Summer-born Children (Education Guidelines)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) on securing the debate, and on choosing such an apposite time of the day in which to have it. I also congratulate him on his very effective campaigning on this issue, both for his constituents—Hugh Hunter and his parents—and the other families he referred to. I congratulate him on the fight he has put up on their behalf, and on his campaign nationally on this very important issue. It is timely, as it allows me the opportunity to set out the Government’s position on summer-born children, and our intention to amend the school admissions code to ensure that summer-born children do not miss out on an important year of their education and schooling.
The statutory school admissions code currently requires admission authorities to provide for the admission to school of all children in the September following their fourth birthday. A child does not reach compulsory school age until on or after their fifth birthday. No parent, therefore, is obliged to send their child to school before that age is reached. Most parents are happy for their child to begin school at the age of four, but as we know, children develop at different rates, particularly in the early years. Some parents will therefore feel that their child is simply not ready to start school before compulsory school age. To allow for this, the admissions code makes it clear that parents can request that their child attend part time, or that their entry be delayed, until they reach compulsory school age.
Where parents of a summer-born child want that child to start school at the age of five, as the law allows them to, they will start school at the point when their peers are moving up from the reception class to year 1. If they want their child to be admitted to the reception class at this point, they must currently request that they be admitted outside of their normal age group. The admissions code requires the admission authority to then make a decision on the age group the child should be admitted to, based on the circumstances of the case and their best interests. In making that decision, the admission authority is required to take into account the views of the headteacher of the school—as my hon. Friend explained—as they are best placed to advise on the age group at their school in which the child’s needs can best be met. The code also makes it clear that admission authorities must take into account the wishes of parents, alongside other information relating to the child’s academic, social and emotional development.
This, however, is where problems seem to arise at a local level. The decision on what age group the child should be admitted to often seems to be problematic, with the parents and admission authority failing to agree on what is in the best interests of the child. I am concerned about the number of cases in which it appears that the wishes of parents are not being respected and children are being admitted to year 1, rather than the reception class, and are therefore missing out on the essential teaching of reading and arithmetic which takes place in the reception class.
We have always made it clear that there are no statutory barriers to admitting summer-born children to a reception class at the age of five. In July 2013, we published non-statutory advice to help admission authorities and parents understand the statutory framework within which decisions must be made, and to remove the misunderstandings that appeared to get in the way of admission authorities agreeing to parental requests. For example, it clarified that a school’s funding would not be affected if they admitted a child out of their normal age group, and this advice seemed to be successful at dispelling such misunderstandings, but unfortunately it did not result in a reduction in the number of problematic cases, or the number of parents whose wishes were overruled.
That is why last year we amended the admissions code to provide greater clarity about how such decisions should be made, and to improve transparency for parents. The code now makes it clear that the decision must be made in the best interests of the child. It also requires the admission authority to take account of the views of the headteacher of the school concerned, as they are best placed to advise on the age group at their school. The code requires the admission authority to publish the process for requesting admission out of the normal age group, and to set out the reasons for its decision in each case for the parents concerned. It also makes it clear that admission authorities should take into account the wishes of parents, alongside other information relating to the child’s development.
In spite of these changes and the additional non-statutory advice we have published alongside them, I am concerned about the number of cases in which it appears that children are still being admitted to year 1 against their parents’ wishes and are, as a consequence, missing out on that important reception year at school. I am also concerned that some children who are admitted outside of their normal year group are later expected to miss a year and move up against their wishes to join the other children of the same age range—a point referred to by my hon. Friend.
We have therefore decided it is necessary to amend the admissions code further to ensure that summer-born children can be admitted to reception at the age of five, if this is what their parents wish, and to ensure that those children are able to remain with that cohort as they progress through school. We have already begun the work necessary to implement the change. We will conduct a full public consultation in due course and, subject to parliamentary approval, we will introduce these further changes to ensure that no child is forced to start school before they are ready.
Admission authorities may have been reluctant to agree to parental requests because they felt it would open the floodgates—that large numbers of parents of summer-born children would want them to be admitted outside their normal age group—and that, as a consequence, the admission system would become impossible to manage. I do not believe this to be true. The reception year of school is the final part of the early years foundation stage, and we know that most parents are happy for their child to go to school at this point, confident that they are ready for the challenge. We believe that only a small proportion of parents of summer-born children wish them to be admitted to reception at the age of five—for example, children born in the late summer months or born prematurely. On that point—the first of the three my hon. Friend made—I will further consider whether we can make changes in relation to the due date versus the birth date of prematurely born children.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this important issue. I hope he is happy to learn that we are taking action to address his concerns on the admission of summer-born children.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (UKIP)
3. What estimate her Department has made of the number of free schools that will be in operation by 2020.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Free schools are helping to raise academic standards and tackle disadvantage, ensuring social justice is at the heart of our education reform programme. Over 250 free schools have opened since 2010, and our manifesto commits us to at least 500 more during this Parliament. By 2020, free schools will have created over 400,000 new school places.
Mr Carswell
For every part of England to benefit from the spread of free schools, restrictions on their expansion need to be removed and capital attracted. What will the Minister do to remove those restrictions and overcome the reactionary blob in his Department?
Dr Tania Mathias (Twickenham) (Con)
What assurances can the Minister give me regarding securing buildings for free schools? In my constituency, east Twickenham is in desperate need of free schools but there are very few suitable sites.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We need local authorities to be co-operative and to work with us to identify sites for free schools. This is an important way of improving the quality of schools and the number of school places, and we expect local authorities to work with us to identify suitable sites.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Does the Minister share my concern about the standards in these free schools? Is he concerned that they might not actually provide the improvement in the quality of education that the Government claim, and can he point to any evidence that free schools have improved the standard of education in any areas where they have opened?
Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)
4. What steps her Department is taking to encourage schools to broaden opportunities available for disadvantaged children.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Thank you, Mr Speaker Bercow.
Subject knowledge enhancement courses allow trainee teachers to build on their existing knowledge to enable them to teach their chosen subject. We have reformed the programme so that the courses can now be delivered by schools and universities, and we are promoting the courses through the successful “Get into Teaching” marketing campaign. The additional training is free of charge and most participants also receive a bursary. New chemistry trainees are also eligible for a bursary of up to £25,000 in 2015-16.
Louise Haigh
Given that the number of primary teachers in Sheffield with a science degree is below the national average, does the Minister agree that it is wrong for the teacher supply model not to account for regional variation?
Mr Gibb
The teacher supply model takes into account the national position. There will, of course, always be areas of the country that find it more challenging to recruit than others, particularly rural areas or some coastal areas. We are also faced with the challenge of a strong economy. If you really want to make recruiting graduates into teaching easier, you need a weak and stagnant economy, with low growth, recession and high levels of unemployment, but for that you need a Labour Government.
Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)
8. What assessment her Department has made of recent trends in teacher retention; and if she will make a statement.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Statistics published earlier this month show that teacher retention has remained broadly stable for a number of years. Eighty seven per cent of teachers who qualified in 2013 were teaching a year later; this figure has remained roughly constant in each year since 2005. Seventy seven per cent of teachers who qualified in 2011 were still teaching three years later; and 60% of teachers remain in the classroom 10 years after qualifying.
Dr Huq
Various recent polls have shown that up to 68% of teachers have considered leaving the profession altogether in the next 12 months. In my constituency, the prohibitive cost of housing contributes to that figure. Heads say that that prevents teachers from staying beyond their initial teacher training. What steps will the Department take to head off the coming teacher crisis in London?
Mr Gibb
I do not recognise the hon. Lady’s figures. Our figures show that 52% of those who qualified in 1996 are still teaching 18 years later. We are doing an enormous amount to encourage teachers to stay in the profession and graduates to come into the profession. We are tackling the workload problem and poor behaviour in schools and we are improving teacher training.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
We hear a lot of noise from the Opposition about how there is a so-called crisis in teacher recruitment. Will the Minister put things into perspective by explaining to the House the comparison between the number of people joining the teaching profession compared with that of those leaving the profession over the past decade?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a good point. So far this year, for example, we have received 24,000 acceptances on to teaching training programmes at universities and schools. That is marginally ahead of where we were this time last year. We have exceeded targets for primary school trainees and for history and PE teachers, and we are ahead on acceptances for maths, physics, chemistry and design and technology compared with this time last year. We do not underestimate the challenges, but those are the challenges that come from a strong economy, and I would rather have that than a weak economy.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I should declare that I am an unpaid member of the London borough of Redbridge and a member of the governing body of Grove primary school in Chadwell Heath. Just last week, both Labour and Conservative councillors expressed concern about the school places crisis in Redbridge. Given that we have one of the fastest growing populations in London, what assurance can the Minister give us that we will receive the funding necessary for additional schools and school places and that there will be the teachers there to staff them?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman was not here under the previous Labour Government when they cut 200,000 primary school places in the middle of a baby boom. One of the first decisions that we had to take in 2010 was to double the amount of spending on creating more school places. Some £5 billion was spent in the previous Parliament and £7 billion will be spent in this one.
Rishi Sunak (Richmond (Yorks)) (Con)
9. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.
Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)
T2. What support will the Minister offer primary schools that are trying to improve literacy standards for all pupils so that no child leaves school unable to read and write?
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
As my hon. Friend knows, the Government place phonics at the heart of the early teaching of reading, and that is reflected in the new national curriculum. The coalition Government provided £23 million in match funding to more than 14,000 primary schools to boost the quality of phonics teaching. In 2012, we introduced a phonics screening check to identify those children still struggling with reading. Three years on from its introduction, the screening check shows that over 100,000 more six-year-olds are on track to becoming confident readers.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
I am told that, having forced schools across the country to become academies, the Department now finds that the bureaucratic oversight is too difficult and is trying to force them all to become part of large academy chains. That may work for normal schools, but it is very difficult for studio schools and university technical colleges. Will the Secretary of State confirm that there is no truth in that rumour and that there is no pressure on schools to join academy chains?
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
Landhead primary school in Ballymoney in my constituency was one of the recent winners of the national flag display to celebrate Magna Carta. There was a celebration here in Parliament square and at Runnymede. Now that the celebrations are starting to draw to a close, what are the Government’s long-term proposals to ensure that Magna Carta and, indeed, the celebration and support of Parliament continues to be part of the education process?
