Draft Coasting Schools (England) Regulations 2016

Michael Gove Excerpts

Wednesday 30th November 2016 General Committees

[Mike Kane]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. This is the final stage of the legislative journey to implement the Government’s commitment to identifying coasting schools, but the idea of coasting schools came about under the last Labour Government, who saw them as schools at risk of failure. Labour identified the issue quite a few years ago, so it has been quite a journey to get to this point.

As the Minister has pointed out, the draft regulations give extended powers to the regional schools commissioners to intervene, yet today we learn that one of the Government’s key performance indicators for the commissioners is not standards, but how many schools they get converted into academies. Just this afternoon, Schools Week says:

“The government continued judging regional schools commissioners (RSCs) on how many schools they converted into academies…despite fears about a conflict of interest”.

That prompts the question whether the RSCs are independent arbiters in terms of judging whether our schools are failing, successful or coasting.

Although RSCs were introduced as a pragmatic response, we need to ensure that there is proper oversight. I think that there is a capacity issue. The Select Committee on Education says that RSCs are part of a

“complicated system of…accountability and inspection”.

That prompts the question whether they are fit for purpose. The Education Committee says that a

“fundamental reassessment of accountability and oversight for all schools will be required in the future to provide coherence”

and talks about ensuring

“that RSCs have the capacity to cope with planned expansion of their role.”

The Minister has already said that what we are discussing could affect 800 schools. We know from previous debates that the Department for Education is groaning under the weight of the MAT—multi-academy trust—initiative, whereby more schools are leaving local authority control and being directly controlled from Whitehall. That situation will be exacerbated very quickly, with 800 schools coming online.

The Select Committee says that the role of RSCs “remains unclear”, that they do not have effective relationships and that there is a “lack of transparency” and an issue about decision making. It says that without attention to those issues, they will come across as “undemocratic and opaque”.

One measure of the opacity is the report by Martin George in The Times Educational Supplement that none of the regional headteacher boards, which meet monthly to decide whether a school is coasting or doing well,

“have published minutes since June”.

So schools do not know; they are not getting the information. The Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), told The Times Educational Supplement:

“There’s a paucity of useful information available online about the work of headteacher boards…The Department for Education…and RSCs need to up their game and ensure up-to-date information is published to ensure there is transparency and accountability.”

The ultimate tool in the regulations is that which forces schools to academise, but the Government need to think again about whether blanket academisation is the only vehicle to support the raising of standards. There is a mountain of evidence that academisation is no silver bullet, so let us look at the evidence. The Department’s own statistical working paper says that at key stage 4, more than half—54%—of MATs are performing significantly below average for adding value, and a further 13% are estimated to be performing slightly below average.

[Michael Gove (Surrey Heath) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mike Kane]

I would be honoured to give way to the former Secretary of State.

[Michael Gove]

Will the hon. Gentleman enlighten the Committee by reminding us how many more children are in schools that are good or outstanding now, in comparison with 2010?