Building Schools for the Future (Liverpool)

Louise Ellman Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome you to the Chair, Mr Benton. It is particularly appropriate that you are in the Chair for this important debate, because you represent my neighbouring constituency of Bootle. I also welcome the Minister to the Chamber and congratulate him on his appointment to one of the most interesting and enjoyable jobs in Government. I am delighted that all four of my colleagues from Liverpool are here for this debate because that demonstrates the incredible strength of feeling across the city on the issues that I will raise and that my colleagues will, I am sure, mention in interventions.

The focus of the debate is the importance of investment in education in Liverpool. It is important for the life chances of children and young people, for social mobility and justice, and for the future economic prospects of the city. A vibrant knowledge economy is absolutely crucial for a city such as ours, and that is especially the case if we are to meet the challenge of increasing the role of the private and voluntary sectors in the city region’s economy.

I shall quote from two business leaders in the city of Liverpool. First, Chris Musson, chief executive of the Liverpool science park, said:

“The future for cities like Liverpool has got to be in higher value economic sectors. Investing in education and creating a generation of state of the art new schools is a vital element in the bigger economic picture. At Liverpool Science Park we are providing support to new knowledge-based businesses. If we, in conjunction with our partners, are to continue to grow the commercial knowledge economy it is vital that there is a qualified and capable supply of talent from which knowledge-based companies can recruit.”

Another business leader, Frank McKenna, who chairs Downtown Liverpool in Business, said:

“The Building Schools for the Future programme is as important to our future economic success as the Liverpool One retail development or the Capital of Culture. Investment to transform education is essential to the development of a high-skill, high-value economy in Liverpool.”

Over the past 13 years, we have seen a remarkable improvement in attainment in Liverpool’s secondary schools. In 1997, the city had one of the lowest attainment rates at GCSE; just 32% of 16-year-olds achieved five or more A* to C grades. The most recent figures available show that in 2009 that attainment rate had grown from 32% to 74%, which is 8% higher than the national average. I pay tribute to the hard work of staff and students, backed by their parents, and the local authority in achieving that incredible transformation. Liverpool’s Building Schools for the Future programme is designed to learn from that educational progress over the past 13 years so that we can promote excellence in all Liverpool schools.

I want to say a few words about Building Schools for the Future nationally. I had the privilege of serving for three years as a Minister in what was then the Department for Education and Skills, when my right hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (David Miliband) led the original proposals for Building Schools for the Future. We looked at decades of low investment in school buildings under Governments of both main parties, frankly, through the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. We looked not only at the physical fabric of schools, important though that certainly is, but at a programme that, more importantly, would support improvement, innovation and change in all our schools. That is a massive challenge, so we had to decide where to start. We made a deliberate policy decision to give priority to those areas with the highest levels of social and economic deprivation. That is why Liverpool is one of the first beneficiaries of Building Schools for the Future, the biggest ever investment in education in the city.

There are six schemes already under way as part of a £135 million wave 2 investment, and I am pleased that three of them are in my constituency: West Derby school, including Ernest Cookson school; Broughton Hall high school; and Cardinal Heenan high school. I have had the opportunity to visit all three of them. They are already excellent schools and have hugely impressive plans. What is most striking is the ambitious education vision at the heart of their plans. I am especially pleased to have been invited to open the brand new West Derby school in September.

[Mrs Louise Ellman (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the programme is vital for the whole of Liverpool, that schools such as Archbishop Blanch school, St Hilda’s school and Shorefields school would benefit from participating in it and that it would be very cruel to crush their ambitions through any clawback on projects already in the pipeline?

[Stephen Twigg]

I thank my hon. Friend and hope that in the course of my speech all my colleagues will have the opportunity to intervene, so that all the schools benefiting from Building Schools for the Future in Liverpool can be mentioned in the debate. The programme is about education transformation, led by the schools themselves; it is not some central Government initiative being handed down from on high. Many of the schools in the programme are already high achievers, but they are being constrained by their buildings.

Wave 6, the next wave of Building Schools for the Future, involves 26 Liverpool schools, with a promised investment of £350 million. The council has identified two sample schools: Archbishop Beck school, which is in the constituency of the my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram); and St John Bosco school. Five years ago, Archbishop Beck school was in special measures, but it has made huge progress since then and its results are now above the national average. Ofsted has judged the school to be “good, with many outstanding features”. St John Bosco school, which is in Croxteth in my constituency, was last month judged by Ofsted to be “outstanding”. I visited the school last month and was hugely impressed by the focus on standards, the high proportion of the girls who are going on to university in what is a very deprived community and the active involvement of the students themselves in the development of the Building Schools for the Future plans.

Five other schools in my constituency are in wave 6, two of which are special schools: Clifford Holroyde school, a wonderful school for children with severe behavioural difficulties; and Sandfield Park school, which has plans under Building Schools for the Future to increase the school roll from 70 to 100, which will mean fewer Liverpool children with disabilities having to leave the city for their education. De La Salle school in Croxteth is also an outstanding school, and it is due to become an academy as part of the programme. Holly Lodge school in West Derby is a fantastic school that desperately needs that investment. It has exciting plans that it has worked on for four years, and the head teacher has told me that they will be devastated if the investment falls through. St Edward’s college, a well-known, highly renowned and popular local school, is also in wave 6.

For all those schools, Building Schools for the Future brings benefits to the schools and also to the wider community, such as better sports and arts facilities—the Holly Lodge school proposal includes plans to open a local cinema, in partnership with FACT cinema in the city centre—adult learning opportunities and extended schools services. The programme will bring high-quality education to many of the communities in Liverpool that we represent, which provides the best hope for social mobility. That is an argument of social justice, but it is also an argument of hard economics. Liverpool’s Building Schools for the Future proposals offer a systematic and structured new set of relationships between every secondary school and an identified business partner. That builds upon existing links between a range of Liverpool businesses, such as Jaguar, Everton football club and Merseytravel, and schools, first, to support learning and teaching in the schools and, secondly, to help shape the skills of the future work force.