Mr Gibb
I congratulate that primary school on taking part in the important celebration of Magna Carta. We have reformed the curriculum, both at primary and secondary school, to ensure that it is more knowledge-based, particularly in history. That will ensure that future school leavers will understand and know more about our important British history.
Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)
T5. The latest figures on the dedicated school grant for 2015-16 show that pupils in my urban Torbay constituency receive significantly less per pupil than their counterparts in other urban areas such as Nottingham. What steps will the Secretary of State be taking to address that funding imbalance, as highlighted by the Campaign for Fairer Funding in Education, or f40?
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
T6. I recently joined pupils at Paddox primary school in Rugby for a class in their outdoor forest school, and the school recently made a successful bid to the Aviva community fund for permanent structures that will enable students to use it all year round. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to encourage other schools to follow Paddox primary’s lead on outdoor learning?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend brings a whole new perspective to the issue of school building design—a very in-tents form of education. Paddox primary school is, of course, an outstanding school and the Government’s approach is to give such schools the freedom to make such decisions, particularly if they believe it will help children to learn their multiplication tables.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
Primary schools in Brent regularly have classes of 29 children with 21 different mother tongues. How is it possible that a fairer funding formula can discount against such schools relative to others that do not labour under such difficulties?
GCSEs and A-levels
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Today I am launching a public consultation on revised subject content for seven GCSEs and five A-levels which will be taught from 2017.
This represents an important step in the third phase of GCSE and A-level reform. Our aims for GCSE and A-level reform are unchanged. We are reforming GCSEs and A-levels to be rigorous and more knowledge-based and to match the qualifications used in the best education systems in the world. The reforms aim to ensure that GCSEs are more academically demanding and will be qualifications in which students, employers, and further and higher education institutions can have confidence. At A-level, our reforms aim to ensure that they prepare students for undergraduate study. A priority in the development process has therefore been to secure the views of subject experts, particularly university academics in the relevant subjects.
The subject content documents being published today set new expectations which all awarding organisations’ specifications must meet. Awarding organisations have drafted content, working with Department for Education and Ofqual. An additional consultation will be published in the autumn with content for the remaining subjects to be taught from September 2017.
This consultation is an opportunity for teachers, further and higher education colleges, parents and students, industry and all those with an interest in these subjects to provide their views and allow us to take them into account when redrafting the content for final publication.
Summary of changes to subjects
Astronomy GCSE has been reformed to ensure it has the same level of demand as the newly reformed GCSE science content. Demand has been increased by introducing new areas of knowledge and placing greater emphasis on students’ use of mathematical skills.
The business GCSE content increases breadth and depth of knowledge, and introduces more focus on the overall purpose of business, on how the different parts of a business work together, and on how business decisions are made.
The new economics GCSE content has been significantly strengthened and focuses clearly on economics as a social science, with additional depth added such as requiring students to understand movements along, and shifts in, supply and demand curves, and with more demanding mathematical requirements.
The engineering GCSE has an increased level of demand with a greater emphasis on systems-related content, a detailed section on testing and investigation, and new and more demanding mathematics.
Environmental science A-level has been brought in line with other reformed science A-levels, and requires greater scientific knowledge, understanding and skills.
The new geology GCSE content requires students to study a greater number of minerals, rock types and fossil groups, and there is new content on planetary geology.
History of art AS and A-level content will ensure students study a wide range of art and artists from different movements and periods including pre- and post-1850.
Music technology AS and A-level content is focused on the knowledge and skills which relate solely to music technology, with the content that overlapped with music A-level removed. As a consequence the qualification now includes more technical, scientific and mathematical content.
Philosophy AS and A-level content will enable students to gain a thorough grounding in key philosophical questions and concepts, including through critically engaging with ideas and reading and understanding the work of key philosophers and thinkers.
Psychology GCSE content will require all students to study in more breadth and depth the five core areas of psychology—social, cognitive, biological, developmental and individual differences—including key theories. All students will also be required to develop a strong understanding of research methods including quantitative analysis.
Sociology GCSE content has been updated to reflect the new, more demanding A-level, with additional sections on the sociological approach and with students now required to know and understand the ideas of key sociological theorists.
As with the reform of the GCSE, the Department has developed subject content for design and technology A-level. The A-level retains a specialist focus with students able to study engineering, product design, or fashion design and development. All students will be required to study the core content of design processes that are at the core of contemporary design practice, and the technical principles needed to choose the right solution to address the design need.
[HCWS112]
Education and Adoption Bill (Tenth sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan
Mr Chope, welcome back for the final furlong of our race to the end of the Bill—via the beginning. This group of amendments relates to clause 1, but fear not: we have disposed of most of the rest of the Bill in your absence and are getting near the end.
Amendment 73 would require the Secretary of State to make the regulations that define a coasting school. Amendment 74 would provide that the Secretary of State may use the power to make regulations under proposed new section 60B(2) of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 only once in any 12-month period. Amendment 79 would require regulations about notifying schools that they are coasting to be subject to an affirmative resolution of both Houses of Parliament.
At present, all that we know about how Ministers intend to proceed comes mainly from Department for Education press releases and from some of the exchanges that we have had in Committee. No comprehensive draft of the regulations is available. Given this level of uncertainty and the savage criticism of the initial definitions received, there is a need to pin Ministers down on some clear and transparent procedures, which is what we are seeking to do now.
The amendments say that regulations should be made; it should not be an option that Ministers proceed on the basis of informal letters or other imprecise forms of guidance and discover what they have got wrong only after a couple of months have passed. Elsewhere in the Bill, as we debated earlier, the Ministers are very keen to use the word “must” in relation to what Ministers do. We encountered that in clause 7, which we debated before clause 1. Under clause 7, Ministers “must” make an academy order in certain circumstances, but in clause 1, Ministers seem to want to leave the options open in relation to making the regulations on coasting schools and having them subject to parliamentary scrutiny. At this point in the Bill, we have the word “may” instead of “must” and we would like to find out a bit more about why that is the case.
Given that the initial draft is a bit muddled—
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
May I give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that we will issue regulations? Indeed, that is why there is a draft of the regulations before the Committee for our information.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful for that assurance, but it prompts the question why the word “may” was used here rather than “must” and the word “must” was used elsewhere rather than “may”. Of course, these are draft regulations; they are not regulations themselves, although the Minister has put it on the record, helpfully, that it is at the very least the Government’s intention that Ministers will issue regulations. We cannot just assume that things will come out all right on the night. We need to ensure that precise procedures are in place to ensure that the Government get this right.
As for amendment 79, if the Ministers, who may issue regulations, decide to go ahead and do so, there is a question about how those regulations will be used. Are they to be advisory for regional schools commissioners? Will the regional schools commissioner be able to overrule what the regulations say about a coasting school? Will the regional schools commissioner be able to notify a school that it is coasting on the basis of his or her professional judgment, even though regulations do not indicate that it is? What happens if the Secretary of State has not made regulations? Will the regional schools commissioner be able to notify a school that it is coasting on the basis of his or her professional judgment?
Interestingly, since this morning’s proceedings, when we discussed the status of regional schools commissioners quite extensively and I predicted a problem because they were not properly set out in statute—the way they are selected is rather informal, like the bad old days of the quango state in the 1980s and 1990s when Ministers phoned their friends, members of the same club and so on to ask them to be the heads of various bodies—we have heard that one of the regional schools commissioners has been stood down. There are now not eight but seven in post. Will the Minister confirm that that is the case—I see that he is seeking inspiration as we speak—and shed some light on it? It is very pertinent to our discussion about the role of the regional schools commissioner in the regulations on coasting schools. What happens if all of a sudden they start falling like ninepins because they have not been through a rigorous, open and transparent selection process, but have been chosen at the whim of Ministers? We would be very grateful for any light that the Minister could shed on this breaking news from the Education and Adoption Bill Committee. We need to get this right and require Ministers to justify the final shape of the regulations to Parliament, hence the proposal for an affirmative resolution procedure.
Kevin Brennan
I am not surprised that my hon. Friend, with her usual copious research and command of detail, has spotted that. I am a big fan of the affirmative resolution procedure. I am not going to say that in every case the previous Government applied it as vigorously as they should have—I have made that point before—but I am a big fan of the affirmative resolution procedure because it is important that Parliament should scrutinise the Executive closely. It is something that you have done assiduously yourself, Mr Chope, on many a Friday and on other days of the week. It is important that we have the opportunity to debate these matters and have an enjoyable discussion, as we are having now, on the detail of Government policy. On that basis, I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Mr Gibb
Clause 1 creates a new category of schools eligible for intervention, as we discussed this morning—coasting schools. Clause 1 also gives the Secretary of State power to make regulations defining schools deemed to be coasting and therefore eligible for intervention. We have provided the Committee with draft regulations setting out our proposed definitions. Amendments 73, 74, and 79 relate to the process by which the Secretary of State will make these regulations.
Amendment 73 seeks to go further than the power provided by clause 1, by placing a duty on the Secretary of State to make regulations setting out the definition of “coasting”. As I said in my intervention on the hon. Member for Cardiff West, the amendment is unnecessary. We have already said that we will make such regulations, and we have provided an indicative set of regulations to show precisely how we intend to use this power and give the opportunity for the details of those indicative regulations to be debated in Committee.
Amendment 74 seeks to restrict the number of times that regulations can be changed, so that they can be amended only once in any 12-month period. We intend to keep substantive revisions of the regulations to a minimum. The published draft sets out long-term definitions for both primary and secondary schools, based on reliable metrics. Schools need clarity and certainty about the circumstances in which they would be judged to be coasting. Making frequent substantive changes to the regulations would create confusion and an unnecessary workload for teachers, something we are trying to tackle with great energy at the moment.
It is important that the Secretary of State retains flexibility to amend the regulations in future if necessary. If we were to alter the coasting definition or make smaller, technical changes, the most sensible point to do so would be as the relevant performance data are published. Since primary and secondary data are published separately at different times, it could be necessary to alter the regulations twice in any one year to give schools clarity on the relevant coasting level as soon as possible. The amendment would therefore be too inflexible, leading to primary schools having to wait until secondary results were published before finding out their coasting level. However, as I said, we intend there to be some stability in the definition of coasting schools.
