Schools White Paper

Lucy Powell Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House believes that every child deserves an excellent education; notes that the Government is proposing to force all primary and secondary schools in England to become academies as part of multi-academy trusts or chains by 2022 at the latest; further notes that the vast majority of schools affected by this policy will be primary schools, over 80 per cent of which are already rated good and outstanding; notes that there are outstanding academies and excellent community schools but also poor examples of both types of such school; further notes the Fourth Report from the Education Committee, Academies and free schools, Session 2014-15, HC 258, which highlights that there is no evidence that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement; notes that the Schools White Paper proposes the removal of parent governors from school governing bodies which will reduce the genuine involvement of parents and communities in local schools; and calls on the Government to put these proposals on hold as there is insufficient evidence that they will raise standards.

I am pleased that we have secured this debate following the Government’s rushed publication of their schools White Paper, which has caused much concern among parents, communities, heads, teachers and others. The main and most controversial proposal is to force all schools to become academies and the vast majority into multi-academy trusts or chains by 2022. That is the proposal on which we have decided to focus this debate, because we believe that the plans are deeply flawed, are not supported by evidence, have already caused huge disruption in schools, and notably, seem to have very few supporters.

There is a growing alliance of those with concerns, including Conservative Members and local government leaders, as well as leading headteacher unions such as the National Association of Head Teachers and the Association of School and College Leaders. It is my intention that this debate be used as an opportunity to air such concerns, and I hope that the Secretary of State will listen carefully, put the plans on hold, and not plough on regardless.

There are elements of the White Paper that we can support, such as the independent college of teaching, but we cannot support the main thrust of forced, wholesale academisation.

The Government’s plan has been met with such concern, even by the very school leaders they claim to be supporting, because it is a bad policy with no evidence base. It is yet another policy from this Government that is obsessed with school structures instead of standards. What is more, given the very real pressures faced by schools today—including huge teacher shortages, real-terms cuts to school budgets for the first time in 20 years and major overhauls to curriculums, assessments and exams—the idea that heads should spend time, money and energy on a £1.3 billion top-down reorganisation of our schools system is, at best, a distraction and, at worst, will have a very damaging impact on school standards.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

I declare an interest as a governor of Denton West End primary academy in my constituency. The point is that that school chose to become an academy because parents and teachers decided that that was the best model for school improvement. Should not we also respect the parents and teachers at those schools that wish to remain under local authority control?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point, which I will come on to make myself shortly.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the proposal could lead to more school closures in the public sector? More importantly, we might face difficulties recruiting teachers. The £1.9 billion could have been better spent on public services rather than on an ideological argument.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend echoes the concerns raised by the NAHT union in a memo it sent this morning to all MPs.

The Tory obsession with school structures has completely missed the point. Just as there are some excellent academies, there are some excellent community schools. There are also some poor academies and some poor community schools. No type of school has a monopoly on excellence. We need to build an education system that provides an excellent education for all children, rather than pitting one type of school against another. Nearly a month has passed since the Chancellor made the announcement, but we have yet to hear any answers to the question “Why?” When schools that want to become academies can already do so, as my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) has said, and when schools that the Government deem to be failing or coasting can already be put into an academy chain, why force all others? This is not about school improvement, nor is it about autonomy and freedoms. The multi-academy trust model is in its infancy, and real questions are emerging about accountability, probity, capacity and, for some, standards.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Lucy Powell]

I will make some progress, because a lot of people want to speak. I will take interventions shortly.

Let us look at each of the Government’s arguments in turn. First, the Government say that this is about school improvement. Let us look at the evidence. The vast majority of schools that will be affected by the policy will be primary schools, of which more than 17% are already academies. Of those that are not, more than 80% are already rated good or outstanding. In secondary, where more than two thirds of schools are already academies, there are more failing academies than non-academies. In places such as Doncaster, Bexley and north-east Lincolnshire, where school improvement remains a real concern, all the secondary schools are already academies.

[Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Would she care to reflect on performance in Greenwich, which has become one of the highest-performing education authorities in the country without the enforced academisation of a single primary school, and in which only three secondary schools have become academies? That performance has been achieved without enforced academisation. Parents in our borough are concerned about why they have been removed from the process and will not be consulted about changes to their schools.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is my hon. Friend aware that we have an absurd situation in Coventry North West? The Secretary of State refused to meet me about this, but she is aware of it. After having been encouraged to become an academy, Woodlands underwent forced academisation a couple of years ago. Woodlands Academy is not doing well, but instead of putting in an intervention team, as the Prime Minister indicated at Question Time, the academy is being closed and another one is being started a mile up the road. What a waste of resources.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point.

Only today, Ofsted has reported that the performance of secondary schools in Reading is “not strong”. Eight out 10 secondary schools in Reading are already academies and are directly accountable to the Secretary of State. Why has she failed to improve those academies, and what is the Government’s school improvement strategy for that and other areas?

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lucy Powell]

I will take some interventions later, but I am going to make some progress.

The Government claim that there are more children today in good or outstanding schools than there were in 2010, as proof that academisation leads to school improvement. However, the Secretary of State knows that, as ever, she is being selective with her figures. The truth is that the vast majority of those new good and outstanding places are in primary schools, where academisation is limited. Moreover, according to Ofsted, the number of pupils in inadequate secondary schools has risen by a staggering 60% over the last four years where academisation has taken hold significantly. Not for the first time, the Government’s selective use of statistics and their dubious link between cause and effect do not withstand any scrutiny. Perhaps that is why the Conservative majority Select Committee on Education recently concluded, after an extensive inquiry:

“Current evidence does not allow us to draw conclusions on whether academies in themselves are a positive force for change”

and:

“There is…no convincing evidence of the impact of academy status on attainment”.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I declare an interest as the chairman of governors of Goole Academy, an academy school that is doing very well. In north Lincolnshire, we have had a big academisation programme, and we have gone from having 38% of kids in good and outstanding schools to having 92% of children in such schools. Although I may agree with some of the points that the hon. Lady has made, will she confirm that the Labour party’s position is to support academies? Her speech so far has seemed very anti-academies, and that concerns me as a governor of one.

[Lucy Powell]

Not at all. As I made clear in my opening remarks, there are some excellent academies and other types of schools. Academisation can be an ingredient of a wider school improvement programme, but the overall evidence is underwhelming at best.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Lucy Powell]

I am going to make some progress.

Although the Sutton Trust found excellence in a small number of academy chains, it found that the majority were underperforming. Not only is the forced academisation programme evidently not about school improvement, but the Government’s drive on it may greatly diminish what capacity there is in the system for school improvement. The regional schools commissioners, their officials, the energies of school leaders and local authorities will now, as we are already seeing, shift almost entirely away from schools that need improvement towards creating trusts and changing the legal status of a huge number of schools, most of which are already performing well. Indeed, the national schools commissioner and the Department for Education have not even acquired the powers they sought from Parliament in the Education and Adoption Act 2016—they will get them on Monday —to put more schools they deem to be coasting into academy chains. Was that piece of legislation therefore a complete waste of time?

[Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is talking about coasting schools. In the NHS, which had a huge reorganisation that nobody voted for, performance absolutely went down while people had to deal with that big reorganisation. Is she worried, as I am, that this is heading in the same direction? If there is a big reorganisation that nobody has voted for, performance in our schools and the achievement of our children will fall away.

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government, as they have no other ideas, seem to enjoy such reorganisations.

I will shortly return to some of the very real concerns about the performance of academy chains, but I first want to look at another of the Government’s arguments for forced academisation, which is that it is about autonomy and freedoms. This Government say they are for choice in education. Choice? What choice is there in a one-size-fits-all policy? What is autonomous about forcing a high-performing school into an academy chain? Will the Secretary of State promise that every outstanding school leader who wants their school to remain as it is can do so? No, she cannot. Where is the autonomy for the small village school, which the White Paper makes clear cannot be a stand-alone academy? I see some nods from Conservative Members to these points. Perhaps this is why even one of the Secretary of State’s main allies, Toby Young, has described this policy as Stalinist. The curriculum and other freedoms described by the Government could easily be given to all schools without the need for a change to legal status.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is talking about autonomy and democratic control. We have a model of that in the form of co-operative schools, in which parents, pupils and school leaders all work together. Why does she think they should be forced to academise?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes another excellent point.

