right call.

It is also worth recalling how bitter the opposition to the idea of free schools was at the beginning. We were told that no one would want to take part, that free schools were being unfairly bankrolled and that they would cause mayhem in the system. None of that has turned out to be true; they have the same funding, the same inspections and often far cheaper buildings than under the old regime. When I became a Minister, I realised that there was a game among academy sponsors, who were competing to see who could get the most expensive new building out of the department. It is true that finding premises in London was difficult and sometimes horribly expensive—I am sure that it still is—but we applied downward pressure on costs overall.

Getting the first 24 free schools open in less than a year, when it had typically taken three, four or more years to open a new school, was hard pounding. It would have been impossible without three groups of people. The first was my Secretary of State, Mr Gove. He delegated responsibility to his junior Minister 100% but would also come charging towards the gunfire when things got lively—the opposite of some Secretaries of State we can all think of, who want to control everything and then blame others when things go wrong.

The second group was the individuals behind the free school proposals. Whenever things were difficult, I found that meeting the proposers was a guaranteed way to cheer me up and make me buckle down again. Their enthusiasm, hard work, bloody-mindedness, vision and commitment to making sure that local children had a decent education drove us on. Without them, there would be no free schools.

The third group was my officials. I remember their looks of incredulity at my extremely permissive approach, bearing in mind that they had all been working for Mr Ed Balls, who had a plan for everything where everything fitted together in perfect logic. Then, under the leadership of Mela Watts—who I believe is still doing the job today—they got stuck in. They had to find premises, negotiate leases and construct vetting procedures—the whole lot. They offered me words of caution when they needed to but drove forward into unknown territory with great grace, humour and commitment. This could not have happened without them either.

I want to offer two thoughts. I have not been close to this for quite a while. My first thought is for the Government and my second is for the Opposition. My thought for the Government concerns something that my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy touched upon, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. One consequence of the success of free schools is that they have become part of the establishment. The thing that I thought was most exciting about them was the innovation and disruption that they brought to the system. I remember that one of the early proposals was for Spanish bilingual primary schools. That would never have come from the traditional state system. We have to hold on to that disruptive and imaginative approach. In relation to maths schools and special schools, we need to keep the enthusiasm there was from the parents of children who had learning and other disabilities to bring a new approach. They must keep their disruptive edge. I am sure my noble friend Lord Agnew is seized of the importance of that. We do not want to create a new orthodoxy where there is a new mantra of two legs bad, four legs good, or whatever it is.

Secondly, and briefly, to the Opposition, I echo the points that were made earlier. I hope that people do not one day feel the need to make huge amounts of structural change all over again. For those who may think that what it needs is just a bit more co-ordination and centralisation and a small, gentle helping hand, we all know that helping hands from government can quite rapidly become overintimate embraces and beyond that come close to strangulation. We need to beware on both sides.

We all know how easy it is for government Ministers to make policy announcements and huge, grandiose promises. The free schools policy is a clear example of where we underpromised but overdelivered. For that reason alone, it is worthy of notice and celebration.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I remember a time when members of the Labour Party were against free schools because they involved parental interest. They were opposed to free schools because they thought that parents would not be able to take on the running of free schools. Now they seem to be saying that they are not in favour of free schools because they do not involve parents enough. I do not know if there has been a change in the policy in the intervening years.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I rather agree with my noble friend that the Opposition seem to have gone on a journey. When free schools were originally mooted under my noble friend’s tenure we were told that no one was capable of creating one other than the Government. We have put paid to that myth.