Amendment 79 seeks to make the regulations subject to the affirmative procedure, and so require parliamentary debate before the regulations are laid for the first time and before any subsequent amendments to them are made. The negative procedure is in keeping with much delegated legislation on education, and I see no reason to adopt the approach in the amendment. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley gave some examples of education regulations that are subject to the affirmative procedure, but that is not consistently the case. For example, section 94(1) of the Education and Schools Act 2008 permits the Secretary of State to make regulations to prescribe the standards that independent schools must meet to be registered; the negative procedure applies to those regulations.
I have already set out plans for further public consultation on the draft regulations. Any future changes would also be subject to wide and comprehensive public consultation. The negative procedure provides the House with the opportunity to pray against amended regulations, something that I am sure the hon. Member for Cardiff West has done in the past, as I have. That leads to a debate in which any serious concerns can be discussed.
The negative procedure therefore provides the necessary flexibility that is appropriate for regulations of this kind while retaining an opportunity for debate whenever hon. Members feel that necessary.
Kevin Brennan
Will the Minister confirm—this was one of my questions—whether a school can be notified that it is coasting if the regulations have not been made? Or do the regulations have to be made before a school can be notified?
Mr Gibb
Proposed new section 60B(2) of the 2006 Act makes it clear that if “coasting” is to be defined, it will be defined in regulation:
“The Secretary of State may by regulations define what ‘coasting’ means in relation to a school for the purposes of subsection (1).”
Subsection (1) of the proposed new section deals with whether a maintained school is eligible for intervention. So unless the word is defined in regulation, the regional schools commissioner will not have the power contained in the 2006 Act—in all those different sections; 60, 60B and so on—to intervene in such schools.
If, as suggested by the hon. Gentleman, the Government tried to define “coasting” in guidance or letters, that definition would not take effect for the purposes of the clause and would not give the regional schools commissioner the power to intervene if the school was eligible for intervention.
Kevin Brennan
Will the regional schools commissioner be able to notify a school that it is coasting in his or her professional judgment, even though the regulations indicate that it is not coasting? In other words, after the regulations are laid, is it possible for regional schools commissioners to exercise a judgment based on their professional beliefs, or do they have to rely on regulations in order to deem a school to be coasting?
Mr Gibb
If the regional schools commissioner wants the powers that are available in the 2006 Act that apply when a school is eligible for intervention, a definition of coasting other than that which is in the regulations will not be sufficient. However, the regional schools commissioner may well feel, based on his experience and the experience of the headteacher board, that a certain school is causing concern, which may trigger an informal intervention with the school. We will be issuing for consultation revised guidance on schools that are causing concern.
However, we rely on regional schools commissioners to use their experience and therefore on the headteacher boards to talk to schools when they have a concern. If they want to use a specific power in the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the school has to fall into one of the following categories—first, a failing school, secondly, a school that has received a warning notice but has not met the conditions in it, or a coasting school. The school has to fall within one of those definitions for RSCs to be able to use the intervention power.
I hope that I have reassured the hon. Gentleman and that he will now be able to withdraw the amendments.
Kevin Brennan
I am disappointed that I did not think about tabling an amendment in relation to regional schools commissioners that are causing concern, given the breaking news that we heard earlier, to which the Minister did not refer in his response. Perhaps he needs a little bit more time to do so and by the end of our discussion of this clause we can have some more information, because it is entirely pertinent to the issues that we have under discussion. I think that the Committee ought to be told what is going on in relation to regional schools commissioners and why we hear today that one of them has either stood down or been stood down—I am not quite sure which it is and what the detail is. Perhaps the Minister will be able to tell us more very shortly.
Mr Gibb
Just to put the hon. Gentleman out of his misery, the regional schools commissioner to whom he is referring, has not stood down, but has resigned through his own choice. These people are very talented and we are very grateful to Paul Smith for the energy and enthusiasm that he has brought to his role. His contribution has been greatly valued. We will be advertising for a replacement, but people of his experience and talent are sought after in the educational world. I suspect that many of our regional schools commissioners will be approached by all kinds of educational institutions because of their ability and talent. I hope that that will not happen, but on this occasion it has happened and we are very grateful for the tremendous work that Mr Smith has carried out over the last period.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Schools Minister for his response, and I apologise. I did not realise that there was a distinction between standing down and resigning, but obviously there is. It is a subtle distinction that is lost on me, but I am sure that we will hear some more about why he stood down at some point in the near future. I congratulate Mr Smith if he has been poached by some other employer for his great talent. It is a wonderful thing if that is the case, although the timing seems a bit odd, while we are completing the Committee stage of the Bill, where we are discussing all these matters. As the Minister pointed out earlier, this is a very new system and regional schools commissioners have been in place for a very short period of time. However, if it is the case, as the Minister has intimated, that Mr Smith has been headhunted and offered a higher job elsewhere, we should all congratulate him on that. If there is any other reason behind his leaving his post, I am sure that we will find out what it is in due course.
Kevin Brennan
Amendment 75 would require the Secretary of State, in framing regulations that define coasting schools, to use international experience in defining coasting schools.
Amendment 76 would require specific factors to be included in the regulations that define a coasting school. Amendment 80 aims to ensure that any official statistics in the definition of a coasting school are used in a statistically correct manner—a recurring theme of the Committee’s discussions—and would provide for a report to be submitted to Parliament confirming that that is the case. It would also require a draft of the regulations defining coasting schools to be approved by each House of Parliament.
Ministers are usually keen to make international comparisons, particularly in relation to the far east and jurisdictions such as the state of Singapore and the city of Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China. The Minister for Schools will have read the recent blog from the Institute of Education, which addresses the broad issue of how areas such as Shanghai, Singapore and Hong Kong are moving away from the categorisation of schools simply according to academic results. The blog says:
“Whilst the systems of Shanghai and Singapore previously used public league tables to rank schools, these have been abandoned in favour of a more supportive and developmental role…In Hong Kong, Territory-wide System Assessments, as part of the accountability mechanism, is meant to inform policy and school improvement rather than make comparisons.”
I commend this article. I am not going to read the whole thing, but it makes interesting observations about the changes that have been happening in places such as Singapore in recent years, which seem to contradict some of the categorisation of their approach that Ministers have outlined in recent years.
Much has been made of the need to base policy on best practice from around the world. Ministers need to be able to tell us which jurisdictions, if any, operate the kind of system that they are advocating here. Which jurisdictions operate the system based on a rather crude categorisation of schools according to their results, and on intervention that is based not on support and improvement, but on allocating blame and imposing structural changes including—preferably, from the Minister’s viewpoint—academisation?
The Institute of Education at University College London recently established a unit to study the far eastern educational superpowers, as we might call them. The Government have a great interest in that work. The unit is staffed by Professor Paul Morris and Dr Christine Han, both of whom have spent a long time in the far east studying and helping develop school systems. We know about the Minister’s love of international comparisons. During the passage of the Education Act 2011, we debated the subject many times in relation to, for example, standards in qualifications and participation in international surveys. Professor Morris and Dr Han have written about coasting schools and what can be learnt from international best practice. We would like to know where school systems like the one proposed in the Bill are used.
Amendment 76 would ensure that many factors are taken into account before a judgment is made about whether a school can be identified as coasting. For example, I think we all agree that statistical data are much less valid in a small school. Most obviously, the current draft criteria seem to make it almost impossible for a grammar school to be found to be coasting—rather difficult to believe, but that would appear to be the case—and much more likely that a secondary modern school in a grammar system would be found to be coasting, which seems to defeat the object. How many grammar schools does the Schools Minister expect to be coasting, under his definition? I assume that he has made some kind of assessment of how many are likely to fall into that category.
The nature of the challenge faced by a school as a result of its intake needs to be taken into account. Pupils with significant SEN are likely to make less than average progress. We know that and we debated it a little bit this morning. For example, the data for a primary school with a SEN specialism unit will be seriously affected as those pupils will be a significant proportion of the school roll. To what extent is that taken into account?
It is established that, statistically, pupils from more challenging socioeconomic backgrounds tend to make slower progress. We can discuss, as we did a little bit this morning, how we try to tackle that statistical reality. Nevertheless, it still features in our debate about the definition of a coasting school. The judgment on a school should not just be data-driven. There should be a requirement to seek professional advice about the quality of the school’s work beyond pure data.
Amendment 80 would ensure that any official statistics in the definition of a coasting school are used in a statistically correct manner. We should all welcome and support that. It would also ensure that a report is submitted to Parliament confirming that that is the case. The amendment would require a draft of the regulations defining coasting schools to be approved by each House of Parliament. We have had substantial discussions about statistics, and more independent assessment of the way in which the Department for Education uses statistics would be very welcome. An amendment to ensure that official statistics in the definition of a coasting school are used in a statistically correct manner would be helpful to everyone—Ministers, Opposition Members, parents, governors, schools commissioners, pupils and local authorities—concerned with the running of a school and concerned about a coasting school in their area. I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response. If he does not accept the amendment, what steps will he take to ensure that any statistics are used in a statistically correct manner?
Mr Gibb
Amendments 75, 76 and 80 apply to clause 1, which introduces new provisions to allow the Secretary of State to identify schools that are coasting, so that regional schools commissioners—all seven of them—can provide them with the challenge and the support they need to improve.
A coasting school is one that does not consistently ensure that children fulfil their potential. If we are to ensure that every child receives the best possible start in life, we should give regional schools commissioners the power to intervene so that these schools improve and offer a higher quality education to their pupils.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. It is always a combination of standards and structures. Structures do help. They give autonomy to professionals, they improve accountability, and they allow the types of intervention that are set out in the Bill and that were legislated for in 2006 by the then Labour Government. We have to do that together with a standards agenda, which is why we have rewritten the primary curriculum. There is now a much more rigorous and demanding curriculum for maths, English and science. That is why we have reformed GCSEs and A-levels to ensure that they are more demanding, and that they start to deliver the kind of education that employers and colleges demand. The hon. Gentleman is right that we need a combination of both. The Bill deals with the structural side of the reform programme, but we certainly need to do both and we cannot rely on only one or the other.