On curriculum freedoms, the Secretary of State and I both know that the autonomy the Tories say they are providing just does not exist. During the past five years, parts of the curriculum have been personally drafted by the Education Secretary and then circulated for sign-off among Cabinet Ministers. This sort of ministerial diktat on the curriculum puts schools into a straitjacket. In fact, what we are actually seeing with academisation is a further narrowing of curriculums as schools aim to improve their Ofsted judgments on an increasingly narrow set of measurements.

While the academy programme was originally about bringing new partners and innovation into the system, a wholesale academisation programme will undoubtedly create an increasingly sclerotic and one-dimensional system. It is no wonder that the chief executive of England’s largest academy chain, Academy Enterprise Trust, recently admitted that there is in fact less autonomy for schools in multi-academy trusts than there is for local authority schools.

[Steve Brine]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lucy Powell]

If the hon. Gentleman wants to comment on that, I am more than happy for him to do so.

[Steve Brine]

No, my intervention is not about that, but I thank the hon. Lady for giving way. She is being very generous with her—or probably our—time. She asks us to support the motion on the Order Paper, which is in her name and that of the Leader of the Opposition. This point came up at Prime Minister’s Question Time earlier. She says that the White Paper proposes the removal of parent governors from school governing bodies, but paragraph 3.31 on page 51 of the White Paper makes it very clear that it will not do so. Clearly, she did not have an opportunity to clarify that during PMQs, but will she now take the opportunity to strike that phrase from the motion?

[Lucy Powell]

I am happy to clarify that the Government propose to remove the requirement for parent governors. If the hon. Gentleman wants to have a semantic debate about that, it is in the White Paper, on the page to which he referred. The Secretary of State will have the opportunity to talk about that in a moment.

That brings me to the evidence for and the performance of multi-academy trusts—MATs—or chains as they have become better known. It may come as a surprise to many Conservative Members that the Government’s free school and academy agenda has quietly but significantly shifted in policy and practice from stand-alone academies to MAT or chain models. That shift was made clear in the White Paper, in which the policy preference is emphatically for schools to become part of chains. Indeed, Department for Education guidance issued yesterday said:

“We expect that most schools will form or join multi-academy trusts as they become academies.”

There is evidence that schools do better working collaboratively with clusters of schools, especially where they are clustered geographically, as many do in local authority areas.

However, the evidence for the performance of chains so far is mixed. There are some notably good academy chains, but there are many more that are not good. Of the 850 current MATs or chains, only 20 have been assessed, and just three have proved more effective than non-academies. The chief inspector of schools, Sir Michael Wilshaw, wrote to the Secretary of State only a week before the Budget highlighting “serious weaknesses” in academy chains. He went on to say that, in many cases,

“academy chains are worse than the worst performing local authorities they seek to replace”.

To continue with forced academisation of all schools after such a damning letter is frankly irresponsible.

There are major questions for the Government on capacity too. Academy chains are in their infancy and clearly require a closer look, yet the Government want them to take on thousands more schools. Maybe that is why the Secretary of State cannot rule out poorly performing chains being given otherwise good schools under the proposals. One of the main reasons why the track record of many chains is not good is the dearth of any real oversight or accountability.

I share the concerns expressed by many Members of all parties, including my near neighbour, the hon. Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), who said that we are in danger of creating distant, unaccountable bureaucracies for schools. That the Department for Education, via its small group of schools commissioners, can provide robust oversight and accountability of all schools in the country, is frankly for the birds. It is an impossible job, and it is also not desirable.

The Secretary of State seems hell-bent on cutting out communities, and cutting out parents from having any say over how their child’s school is run. First, let us take the Tories’ plan to scrap the requirement for parents to sit on governing bodies. Abolishing parent governors and removing any role for parents in choosing whether their child’s school becomes an academy and what type of academy it becomes has unsurprisingly been met with a huge outcry. I understand that the Secretary of State wants to take this opportunity to clarify that parents can still be governors. However, as she well knows, under her plans, there will no longer be a requirement for governing bodies to have them. I do not think that that is the kind of clarification parents are looking for. Perhaps she would like to take the opportunity to go further. In any case, she and I both know that in a world of academy chains, the role of the individual school governing body is greatly diminished and key decisions are taken by the two new levels: the board of trustees and the member board above that; bodies that are all too often appointed by the head or the chief executive whom they are supposed to be holding to account.

