Education and Adoption Bill

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her kind words of welcome. It is a pleasure to be the new shadow Secretary of State for Education, a role that I am passionate about. I am sure that she will agree that Secretary of State for Education is one of the great offices of state, and it is great to see two women in these roles today. I was, however, less comfortable with one aspect of being offered this job. Unfortunately, given that I am an October-born, bossy politician who studied chemistry at Somerville, the parallels between Margaret Thatcher and me take another step forward. I very much hope that that is as far as they go.

I pay tribute to my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). He has been a passionate campaigner for education and it is an honour to follow in his footsteps. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for all their hard work on the Bill, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who has served as the Whip on the Bill and who, I am sad to say, will leave the Whips Office after today. I also thank the many colleagues who served on the Committee and contributed to the debate.

For me, education is personal as well as political. With children at secondary, primary and nursery school, I see at first hand the immense value of an excellent education. It truly is the best investment any country can make. Coming from a family of teachers and headteachers, I have the highest regard for all those in education, who do amazing jobs, often in challenging circumstances.

Education is our route to a successful, rich, vibrant, tolerant and inclusive society and economy, but with globalisation, the digital age, emerging economies with high skills and a shrinking number of low-skilled jobs, we need to ensure that we continue to meet the needs of the next generation.

Labour is committed to excellence in state education, to raising aspirations for all children and to continued increases in standards. We also want an accountable system with strong local oversight, collaboration and support. That should apply equally to all schools, whether or not they are an academy, free school or local authority school. We cannot support this Bill, because it does nothing to meet those challenges and it takes school oversight, parental involvement and support for headteachers backwards. Yet again, the Government seem to want to apply these measures only to local authority schools instead of addressing failure across the system.

The sponsored academy programme of the last Labour Government brought new resources, leadership, partnerships and higher standards to some of the most disadvantaged schools and it was very successful. However, what we have seen from this Government is the wholesale academisation of schools, with little evidence to show that that in and of itself raises standards. Indeed, Ofsted has raised concerns that the academisation of schools can often be a detrimental distraction for school leaders when they could be focusing on other interventions. What is more, the Bill fails to address the very real concerns about whether the Secretary of State is best placed to offer the oversight and support that the majority of schools require, and it does nothing to address failure in academies or academy chains. No parent wants their child to be in a failing, inadequate or coasting school. We should all be intolerant of failure in our school system, but I am far from being convinced that the Bill’s measures will deal with those issues.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has said, we support many of the Bill’s adoption measures, although we have raised concerns about the threat to specialised adoption agencies.

I shall focus the remainder of my remarks on the schools element of the Bill, which has a number of serious flaws. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West has said, the very narrow definition of coasting schools, which is purely a data exercise, is flawed. It gives no recourse to other information from Ofsted or elsewhere. It could also have serious unintended consequences.

Children not achieving their potential or not being stretched, which may lead one to think that the school is coasting, has long been an issue, but the Bill’s crude measure will potentially exclude many schools that require intervention and include some that do not. That is a major flaw. It also sets up a parallel judgment of schools outside, and often in competition with, the Ofsted framework.

The Bill also fails to devolve powers of oversight and intervention from the Secretary of State; indeed, it concentrates further powers into her hands. Regional schools commissioners are nowhere near an adequate response to that growing problem, which is widely recognised. Although devolution is rightly the agenda of so much public policy, education is going in exactly the opposite direction under this Government and with this Bill.

Another of the Bill’s failings is the exclusion of academy schools and academy chains from required interventions. Many examples have been given, especially by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). The Bill deals only with local authority maintained schools. There is no parallel requirement on the Secretary of State to take equivalent action against a failing academy.

The Bill’s focus on forced academisation is only justified if the evidence supporting academy status as a path to improvement is overwhelming and unchallenged. In fact, there is no such evidence. The Tory majority on the Education Committee was unable to find any convincing evidence that academy status itself led to school improvement, but the Secretary of State continues to maintain that, rather than a useful targeted intervention in appropriate circumstances, academy status is the single magic bullet that will lead to improvement. We all know that it is much more complex than that, and the Bill does nothing to strengthen and speed up other interventions that we know work.

The views of local stakeholders, particularly those of parents, will be completely removed by the Bill. That is the wrong direction of travel, and we cannot support it. It also fails to address major challenges in our education system, such as the growing teacher shortage as recruitment and retention collapses, and it does nothing to solve the crisis in school places.