International benchmarks are valuable because they allow us to compare the performance of our education system as a whole with those in other jurisdictions. They are less suitable for underpinning comparisons of individual institutions between countries. PISA and other international benchmarking assessments are based on a sample approach. They would therefore be inappropriate for school-level accountability, including identifying individual schools that are coasting or failing. While international comparisons should continue to inform our expectations for young people and guide our reforms, as they have done, the amendment would require the Secretary of State to take an unworkable and inappropriate approach to the use of international evidence.
Amendment 76 seeks to require the regulations defining coasting schools to include other factors, such as the number of pupils in a school and their socioeconomic background.
Kevin Brennan
I am sorry to stop the Minister just as he was starting on amendment 76. Has he based his proposals on the approaches taken to coasting schools in any of the jurisdictions he admires?
Mr Gibb
Some other jurisdictions use performance data to evaluate school performance, but we are not aware of a definition of “coasting” in use internationally that could be used as the amendment proposes. Relatively few education systems internationally have the quality of reliable performance data in the public domain that we have in this country.
Amendment 76 would require the regulations defining coasting schools to include other factors, such as the number of pupils in a school and their socioeconomic background. Some of those factors are relevant when reaching a considered assessment about whether to intervene and what action to take, and that is what regional schools commissioners will do.
Although schools will not be identified as coasting until 2016, the Department already uses discretion and takes additional contextual school data into account when making decisions about school improvement. For example, Morgan’s Vale and Woodfalls Church of England voluntary-aided primary school in Wiltshire applied to convert as a stand-alone academy. It was due to open in September 2013 but its key stage 2 results fell by 10 percentage points. As our policy is to allow only schools that are performing well to convert without a sponsor, we looked carefully at the school’s circumstances before deciding whether to allow it to open as an academy. It is a small school with fewer than 90 children on roll, and only 12 pupils took the test in 2013. The Department recognised that each child’s performance would have a significant impact with such a small cohort. Given that context and that the school had a track record of performing above the national average in previous years, Ministers at the time decided to allow the school to convert. In 2014, 100% of pupils achieved level 4 or above at key stage 2.
While many of the factors proposed in the amendment are ones that regional schools commissioners will take into account when deciding what action to take for a coasting school, it would not be appropriate to specify them all in the regulations that define coasting. It is important that the definition of coasting is simple, transparent and based on established, published performance data, so that schools and others can easily identify whether they are coasting and understand the basis for determining that.
I am reminded of our debate this morning about schools in leafy suburbs and whether the attainment level is appropriate for pupils of those schools. In particular, the hon. Member for Hyndburn referred to the 85% attainment level. However, only a small proportion of primary schools would fall into the category above 85%. Only 16% of schools currently have 85% or more of their pupils achieving the new, higher expectation of an equivalent of level 4b. When we add to that the fact that a school needs to achieve that for three years, it becomes a very small proportion.
We want all pupils to reach the level of attainment that makes them ready for secondary school. We therefore make no apology for having an attainment level, because we want to push the level up so that more—in fact, all—pupils are ready for secondary school when they leave primary school.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I am grateful to the Minister for raising that point. Will he explain what he intends to do for the 16%, or thereabouts, of schools that are above the 85% threshold?
Mr Gibb
It will be less than 16% because we have to take into account the three-year requirement. As my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South pointed out, other tools can be used to ensure that those schools are performing well, one of which is Ofsted. Ofsted is quick to point out in its judgments when schools are not delivering for every ability range, which can lead a school to go into special measures despite having high attainment levels.
Amendment 80 would require a certificate from the UK Statistics Authority each time regulations are made, to certify that statistics have been used correctly. The data published in performance tables have been used for many years to assess schools’ performance and hold schools to account for the outcomes that they achieve. Those are the data we have used for many years to set the floor standards that determine when schools are failing to achieve our minimum expectations, and the data used by Ofsted in inspections and by schools to evaluate their own performance relative to others and to identify areas for improvement. The data are classified as official statistics and published in official statistical first releases every year. The DFE is currently working towards the designation of the data as national statistics. That is the highest quality mark that the UKSA can give official statistics. I am, therefore, very clear that the data we will use to define coasting schools are robust and independently verified. In light of that and the other arguments I have made, I hope the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Kevin Brennan
That was interesting. We have discovered that, in bringing forward the proposals on coasting schools in clause 1, the Minister does not have any international model or comparisons in mind. He told us that, although other jurisdictions use data, he could not name one that took this approach towards coasting schools. That tells us that the Government are carrying out something of an experiment. It is not based on previous experiences elsewhere. Somebody always has to be first but, when embarking on an experiment with schools that will have an impact—one hopes, a positive impact, as the Minister intends—on the education of young people, it is wise and better to pilot it properly. That is especially so if it is a groundbreaking experiment that has no international example to call upon. At least amendment 75 has drawn out that fact; that this is a completely new approach that is not based on the high-achieving jurisdictions that Ministers are often keen to cite as evidence in support of their approach to education policy. That has been helpful.
In relation to data, no one doubts that these are official statistics; we understand that. It is not the raw data that count but how they are processed. We have seen that time and again during our discussions. What counts is the way data are contextualised and processed. That is why we called for a check on that from the body set up to verify statistics independently and appropriately by Government, namely the independent UK Statistics Authority. It might have been appropriate for the processed data rather than raw data to be subject to some stamp of approval from the UK Statistics Authority to ensure that the actions being taken are justified by the statistics. I will not press the amendment to a vote at this stage, but it has been a significant feature of our discussions.
We have also learned a little more from the Minister. We now have seven people holding the very important position of RSC. As our deliberations on the Bill progress, they expose the need for further scrutiny and transparency about the actions and work of regional schools commissioners. At this stage, in order to proceed and get on to the clause stand part debate, although there are many issues that we have not discussed, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
As we have discussed, the clause enables the Secretary of State via the regional schools commissioners to identify schools that are coasting, and gives her and the relevant local authority power to intervene in those schools when necessary. The Government’s manifesto was clear that, as well as moving more swiftly to tackle failure, a commitment to every child receiving a good education means that we must also tackle those schools that have been coasting.
The principles behind our coasting definition have been clear. We want to capture those schools where data show that over a three-year period they are failing to provide an acceptable level of education. Clause 1 would give us a regulation-making power allowing the Secretary of State to set out precisely what criteria sit behind the principles. The Committee has been able to consider the draft regulations in detail, but this debate has been helpful in reiterating some key points.
First, the draft regulations will not identify any school as coasting until after a school has performance results for 2014, 2015 and 2016. In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s question about the number of grammar schools which fall into the definition, it is very difficult until we have the 2016 results.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for referring back to that point. That almost seems to suggest that a school with a large unit of this kind is almost certainly to be categorised as “coasting” because of the rigid nature of the assessment. Does the Minister see how dispiriting it might be for a school that is doing work with children with special educational needs to find that it is deemed to be coasting due to the rather rigid definition in the regulations?
Mr Gibb
We want all pupils, regardless of their background or any special educational need, to do as well as possible. That is why it is important for the regional schools commissioner to look at the standard of SEN education as well as non-SEN education being delivered to pupils. So I do not apologise that a school with a large SEN unit will perhaps fall within the definition of coasting. Remember that the definition is based on prior attainment, and a school that takes a child with low prior attainment and manages to deliver a high-quality education will see very good progress levels recorded in their metrics.
Clause 1 provides that, once a school has fallen within the “coasting” definition and the Secretary of State has notified it, it will be eligible for intervention. We have been clear however that, unlike failing schools, in which intervention will be automatic and from day one, coasting schools will be given the opportunity to demonstrate that they can improve sufficiently.
Regional schools commissioners will take into account the context of the school—as I have just said with regard to schools with large SEN units—and will look at its capacity to improve sufficiently before deciding what support or intervention may be necessary. Some coasting schools may have the capacity to improve and, where this is the case, they should be given the opportunity to improve. Other coasting schools may require additional support and challenge from a national leader of education or a strong local school, but where a coasting school has no credible plan or is not improving sufficiently, the regional schools commissioner will be able to bring in an established academy sponsor.
Clause 1 reflects the Government’s commitment to social justice alongside other measures in the Bill. The clause should ensure that schools improve and children get the education that they deserve. I therefore move that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kevin Brennan
To reiterate what I said on the first group of amendments, we do not have a problem with the concept of trying to deal with coasting schools and schools that, although superficially doing well, are not meeting the needs of all their pupils in as effective a way as they can. There is a laudable aim behind what the Government are trying to do. The clause seems deceptively brief and simple, but it raises a series of issues that go to the heart of why there are flaws in the Government’s approach to improving coasting schools and schools more generally.
At the heart of the approach, I am sorry to say, there is a degree of political posturing. It seems that Ministers can, by legislating at the stroke of a pen, transform thousands of schools because they have a unique insight into what needs to be done. It seems that they have an insight that the tens of thousands of heads, teachers, parents, governors and others involved in the schools have for some reason never discovered.
Before we go into the detail of the muddle that is in the clause, it is useful to stand back and look at the fundamentals of the approach. We have already heard in debates on the amendments that the most effective school systems internationally are realising that the simplistic approach to ranking schools in order to praise some and blame others has had its day. We see that in Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Such approaches have had a part to play, but a lesson is emerging from the highest performing jurisdictions in Asia that perhaps times have moved on.
Nor do such effective systems agonise about school structures in the way that we seem to in this country as we try out different forms of governance. They get on with the fundamental task. The point that we have always made, which is at the heart of any attempt to improve our school system, is that we should try to improve the quality of teaching, learning and leadership within our schools. In other words, we need to design the systems to support teachers, rather than continually blame them. We need to focus on helping teachers to learn how to improve what they do.
I am afraid that we have been subject in recent years to the big man theory of education reform, which is that a great person will come along and transform everything. I prefer what I like to call the Sir David Brailsford approach to improvement. He was the coach of the very successful UK cycling team in the Olympics. He brought about that wonderful success through the accumulation of marginal gains over a period of time, and through understanding that we get improvement by tweaking what is wrong and improving the quality of staff and resources that are used to bring about improvement.
