Schools White Paper

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the briefing that she and her officials provided for the Labour education team yesterday.

This White Paper is a thin document that we believe represents a missed opportunity in many ways. Paragraph 123 says:

“The system that has evolved over the past decade is messy and often confusing … Unclear expectations of academies and local authorities permit grey areas which have sometimes allowed vulnerable children to fall through the gaps. Government has not been able to intervene adequately in the small number of trusts that have fallen short in the expectations of parents”.


So what have the last 12 years been all about?

Other than an attainment increase at key stage 2 and GCSE, for which there is minimal detail, this White Paper betrays a real lack of ambition by the Government. When the headline soundbite is some schools staying open for 10 or 15 minutes longer, there is something seriously lacking.

The Secretary of State would have done well to have studied the speech given by his shadow, Bridget Phillipson, at the ASCL conference earlier this month, where she spoke about the broader aims of education and the importance of soft skills, creativity and balance in the curriculum. The White Paper never really gets beyond a fixation with maths and English.

There is no recognition of why many employers are seriously critical of the current school system and curriculum. There is seemingly no understanding that England is becoming an outlier internationally in its narrowness and fixation on academic subjects and end-of-course exams. There is no attempt to set out a vision of what education is for and of the kind of world that we are preparing children for.

There are no funding commitments of any seriousness, and inflation will surely erode much of what has already been agreed. This needs to be seen in the context of the new funding formula, which has been introduced at the expense of the most disadvantaged areas and is quite contrary to the Government’s levelling up ambition.

One proposal that I welcome is the introduction of a register for children not in school, which is long overdue, not least in terms of safeguarding issues.

On structures, some potentially interesting changes are proposed, but without the detail it is hard to assess them. It could imply the effective replacement of individual funding agreements by a statutory framework. It could imply the end of the free school programme except where there is a demographic need for new schools. In recent weeks, the education media have been fed stories of all schools being forced to become academies. The White Paper does not state that explicitly. Can the Minister clarify the Government’s intent? I read paragraph 146 as enabling forced academisation where the local authority wants it, irrespective of what individual schools want, as has been the case in places such as Hull, Leicestershire and Thurrock.

The Government admit that contracting with academy trusts is at an end and will be replaced with “academy trust standards”. No further information is given. Is this a return to direct grant schools, which Labour abolished in the late 1970s, with academies remaining independent schools? Is the intention to set up a new type of school which is “Secretary of State maintained” rather than local authority maintained, similar to the grant-maintained schools? We just do not know, and there is scant evidence that the Government do either.

The premise that trusts are the best way of organising schools is asserted but not proved. Occasionally, data is cherry picked. I ask the Minister how many trusts do not contain 7,500 pupils, which is said to be the benchmark for efficiency and effectiveness. How does the DfE propose to deal with the many trusts that are not that size? Talk of a family of schools quickly comes up against a basic problem: that of geography. How can you have a family of schools scattered the length of the country?

Chapter 3 focuses on targeted support. There is no definition of students falling behind, but the White Paper says that you must not label children as “behind”. Can the Minister clarify where the funding for this support will come from? Of course, the elephant in the room on the whole question of education recovery is the Chancellor. Sir Kevan Collins knew exactly how much was required to deliver meaningful programmes, but the Chancellor callously put his red pen through it and hundreds of thousands of children throughout the country are living with the consequences of his parsimony. Yesterday’s DfE-commissioned report on pupil learning loss from the pandemic bears that out.

There is no recognition of the huge issues in teacher recruitment at present but quite a lot about the current attempts to change initial teacher training, with the imposition of a political ideology on all stages of teacher development. The proposals around the Oak academy turning into a provider of resources and lesson plans could be a worrying step towards enforcing a national model of pedagogy and curriculum content.

After two years of pandemic chaos and six years since the Government’s last schools strategy, this plan will leave parents, teachers and pupils wondering where the ambition for children’s futures is. Clearly, it is not with this Government.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise for being a few minutes late; I hope that I shall not be sent to the back of the class.

I thank the Minister for the Statement. I like the tone of it; I like the fact that we are celebrating schools and the hard work that teachers do. I detect a real change in the way that we look at our education system.