The Government should develop policy based on evidence and proper analysis. When using individual examples, I am always mindful of the fact that we can all find those that make our point one way or another. On reading the Secretary of State’s speech on Second Reading, I noticed that she gave two or three examples of school improvement to justify the Bill. One such case, that of the Manchester Enterprise academy, stuck out for me because I know that school well and, dare I say, better than the Secretary of State. She cited the school as a clear demonstration of why academising a failing school works, but the situation is much more complex. I do not want to politicise the school, but it is important further to draw out what is happening there because it highlights all the issues we are debating.

First, given the Secretary of State’s clear belief that local authorities cannot be part of the solution in supporting and turning round poor schools, I was surprised that she chose a school whose sponsor is none other than the local authority, in partnership with Manchester airport. The city council has had a great deal to do with the recent success of the school, as indeed it has with all schools across Manchester, in which standards have risen significantly in recent years. She and her Government seem to think that local authorities can never be part of school improvement, but I beg to differ—as her own example shows.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome my hon. Friend to her new position at the Dispatch Box. The school she mentions is in my constituency. It was academised under the previous Labour Government, sponsored by Manchester City Council—a Labour council—as well as Manchester airport and the local Wythenshawe community housing group. It has been transformed under the leadership of James Eldon. The Secretary of State spoke about the Manchester Enterprise academy on Second Reading, so I challenge her to come and see how a local authority has got to grips with turning around such a school.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight such issues, particularly the important role played by the city council. Manchester is at the vanguard of the right hon. Lady’s Government’s programme for devolution. Indeed, some might argue that the leaders of Greater Manchester are closer in outlook to the Chancellor than she is. Why is she not part of that agenda? Instead she is taking education in the opposite direction.

Secondly, had the Secretary of State looked further into the history of the Manchester Enterprise academy, she would have found out what any local representative, such as my hon. Friend, or education professional in the city could have told her—that it took many years after academisation for the school to be turned around. There were leadership changes, financial problems and low attainment for many years after it became an academy. It was not academisation in and of itself that improved the school, but a range of interventions, many of which have been more recent than its academisation.

Thirdly, as the Secretary of State cited this example on Second Reading, I wonder whether she is aware of the school’s results this year. Through no fault of its own—indeed, the school continues to go from strength to strength—its GCSE results this year dropped by 9%. As she may be aware, as in many deprived and challenging parts of the country, the new system of comparative results means that no matter how hard the school works and how excellent the teaching is, results can fall as grade boundaries change, making the gap impossible to close. That comparative results system, with its constantly changing grade boundaries, may result in excellent schools, such as the Manchester Enterprise academy, being labelled as coasting. Has she considered the consequences of that? She will also be aware that schools face a crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, particularly in maths and science. That, too, could affect a school’s results through no fault of its own.

The Secretary of State’s example highlights my bigger point. Despite having a whole Department working on her speech and sourcing examples, no one brought the real situation of the academy to her attention. Local representatives could have told her about it. That only highlights the difficult job that she has in being solely responsible for thousands of schools. This Bill and the Secretary of State miss the most fundamental point: we need to devolve oversight for all schools to a level where support, collaboration and accountability can happen effectively. The Bill rejects that and her regional schools commissioners fall well short.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

There are 2,024 maintained Catholic schools in England and 386 Catholic academies. As the hon. Lady is speaking on behalf of the new Labour Front-Bench team, may I ask her to pay tribute to our faith schools and assure us that the Labour party is fully committed to their continued existence? In the context of the Bill, will she commit her party to ensuring that if, sadly, an interim executive board has to be appointed, the religious nature of such a school will be preserved?

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I reiterate the Labour party’s commitment to faith schools. As he raises the input of Catholic schools, he may be interested to hear that they are opposed to many aspects of the Bill, as we highlighted in Committee. In particular, they are very much opposed to clause 7.

I will spend the coming months listening, responding and developing and setting a course for an ambitious vision for education in this country—something that the Bill fails in. The Bill takes school oversight and parental involvement backwards, and further demonises local authority schools. That is why we will oppose it. It is also a huge missed opportunity for a newly returned majority Government. The Secretary of State has the best and most important job in this country. Is this Bill the best she can do? If I had any doubt as to why the Bill is before us this evening, I do not after reading her interview in The Daily Telegraph this morning. It is clear that the Secretary of State’s primary interest is not raising standards and supporting pupils, parents and teachers; it is narrow political tactics aimed at the Labour party. I am afraid that that is quite a sad and pathetic development.