It is politically beguiling for Ministers to be able to claim to have transformed our schools system at the stroke of a pen, but it does not work that way. We all know it. Ministers in their heart of hearts know it. Certainly anybody who has ever worked in education and has been at the frontline in a classroom knows that improvements come about over a period of time. All the mantras and sloganising about instantly transforming schools overnight is a little misleading. We need quality leadership, quality local authorities and quality academy sponsors, and we need to work on developing those together, in partnership. That is the way forward.
It is instructive to look back at the coasting schools initiative started by our party at the latter end of the Labour Government, in 2008-09. No one can deny that some schools achieve well but do not do well enough. That is why we signalled our support for doing something about this, and we were in the process of doing so. The broad definition back then was that coasting schools had an intake that did not fulfil its earlier promise and could achieve more. We probably share some common ground with the Minister on that.
However, the current approach seems to have departed from that insight and is rather rigid. We thought that identification of coasting schools was better done by those who were close to the schools, which is why we wanted local authorities to be involved, taking into account local factors and individual circumstances. We heard earlier about schools with a large special educational needs unit. That should surely be taken into account in some way, shape or form before a “coasting” judgment is made, given the negative impact that the judgment could have if it is not justified.
Our proposals recognise that many factors can affect a school’s raw data. The word “coasting” is not always a fair description of a school with relatively high attainment but below-average progression. It cannot be a one-size-fits-all strategy, and that is why we asked local authorities to get involved in identifying schools appropriately. Such an approach is very different from the simple data-driven exercise that seems to be at the heart of the regulations. It will be interesting to see how the consultation that the Minister outlined pans out over coming months.
It has been suggested that the Government’s criteria will constitute guidance to regional schools commissioners—seven of whom, as we heard, are left out of the eight—rather than being applied automatically. We heard something about that from the Minister, but if it is the case, each commissioner will be asked to make judgments about several thousand schools, of which they can hardly have a detailed knowledge. We are concerned about regional schools commissioners’ capacity to carry out those functions.
When we were in government, we selected criteria that would support the identification of schools to which the definition “coasting” might reasonably apply. The Government seem, at least initially, to have selected criteria that are almost perfectly designed to miss the very schools that they say they are targeting. When the “coasting” definition is first introduced, any secondary school with an attainment level of above 60% for the GCSE measure will be exempt, even if they should be getting 80%. Why are they exempt at the beginning of the process? If it is so urgent for us to get this right from day one, why are those schools exempt? Would it not mean that they were coasting if they got 60% but should be getting 80%? Any primary school getting 85% of students to level 4 will be exempt, even if they should be getting 95% and lots of level 5s. Why? If that is the case, does it not mean that the school is coasting?
As far as progress measures are concerned, we know from research—my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley raised this issue earlier—that pupils starting at a lower level make slower progress, even when they are taught in the same school as pupils starting at a higher level. The Government’s measures, as outlined, will lead to the identification of schools with challenging intakes and will let off other schools with more favourable intakes, at least at the beginning.
Mr Gibb
Some schools in “leafy” suburbs will meet the “coasting” definition, and some that are not in “leafy” suburbs will be above the “coasting” level. But many, many schools in “leafy” suburbs, which seem to be the hon. Gentleman’s main concern, will fall within the definition of “coasting” schools, notwithstanding the attainment levels of 60% for secondary schools and 85% for primary schools.
Kevin Brennan
Well, we will see. By the way, “leafy suburbs” is not my phrase; that is the phrase of the Secretary of State. It is hardly fair of the Minister to describe it as my “main concern”, since I am quoting the Secretary of State.
Kevin Brennan
Of course, it is perfectly possible for a small school or a school of any size to be coasting. The problem is that if we define coasting simply in terms of data, we know that data can be skewed when there is a smaller sample. It commonly happens that a relatively small difference, for example in the nature of the intake, can make a big difference in smaller schools to the result of an Ofsted inspection or the coasting regulation. The hon. Lady is right that any school might be in that category and we need a little more subtlety in the way in which we apply the data.
There is also the question, which we have discussed elsewhere, of what will happen to coasting academies. It remains to be seen where all the experts, heads and sponsors are to be found. More importantly, nowhere in the Government’s proposals is there any analysis of what will actually change in classrooms. Our concern was to focus on learning outcomes and approaches, rather than simply on structures. It was a serious attempt to address how to improve teachers and teaching and how to motivate and encourage pupils—and to have some resources to match that.
The initiative’s intention is laudable, but the execution is flawed. It is based on the Government’s view that change in structure is all that is needed. We do not think it will identify the right schools. We do not think it offers a proper analysis of why schools might be coasting or many useful suggestions about ways in which schools might be improved, other than the inevitable desire to force them to be academised.
Much of the Bill is less about action and more about seeming to act. Out in the real world it will make precious little difference, except to contribute more to the disillusionment that is so widespread in our schools, unless there is a better definition of coasting. I will quote Laura McInerney of Schools Week, who states that,
“if you truly want to find the real coasting schools then you wouldn’t begin with a definition, as is currently proposed until 2018, which protects those schools above a certain GCSE threshold. Instead, you would go after schools that have high GCSE pass rates and very low progress rates, just like the Labour plan suggested in 2008”.
Why have Ministers chosen to take this approach rather than an alternative approach, which truly would have identified those schools that the Secretary of State said she wanted to identify?
Mr Gibb
Let me briefly address some of the hon. Gentleman’s points. On “coasting” and “outstanding” schools, Ofsted’s judgments are a snapshot at any one given moment, whereas the definition of coasting takes into account three years of figures, so there will be discrepancies because of that, particularly if the Ofsted inspection took place some time ago.
Kevin Brennan
Ofsted’s judgments may be a snapshot, but are they not supposed to take into account all the data that are available?
Mr Gibb
Yes, and the data two or three years ago may be very different. It is only over three years that the definition of coasting kicks in and the school may have been below the level of coasting for two of those years, but Ofsted will not have regarded it as coasting, because it felt that there was capacity to improve, although in the third year the school failed to improve sufficiently to be taken out of the definition. As the definition of coasting permeates the education system, I think we will find that more and more people will take it into account as part of their analysis of data, when this type of analysis of schools is conducted.
The hon. Gentleman talked about the 60% attainment level not being fair, because it will exclude schools in affluent areas that have poor progress from the definition of coasting. We could have taken the approach of retrospectively applying the progress 8 measure to the years 2015 and 2014, but we felt that was not the right approach in assessing and applying the definition of coasting. By 2018, three years of progress 8 data will be available to regional schools commissioners, of whom, by the way, there are still eight, notwithstanding my tongue-in-cheek comment about there being seven, because Paul Smith does not leave office until December 2015 at the very earliest. In 2018, there will be three years of data but we felt that it would be wrong to retrospectively apply that.
Mr Gibb
The Bill is intended to improve the overall quality of education received by children in England, and to improve the efficiency of adoption services. Clause 14 sets out consequential omissions to legislation as a result of the amendments made by the Bill. Those omissions are to three Acts: the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which was known as the ASCL Act to the irritation of the Association of School and College Leaders; the Education Act 2011; and the Children and Families Act 2014.
The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 includes a schedule that adds a subsection to the Education and Inspections Act 2006 relating to local authority powers to appoint additional governors where a school is eligible for intervention. This Bill removes that subsection. Consequently, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act will now be changed because it has redundant provisions. The same schedule applies to the definition of “working day” in part 4 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which relates to intervention powers of the local authority and the Secretary of State. As the Bill removes the “working day” definition, it should likewise be removed from schedule 13 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act.
The second Act that requires changes is the Education Act 2011, which makes amendments to the power in the Education and Inspections Act 2006 for the Secretary of State to direct a local authority to give a performance standard and safety warning notice. It also inserts a new section into the Academies Act 2010, concerning consultation on academy conversion. It is necessary to remove these sections from the Education Act 2011 as the Bill removes the changes it makes to other Acts.
Finally, the Children and Families Act 2014 inserts a section into the Adoption and Children Act 2002 concerning the recruitment, assessment and approval of prospective adopters. As that section is removed by the Bill, it is necessary to remove this section from the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The changes are technical but they are required to avoid confusion.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 14 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 15
Transitional, saving and consequential provision
Kevin Brennan
I beg to move amendment 64, in clause 15, page 9, leave out lines 17 and 18.
This amendment removes the power to amend primary legislation without recourse to a new Act of Parliament.
Kevin Brennan
Amendments 64 and 65 would empower the Secretary of State to make orders by statutory instrument consequential to the provisions of the Bill. Clause 15 specifically allows an order to make changes to previous primary legislation. This does require affirmative resolutions, and other orders are subject to the negative resolution procedure. Implementing the legislation through clause 15 includes a Henry VIII provision to amend other primary legislation, and with these amendments we are probing the Government’s thoughts on that.
Mr Gibb
Clause 15 gives the Secretary of State the power to “amend, repeal or revoke” any existing legislation—including legislation made in this session—through secondary legislation, where changes are needed as a consequence of any provision of the Bill. Amendments 64 and 65 seek to remove this provision. Such powers of amendment are not unusual. For instance, they exist in the Education Act 2005 and the Education and Inspections Act 2006, both of which were passed by the previous Labour Government. They allow us to make changes to existing legislation that will be consequential to the new Act once it has Royal Assent. This will be necessary if, for instance, definitions in existing statute no longer make sense, or if a new legal provision makes existing law redundant. As I said, the Department has already identified some technical amendments to current legislation that will be needed as a result of the passage of the Bill.
The Committee will see that there is a complex chain of interactions between different pieces of education legislation. We want to ensure that we can identify other similar consequential changes that are necessary. The provisions that the hon. Gentleman seeks to remove enable this approach. Given these explanations, I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West will be prepared to withdraw his amendments.