If we want to avoid more scandals such as Perry Beaches, Kings Science Academy and E-ACT, to name just a few, and if schools are genuinely to be held to account, we need a much more robust governance regime than remote trustee boards appointed by their executive, held to account only by a regional schools commissioner, who is responsible for overseeing thousands of schools.

There are also very real issues on the ground about accountability and responsibility for excluded children, placing children with SEN and admission policies. They all have very real problems under the fragmented schools system. Such a system of oversight also needs to have recourse to the needs of the local community. We cannot have a situation where the needs of the local area are not considered, such as the case of Knowsley, where the last A-level provision across the entire borough is about to be lost, based on a decision taken by one school. There has to be a better-joined up approach to school improvement and local oversight, involving school leaders and councils as well as parents.

The Government claim to lead the devolution revolution, so their centralisation of schools is both wrong-headed and contradictory. In places like my own, Greater Manchester, the Chancellor talks of releasing the combined authority and elected Mayor to create a northern powerhouse. That the skills and education of the next generation are being taken away at the same time shows what a sham that project is.

That point leads me to one last argument the Government make, which is that it would be simpler to have one funding system. That argument is nonsense and certainly does not support the £1.3 billion reorganisation of the schools system that is being proposed. It is also disingenuous of the Government to link the proposals to the fair funding consultation. There is broad support for a fairer funding model, as long as deprived areas and areas that require improvement do not lose out. Forcing all schools to become academies does not need to be linked to that.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

The shadow Secretary of State was absolutely right to say at the start of her remarks that this should not be a debate about quality. Does she agree that if we reach a certain tipping point in the number of schools recognising the direction of travel and academising, it is sensible to have a discussion about what, if any, future role there should be for LEAs as we understand them, and what the future of education planning will be for the next 20 or 30 years? It seems to me that we have arrived at that tipping point and so it is right to have that debate.

[Lucy Powell]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, but disagree that we have reached that tipping point. We certainly have not done so with primary schools, as only 17% are academies. A longer-term look would be welcome, but an arbitrary timetable set by the Chancellor and Prime Minister as part of their legacy is a totally false track. For decades, we have had a multifaceted funding arrangement for our schools. There is no real reason why that cannot continue.

The proposal to force all schools to become academies and part of academy chains is a costly reorganisation that schools do not want or need. Heads are dealing with some very real and big challenges, such as teacher shortages, significant real-terms cuts to their budgets, flux and chaos in assessment, and insufficient school places. Asking them to take time out to change their legal status and to become an academy against their wishes is wrong, and will impact on standards.

This agenda is not about school improvement, as most of the schools affected are already good or outstanding. It is not about more autonomy or more choice, as a one-size-fits-all approach is being forced on all schools. It is not about parents, as they are being cut out of the picture. It is not about devolution, but centralisation. There are real and serious concerns about capacity, oversight and accountability under the Secretary of State’s plans.

There is a growing alliance of heads, governors, parents, teachers, politicians from all parties and many of the original advocates of the academy programme against forced wholesale academisation. Yet this Government, who used to say they were all for choice, profess to be about standards and claim they are on the side of parents and schools, seem to be ploughing on regardless, without a single coherent argument or a shred of credible evidence to support them. They still have time to listen, pause and reflect, and today’s debate gives them a chance to do just that. I commend the motion to the House.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

[Lucy Powell]

rose—

[Nicky Morgan]

Let me answer the point and then I will invite the shadow Education Secretary to clarify what the Opposition motion actually says. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are two errors in the motion. The first is that it says we are abolishing the role of parent governors. We absolutely are not. The second is that we will force all schools to join multi-academy trusts. That is also not the case.

[Lucy Powell]

This may be a semantic argument, but does it not say in the White Paper that the Secretary of State is removing the requirement for parent governors? Is the Secretary of State removing the requirement—yes or no?

[Nicky Morgan]

Let me just remind the hon. Lady what her motion says. [Interruption.] Opposition Members do not want to listen.