All the research shows that parents are not interested in structures. We go on about academies, academy chains and LEA schools, but parents want good teachers, good leadership of a school and a curriculum which excites, motivates and enthuses pupils. I am afraid that we get hung up far too often on structures. I think I detect the glimmer of hope that we will again move away from the notion that structures are the way forward—they are not; it has to be about the quality of the education provision and of the teacher.

Turning to academy trusts—we have long debated this in the past—I have a number of observations resulting from the Statement. First, we hear that the voice of the parent should be heard. Perhaps the Minister could assure us that those academy trusts—few, thank goodness—which have done away with governing bodies for each school will be a thing of the past. Schools, even in multi-academy trusts, need to have a governing body, particularly so the parent voice can be heard.

My second observation, which I raised time and again with the Minister in the Lords before this Minister, is about chief executives of academy trusts and how their salaries have got completely out of control—some are getting up to £300,000. Over the last two or three years the number of chief executives of even small academy trusts earning more than £100,000 has grown. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, assuring us that he was going to tackle this issue, but his tackling of the issue has seen the problem escalate rather than get better.

As was mentioned in Oral Questions, academies can choose the curriculum they want. There are certain things which are crucial for all children. Again, when we discuss the White Paper, we need to look at giving all schools the same freedoms and opportunities, but with those freedoms come responsibilities. There are areas of the education curriculum where we should ensure that every school, whether a local authority academy—there is a new thing—a free school, or, if they still exist, any local authority schools not in academy trusts, must teach.

One thing that slightly jarred with me in the Statement was that only one school was mentioned. It was not that anything this school—Oak National Academy—had done was wrong, just that only one was picked out. A teacher would not pick out one clever pupil in the class, they would celebrate the whole class. There are lots of examples of schools which have done just as much, if not more, innovative things than the Oak National Academy. That jarred slightly.

This afternoon we talked about creative subjects and the EBacc. I challenged the Minister to give a direct reply, which she was not able to do, and I understand why. The White Paper will give us all an opportunity to explore the effect the EBacc has had on certain subjects in the curriculum. It might well be—it is not my particular wish, but I got this sense from the Minister’s reply—that she sees T-levels as providing the less academic, more vocational route, hence they would not be part of the EBacc. That would be a grave mistake and the EBacc should encourage creative subjects as well.

I am pleased the Government have listened to the issue of a national school register, but there are a number of other matters, as the Minister well knows, such as unregistered schools. One of the reasons we are not able to take action against unregistered schools, as Ofsted will tell you, is that they can morph into very small units. Unless we are prepared to see home education treated in a different way, it will be very difficult to deal with unregistered schools. That is an area where we need to focus.

We are told that Ofsted will inspect all schools. That is right, but let us remember that schools have been through a terrible time just keeping the doors open and keeping children educated. I would hope that Ofsted would be more about an opportunity to work with schools and would offer a supportive inspection. Rather than waving a big stick where perhaps the wheels have wobbled during the pandemic or things have gone wrong, I hope that Ofsted might proverbially put its arm around the school and say, “Look, these are the issues that need sorting out.”

I have a few questions. First, we know that children from deprived communities have suffered the most for all the reasons that we have debated and discussed in the past. I was a bit disappointed that that issue was not particularly addressed in the comments. Secondly, children have missed out on extra-curricular social and academic experiences—opportunities to develop the skills that they will need for the future. Why have the Government not used the first White Paper in six years to change and expand the range of opportunities that are given to children? Where is the ambition?

The White Paper has so far had quite surprisingly mixed reviews. Geoff Barton, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, said that, although the paper outlined promising measures, it lacked ambition or “big ideas”. The Education Policy Institute think tank said that pushing all schools to become academies was “no silver bullet”, and that, although the White Paper contained “some bold aims”, it seemed

“unlikely that many of these bold pledges will … be met.”

My party looks forward to the opportunity that this White Paper gives to address not just the questions that I have raised or those raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, but issues such as children being permanently excluded from school, how they are treated, and how we need to make sure that we give them a much better opportunity and a much better education. I look forward to working with the Government on the White Paper.