Kevin Brennan
It is always worth pausing when there are Henry VIII-type provisions within a Bill. However, having heard the Minister’s explanation of the Government’s intent, it is not my intention to press these amendments to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 16
Extent
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
With your permission, Mr Chope, I would like to consider clauses 16, 17 and 18 together. These are technical clauses which set out when the provisions in the Bill will come into force, their extent and the title by which the Act will be known, subject to Royal Assent. Clause 16 provides that the Bill applies to England and Wales only. As hon. Members will be aware, England and Wales are a single legal jurisdiction. However, as the explanatory notes set out, the provisions of the Bill apply only to schools and local authorities in England, as education is devolved to Wales. It will be for the Welsh Government to take a decision to apply these new provisions in Wales. The Bill does not apply to Scotland and Northern Ireland, which have their own legal jurisdictions. They legislate for themselves upon educational matters.
Clause 17 provides for the commencement of the Bill, subject to Royal Assent. Clauses 1 to 14 will come into force on days appointed by the Secretary of State in commencement regulations. As we have discussed, the provisions for failing and coasting schools will come into effect at different times. No child should spend a single day in a school that is failing to provide an acceptable standard of education. For that reason, we will implement the provisions for failing schools as soon as possible after the Bill receives Royal Assent. For coasting schools, the draft regulations are clear that we will not identify any school as “coasting” until the 2016 results are available, and the relevant section will be commenced accordingly.
Clause 18 sets out that the Bill should be known as the Education and Adoption Act, should the Queen give her consent. That is considered to be a logical title. I therefore move that these clauses stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
Is not the hon. Lady aware that all the gentlemen whom she listed are following in the footsteps of philanthropists in the United States in giving large sums of money and large amounts of their time and experience to the public good to raise academic standards in academy chains? She should applaud those individuals, not criticise them.
Louise Haigh
I absolutely applaud philanthropic activity. If that is genuinely the motivation of those individuals, I will certainly pass that on. My concern is around the conflicts of interest that independent auditors and the National Audit Office have raised about the Education Funding Agency, and those that are clearly apparent among these institutions. I do not think it is inappropriate to ask, as the Select Committee report did last year, what processes the Minister has in place to guard against certain trusts being given preferential treatment if, as we expect, the Government refuse to allow independent scrutineers to judge for themselves.
The context is important and demonstrates that the oversight and accountability of academy chains are far from ideal. Of course, some of the concerns are about wider issues, but our interest, especially in the Bill, is primarily in ensuring high quality education for all our children. New clause 4 goes some way to address that specific point.
A couple of examples from the Institute of Education report show the consequences of the lack of accountability directly for the management and oversight of schools. One interviewee described a case where a headteacher had spent more than £50,000 on a one-day training course run by a friend. In another case, one executive head was also the member of the wider chain, meaning that the executive head could appoint the board, which would then undertake performance management on their own school. Although the report states that that is clearly not widespread practice, it highlights how crucial it is to have an independent assessment and judgement of academy chains, and that is exactly what the new clauses seek to do.
Mr Gibb
New clauses 2 and 4 relate to inspection arrangements for academy trusts and sponsors. I agree that it is important that multi-academy trusts, including those led by sponsors, are held to account for their performance. The main way in which this should be done is through the individual Ofsted inspections of schools within their chain. The funding agreement with the Secretary of State allows the Department to take action where Ofsted finds that individual academies within the chain are failing.
The Secretary of State and the chief inspector at Ofsted agreed the arrangements for focus inspections of multi-academy trusts earlier this year. The agreement set out that there was no need to extend Ofsted’s remit to provide them with additional powers to inspect multi-academy trusts. These arrangements enable the assessment by Ofsted of the overall performance of a multi-academy trust, including the contribution and role that the sponsor plays in supporting and leading the effective governance of the trust and the improvement of its schools.
The core of these inspections is based on the inspection of a group of individual academies governed by the trust. In addition, Ofsted can seek the views of all the academies under the trust on the support they receive and use any data and information that they have about the trust and its academies. Ofsted uses this information to reach a view about the overall quality of the support and governance that the trust provides to its academies.
We therefore recognise the importance of holding academy chains to account, which is why we published a statistical working paper in March 2015 putting forward new measures for multi-academy trust educational performance. We have undertaken to make access to information about multi-academy trust performance more transparent and easier to access. We will improve the performance tables to ensure that they allow access to information on overall multi-academy trusts. A cycle of inspections is under way and Ofsted has so far inspected four multi-academy trusts and published reports on three.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley is enamoured of new clause 4, which also proposes requiring the chief inspector to provide a report on the performance of the trust before the Secretary of State can enter into a funding agreement with it in respect of an additional sponsored academy. This is also unnecessary. The Secretary of State already subjects sponsors and their trusts to thorough scrutiny through the regional schools commissioners before they are approved to take on sponsored academies. They consider all new sponsor applications in their regions, approving those that demonstrate that they have the capacity and expertise to turn failing schools around.
Kevin Brennan
Given that I pointed out earlier that about 3% of applications were rejected and yet there was quite a failure rate following that, does the Minister agree that more could be done to identify suitable sponsors more accurately?
Mr Gibb
We are always looking for more sponsors of academy groups. The vast majority of sponsors to which the hon. Gentleman refers are existing schools that are graded good and outstanding by Ofsted, so they have a track record of high academic performance. It is not surprising that when those schools apply to become sponsors, they get through the system, because they have already shown an exemplary track record of delivering good quality education to their pupils.
Regional schools commissioners apply a rigorous assessment process, benefiting from the advice of the headteacher boards. That ensures that prospective sponsors have a strong track record in educational improvement and financial management and that their proposed trust has high quality leadership and appropriate governance. The majority of sponsors are high-performing schools, which have been subject to rigorous assessment by Ofsted.
After sponsors are approved, they remain under careful monitoring by the Department, which takes account of the trust’s capacity and track record in turning round the performance of academies, before allocating them to any new sponsored academies. Where academies are not making sufficient progress, this is challenged. Where it is clear that the trust is not improving the school, we will not hesitate to take action and re-broker it to another stronger trust.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West referred to the article by Warwick Mansell, in which he said that the DFE had published combined league tables of local authorities and academy chains and that the top 47 out of 50 were local authorities. He noted:
“That might not be a fair comparison”.
Mr Mansell’s claim is based on a partial reading of the statistics. Actually, that is exactly the accusation that the hon. Gentleman has laid at my door in these sittings—erroneously, I should add.
It is not surprising that there are many more local authorities than sponsors in the list, but there are only 20 academy chains in the analysis, compared with 100 local authorities. The working paper refers to two aspects of performance—current performance and improvements—and, on improvements, academy chains make up 10 of the top 50 slots. Given their relative numbers, they are disproportionately more likely to be among the top performers.
Kevin Brennan
I may have misheard the Minister, but I thought that he said that the proportions were 20 out of 100 and 10 out of 50. Does that not mean that the proportions are exactly the same?
Kevin Brennan
I think that the Minister said something different, but I understand his subsequent point so I will not press that any further. He did say, however, that I had said that that was perhaps not a fair comparison. Would it not be helpful if he sometimes said that about some of the comparisons he has regularly made, which have been criticised by the UK Statistics Authority?
Mr Gibb
As I said, the UK Statistics Authority was confident that what had been said by Ministers in the media and in the House was fine. When I have referred to the statistic about the improvement in sponsored academies over the past four years, I have compared that with the national improvement just to put that number into perspective. I have not claimed what the hon. Gentleman said I had about that figure, but a 6.4 percentage point improvement in schools’ GCSE results is stark compared with improvement of just over one percentage point in the system as a whole.
We are confident that the arrangements are effective and that they provide clear information about the effectiveness of the trust and enable appropriate decisions to be made in allocating sponsored academies. We are therefore clear that new clauses 2 and 4 are unnecessary.
Kevin Brennan
Before the Minister winds up, I know he says that it is unnecessary, but will he explain his philosophical objection to Ofsted inspection of academy sponsors?
Mr Gibb
The point is that they are being inspected by Ofsted, but through batched inspections of academies within a chain. It can also look at the quality of core services being provided by head office to those schools. It will look at the quality of the school improvement service and ask questions to the academies while it investigates the schools. On that basis, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the new clause.
Mr Gibb
On a point of order, Mr Chope. As we have reached the end of these proceedings, I thank you and Sir Alan for your careful chairing of these 12 sittings. When I say the figure 12, I am slightly hesitant now about whether I have got the mathematics right. It is all to do with adding back the denominator and the numerator when calculating what the denominator is. I shall stop digging and say that it has been a very good series of sittings. I thank all hon. Members on both sides for their attendance and their contributions. The hon. Member for Cardiff West persistently seeks examples of high performance, and I think it fair to say that the Committee has been an example of detailed and effective scrutiny of an important Bill.
I know from personal experience how much the burden of these debates falls on the Opposition, particularly on the Front-Bench speakers. Some 80 amendments were drafted by the Opposition and a staggering zero made it into the legislation. A less generous person might define that as a metric that should lead to special measures, but I think that it would be grossly unfair to regard either the hon. Member for Cardiff West or the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak as anything other than outstanding performers in this Committee. There was nothing coasting about any of the interventions by my hon. Friends or Opposition Members. I particularly thank both Whips—the hon. Member for Hyndburn and my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge—for keeping us all on track.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester for his efficiency in delivering in-flight refuelling, though on occasion, as just now, a little sooner would have been helpful. I thank both the Clerks and the Doorkeepers for managing the Committee. Last, but not least, I thank the officials from the Department, the lawyers and the Bill team who did so well in drafting the Bill that it leaves Committee as perfect as when it entered. Finally, I wish everyone a pleasant final week before heading off for a relaxing holiday and an intensive period in our constituencies over the summer Recess.
Kevin Brennan
Further to that point of order, Mr Chope, I thank the Minister for his very kind remarks. He is courteous, as always, and he knows what it is like to sit on this side of the House. I have to say that having a score of 0 out of 80 when you honestly could not have tried harder is probably the worst school report you could get. However, I am grateful that he leavened that assessment with his kind remarks and I sympathise with the few problems he had with his maths towards the latter stages of the Bill. Now he knows what it feels like when he goes round schools in the country testing children on their times tables as they wander innocently through the corridors. Perhaps he will have a little more sympathy for them in future if they stutter slightly at his now infamous testing when he goes around looking at schools, occasionally terrorising pupils—not intentionally, I am sure—by asking them to recite their times tables.
I, too, thank everyone whom the Minister thanked. I thank you, Mr Chope, and Sir Alan for your chairmanship of the Committee and for keeping us in order throughout our proceedings. I thank my hon. Friends, all of whom made a great contribution, especially my hon. Friends on the Front Bench. It takes a great deal of work to scrutinise a Bill in opposition and there is a degree of whipping as well as presenting of amendments to be done. I also thank the members of staff and volunteers, because in Opposition, as the Minister for Schools will know, we do not have the Rolls-Royce service of the civil servants available to us. I thank them for their contribution to our proceedings. We have to rely a little bit on our wits and on limited resources—rather like the schools commissioners—and also on volunteers in order to carry out our duties. I thank the volunteers who have helped us, and also the Clerks of the Committee, the doorkeepers, the police and everybody else who has helped our proceedings. I thank the members of the public who have attended and followed our proceedings from a distance for their kind interest. I also thank the witnesses who gave evidence in our oral proceedings, and those who have taken the trouble to submit written evidence, for which we have all been very grateful as it has helped us in our efforts to scrutinise the Bill.
The Minister said that the Bill was perfectly drafted, and it emerges from Committee unscathed. This is true, although it is not unusual in the Commons. It will be interesting to see what happens to the Bill as it progresses to Report after the summer recess, and then goes to another place. It may well be that some of the fruit that we have attempted to shake from the tree with our efforts here in Committee in the Commons may be picked up and bear further fruit in the other place at a later stage. When the Bill eventually returns to us, if it has not been amended on Report and Third Reading in the Commons, it may well be that their lordships in due course will come up with some suggestions as to how the Bill might be amended and improved. I hope that I have not forgotten anyone.
Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Kevin Brennan
I understand that you are not with us this afternoon, Sir Alan, so I take this opportunity to thank you for chairing our proceedings over the past few days. I speak for everyone when I say that we will all miss our get-togethers, but good things have to come to an end. Thank you for your fair chairmanship of our proceedings.
We now come to amendments 61 to 63, which relate to clause 12. Amendment 61 is designed to establish the implications of the clause where an academy agreement has already been made. Amendment 62 would require that any order revoking an academy order be made by a statutory instrument that has to be laid before Parliament. Amendment 63 is a probing amendment to see whether the existing mechanism for revoking orders that do not have to be made by statutory instrument applies.
Under section 4 of the Academies Act 2010, the Secretary of State has the power to make an academy order in two sets of circumstances: first, where an application for an academy order has been made in respect of the school, such as with a voluntary conversion; and, secondly, where the school is eligible for intervention within the meaning of part 4 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which has subsequently been amended.
The statutory guidance, “Schools causing concern”, makes it clear that conversion to sponsored academy status should be considered the normal means of improving a school where it has a history of sustained underperformance. Clause 12 inserts new section 5D into the 2010 Act. It allows the Secretary of State to revoke any academy order in relation to schools eligible for intervention. The explanatory notes give the example of a situation where the Secretary of State decides that it would be better to direct the local authority to close the school.
With amendment 61 we are probing on where, in the process of creating an academy, the power to revoke applies. Does it lapse when a funding agreement is signed, for example? That is not immediately obvious to us from the wording. If it does not lapse then, that radically undermines the position of academy trusts. If they have a seven-year contract, they might reasonably expect some clarity.
Given the implications of the clause and the potential for controversy, amendment 62 would require a statutory instrument to be laid, which could be prayed against. Would that not prove a useful safeguard in the circumstances?
We tabled amendment 63 to explore whether there are two bits of potentially contradictory legislation here. We look forward to the Minister’s explanation.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
May I add my thanks to you, Sir Alan, for your professional and courteous chairing of the Committee? I am sure you will miss our deliberations as we go into the summer recess.
Amendments 61, 62 and 63 relate to the power in clause 12 for the Secretary of State to revoke academy orders. The Bill strengthens the Secretary of State’s powers to turn around failing schools by bringing in sponsors with the necessary expertise to raise standards. The Bill simplifies the process of conversion and reduces opportunities for ideological obstruction, ensuring that the necessary improvements to schools are secured more quickly.
There will, however, be rare circumstances where an academy order needs to be revoked. As the hon. Gentleman said, clause 12 addresses that by inserting new section 5D into the 2010 Act. That will allow the Secretary of State to revoke any Academy order issued to a school that is eligible for intervention. The Bill requires the Secretary of State to make an academy order for every school judged “inadequate” by Ofsted. The vast majority of those schools will become sponsored academies as a result.
Under clause 1, other schools will become eligible for intervention because they are coasting or, under other provisions, have failed to comply with a warning notice. In those circumstances, the regional schools commissioners may decide that the best strategy to tackle underperformance is for the school to become a sponsored academy. Those schools will also be issued with an academy order.
There might, however, be a small number of exceptional cases where the Secretary of State decides not to pursue academy conversion after an academy order has been issued. A school may, for example, prove to be unviable because of falling pupil numbers. As the hon. Gentleman alluded to in his opening remarks, in those circumstances closure would be more appropriate. One such example was Wakefield Pathways school, which was judged to require special measures in November 2014. After undertaking our due diligence, and with agreement from the local authority, the Department decided not to pursue sponsored academisation. The school’s falling pupil numbers meant that it is not considered to be viable and the children will be supported to move to other schools.
There may be other examples in the future. There may be an instance where a school has gone from “outstanding” to “inadequate” due to a specific safeguarding concern but that issue has been quickly resolved. In such a case, the Secretary of State may not view academisation as in the interests of the school or its pupils. She would be able to revoke the automatic academy order using the power in Clause 12.
In amendment 61, the hon. Member for Cardiff West seeks to remove the power of the Secretary of State to revoke an academy order after a funding agreement has already been signed. I understand that this is a probing amendment, to see at which point the power lapses. We do not believe that the amendment is necessary. Once a funding agreement has been signed, the academy will open. It is important to have the power to revoke an academy order prior and up to the point of the funding agreement being signed and an academy opening, for the reasons I have set out; but it would make no sense to have a power to revoke the academy order after this point.
Amendment 62 would require any revocation of an academy order to be made by statutory instrument. This is an unnecessary complication. We anticipate that the Secretary of State will use her power to revoke an academy order only in a very small number of exceptional cases. For each of these cases, of which I have already provided examples, the case for revoking an academy order is clear and straightforward. This amendment could create unnecessary and costly delays when the Secretary of State has determined that a school should be closed because it is not viable.
Amendment 63 would remove the provision in clause 12 enabling the Secretary of State to revoke an academy order, on the basis that she already has other powers regarding revocation and variation of certain orders and directions under section 570 of the Education Act 1996. Given our aim of simplifying the streamlining of the processes for turning around underperforming schools, it is important that there is a clause contained within the Education and Adoption Bill that applies specifically to the revocation of academy orders. The Bill is clear that the Secretary of State has a duty to automatically make an academy order for every school judged “inadequate” by Ofsted. It is only right that it should also contain a power that relates specifically to academy orders and permits the Secretary of State, in the exceptional circumstances which I have described, to revoke an order. It is important that these processes are clear on the face of the Bill and available for exceptional circumstances as they occur.
In view of this I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel reassured and withdraw his amendment.
Kevin Brennan
Well, Sir Alan, we are all very grateful that you are protecting the interests of public decency at the same time as chairing our proceedings.
The Minister is right: these are probing amendments. We are trying to find out what the Government’s thinking is here and how far along the road this revocation could take place. He has given a further example to the one given in the explanatory notes. We would be interested in due course, perhaps, to hear about other circumstances in which a revocation order might be brought into play, but he has extended that in his remarks. I am not entirely clear until what point the power to revoke exists. I do not want to extend this into a clause stand part debate, but does the Minister have anything to add on whether the power to revoke exists only until the signing of the funding agreement? Unless he knows the answer now or I missed him saying it, I would be happy to hear it later.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful for that. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The clause gives the power to revoke an academy order made on the grounds that a school is eligible for intervention. The Bill is clear that the Secretary of State must make an academy order for every school judged “inadequate” by Ofsted. The vast majority of those schools will become sponsored academies as a result. There will be other schools that have become eligible for intervention through being a coasting school or failing to comply with a warning notice, for which becoming a sponsored academy is also the best way of bringing about sufficient improvement. They will therefore also be issued with academy orders.
There might, however, be a small number of exceptional cases where the Secretary of State decides not to progress with academy conversion. Such a case might, for example, be where a school is not considered viable and closure is appropriate, or where a school has gone from “outstanding” to “inadequate” only because of a specific safeguarding concern that has quickly been resolved, rather than concerns about leadership or standards, so the school does not need the additional support and leadership of a sponsor.
When an academy order is made for a school that is eligible for intervention, through the new sections of the 2010 Act inserted by the Bill, the governing body and local authority have a duty to facilitate the conversion and comply with directions given by the Secretary of State. Where the Secretary of State made an academy order in relation to a school that was eligible for intervention and has subsequently decided not to proceed to enter into academy arrangements, it is desirable that she provides certainty for all those involved by revoking the order and telling those involved that she has done so.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 1
Coasting schools
Kevin Brennan
I beg to move amendment 66, in clause 1, page 1, line 4, at end insert—
“(a) in subsection (1) after (c) insert—
“() an Academy”;
(b) ”
This amendment would include Academies in the definition of maintained school in Part 4 (Schools causing concern) of the Education and Inspections Act 2006.
Mr Gibb
I would hate the hon. Gentleman not to include the full findings from the UK Statistics Authority, because it did say:
“The Authority has reviewed these uses of the statistics and concluded that the comments made by Ministers on the Today programme and in the House of Commons did not misrepresent the statistics.”
Kevin Brennan
I am very grateful to the Minister for that clarification. I am sure that, in future, he will not imply a causal link. In time, perhaps we will see what the UK Statistics Authority makes of our exchanges. It is a timely reminder for us all to use statistics in the appropriate manner.
Currently, the only powers that Ministers have regarding academies are in their funding agreements. Given the way that funding agreements have changed over the years, there is no consistency in those powers. Some, but not all, mimic the language of the 2006 Act.
Coasting is not mentioned anywhere in funding agreements because the concept is only being introduced through this Bill and is not applicable to academies. It is not clear how the Minister’s right to intervene in coasting schools, under his proposed definition or any other, can be applied to an academy. The model funding agreement echoes the 2006 Act. It does not echo the Bill. No reasonable reader would imagine that the coasting provisions could be read into the existing funding agreements.
It seems that the Minister has a choice. He could accept our amendment, which would bring academies within the scope of the Bill, or he could renegotiate several thousand individual funding agreements to ensure that coasting academies do not escape the scrutiny and intervention that he thinks is so vitally important—not because they are maintained schools, but because coasting educational establishments have an impact and an effect on children.
A wider issue is the use of private law to manage academies that are causing concern. Becoming “of concern” is a private contract law matter between the Secretary of State and the academy trust, but public law is used to identify, support, manage and improve provision in maintained schools that are causing concern. The Government should be asked why they do not want to bring academies causing concern into public law. Under the coalition Government, certain academy matters were brought into public law, when they were faced with the reality of managing a public education service by contract law—the situation that we are rapidly moving towards.
There are several examples. One of the most important is special education provision in the Children and Families Act 2014. An academy trust had shown it did not have to admit a pupil with what was then called a statement of special educational needs. Another is pupil admissions in the Education Act 2011. The Minister and I both served on the Bill Committee for that. We argued very strongly for and achieved direct power of the school adjudicator over admission arrangements. That was a welcome development. There are several minor examples such as infant free school meals in the 2014 Act. Can the Minister explain why he wishes to use inflexible private contract law to manage academies causing concern when by amending the Bill we could make matters much more straightforward?
Amendment 67 is about pupil referral units or alternative provision, as they are often now called. They are similarly not covered by the 2006 Act. This applies to both local authority maintained schools and to alternative provision academies. There does not seem to be any particularly good reason why alternative provision should be outside the terms of the Bill, given that the units are increasingly taking on the characteristics of schools with their own governance and financial arrangements. In this respect the scene is very different to that in 2006. At that time, pupil referral units were usually fully controlled units of the local authority rather than autonomous schools. However, the criteria currently proposed would of course be entirely inappropriate for pupil referral units, so if they are to be included, there would need to be a significant rethink on definitions and criteria. The Bill presents an opportunity to address this anomaly and this amendment is to probe further the Government’s thinking on this matter.
Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
May I add my thanks for your excellent chairmanship during these proceedings, Sir Alan. I rise in support of amendment 66 in the name of my hon. Friends. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State outlined the intention that,
“No child should have to put up with receiving an education that is anything less than good”,
before going on to say that,
“The measures in the Bill are designed to speed up the process by which underperforming schools are transformed”.—[Official Report, 22 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 638.]
Clause 1 specifies, however, that only a maintained school can fall under the proposed coasting regulations and, as we know, there is no provision whatever about transforming failing academies and failing academy chains, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West has already made clear. Indeed, under one of the measures of coasting—below 60% of pupils achieving grade A* to C at GCSE—the figures from the DFE performance tables are revealing.
The number of academies and free schools not meeting the 60% benchmark has almost trebled in the past three years, whereas the number of maintained schools failing to meet it has halved. They now very nearly match each other, with the number of maintained schools missing the benchmark falling from 1,445 to 854 and academies rising from 214 to 558. I appreciate that this is just one benchmark of the new coasting definition, but it is telling that the Government have chosen to focus their new performance measures entirely on maintained schools when, under their own terms, there is a clear issue with academies, and failing academies in particular, especially given that there were proportionally more inadequate academies than maintained schools as of April 2015. Further, and finally, as my hon. Friend mentioned, Opposition Members have serious concerns that this Bill will, yet again, leave academies free of direct parliamentary scrutiny, to be dealt with via private contract law behind closed doors. We hope that this amendment will go at least some way to increasing the scrutiny of academies and will allow standards to be raised for all schools.
Mr Gibb
The provisions in clauses 2 to 12 will allow us to tackle failing schools more swiftly. They build on the success of the academies programme established by Lord Adonis and expanded by the coalition Government, and this approach has contributed to a dramatic improvement in standards—over a million more children are now in “good” or “outstanding” schools than in 2010. Those measures will accelerate the process of intervention in failing schools by removing bureaucratic obstacles and making it more difficult for ideology to stand in the way of necessary improvements.
However, our commitment to social justice means that we need to go further. If we are to ensure that every child, regardless of background, receives the high-quality education to which they are entitled, we cannot settle for tackling failure only once it has arisen.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
On a point that I raised during the evidence sessions, the Minister talks about progress 8 measurements, but will he go on the record and tell us where an assessment of parental contribution is included in the measurement of coasting schools? The issue of coasting schools in my region is largely in affluent areas and relates to the work that parents do that substitutes for the work of teachers. Will he address that point?
Mr Gibb
It is my view that the background of a child and the support, or lack of support, from parents should be irrelevant. The school should be helping children, regardless of their circumstances. So if a child does not have support from parents when they attend school, the expectation is that the school will make up that help. That is the purpose of the pupil premium. This is significant extra funding— £1,300 for every child in a primary school, nearly £1,000 for every child in a secondary school—because we are determined that, whatever the background or ability of a child, they should get the best education possible. That is the core social-justice objective behind all our school reforms for the past five years.
Graham Jones
The Minister refers to the pupil premium, so we gravitate back to deprived areas, not affluent areas. In affluent areas, some children will receive the pupil premium, but far fewer. In some cases, it will be next to none or none. I am talking about affluent areas where the pupil premium is negligible. What about schools in those areas that do not receive the pupil premium and where the work of teachers is being substituted by the efforts of parents at home? How do we make an assessment of those two pillars of a child’s education?
Mr Gibb
Children from more deprived backgrounds attending those schools will also be expected to achieve well. That is why we are using a progress measure so that the school will benefit from helping those children to achieve well, regardless of their starting point. The metrics will reflect the support given to those children. The new metrics, which move away from focusing on the C/D borderline, or the level 4c/3a borderline in primary schools, will give schools in affluent areas more incentive to help children who start school at a low level than the previous metrics, which have been in place for a number of years.
Graham Jones
It strikes me that we do not have any measure of tiger mums or tiger dads in all this. They play a crucial role in a child’s education, complementary to the education system, the school and the teachers. Where that effort is being made by tiger mums and tiger dads, how do we measure a coasting school?
Mr Gibb
No one should criticise parents for taking an interest in their children—we should be encouraging it throughout the population. The more children are read to by parents in their early years and throughout their childhood, the more effective readers those children will be in later life. It is a good thing for parents to support their child’s education, and we need to encourage rather than penalise that. I think that the hon. Gentleman is trying to say that schools may actually be coasting, but the metrics and the performance of that school may not reflect that fact because it is masked by the help that parents give to children at home. [Interruption.] That is a valid point, but if the metrics show that all the children at that school are—by hook or by crook—achieving the expected level or beyond by the time they leave primary or secondary school, then that is a good thing.
We are worried that pupils are not progressing to their maximum potential. If the schools to which the hon Gentleman referred are not delivering a high level of achievement for those pupils who do have support from home, then that will be revealed in the progress measures. If a child starts primary school at age four or secondary school at age 11 with a high level of attainment because they have had support from their parents and the school is not adding value beyond the help that they already had before starting at that school, that will be reflected in the progress measures, both progress 8 and the progress measure at primary school.
Graham Jones
The Minister draws on a point that was raised in the evidence session, which was the accelerant or social gradient that occurs in most affluent communities. He talks about measuring from the beginning to the end and seeing an improvement, and otherwise a school will be defined as coasting. However, we heard in the first evidence session that there is an accelerant in this. There is a social gradient, in which affluent kids bound onwards. Their educational improvement is not just linear but actually accelerates. Therefore, there will still be a problem in measuring the level of improvement for those children.
Mr Gibb
I will have to think further on what the hon. Gentleman says. I remain confident that the progress measure will reflect a lack of progress by pupils, at whatever speed and whichever point during their school career they make or fail to make the progress that they should be making, given their starting point. I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about Rebecca Allen’s evidence in our first evidence session. She said that in non-affluent areas there might be a disincentive for schools to recruit high-ability teachers. She felt that those schools were unfairly penalised by the metrics that we used, and we were therefore compounding the problems that those schools faced by making it difficult for them to attract highly able teachers. The argument against her viewpoint is, of course, that you cannot have lower expectations for schools in more deprived areas than for schools in leafy suburbs. That is why we are determined to tackle coasting schools using the same metrics in more deprived areas as in affluent areas. We expect every child to receive the same quality of education as a child in a leafy suburb, regardless of their background.
Kevin Brennan
I am sure that we will also discuss many of these points later in the clause stand part debate. What did the Minister mean when he said earlier that the level of parental support should be irrelevant—I think that was the word he used—because of the pupil premium? Is he really suggesting that a payment of £1,320 could compensate for a lack of parental support at home for pupils attending school?
Mr Gibb
We want it to be irrelevant. Of course, it is not irrelevant so far as the child is concerned. Supportive parents who encourage the children to do their homework and to read, who read to their children and take them to museums and theatres and around the country on trips, will of course all impact on the child’s education and ability to learn. However, if we want an education system that is needs-blind and tries to remedy all the problems that a child may face as a result of their background, we need to have very high expectations of every school, regardless of where it is situated and regardless of its intake. That has been the drive behind many of the education reforms implemented over the past five years, and behind the concept of the pupil premium.
The reason for the pupil premium is to provide extra funding for schools that face the challenges that the hon. Member for Hyndburn described. That is why significant sums of money totalling £2.5 billion a year have been allocated to schools, particularly to schools serving deprived areas. We want very high levels of expectation in schools.
I can take Opposition Members to schools that serve challenging areas and deliver the education that we want for every child in this country. They are managing to do it. I admit that they are fewer in number than we would like, but the Government’s ambition is to expand the number of schools that deliver high-quality education in areas of deprivation so that every single child reaches the expected level or beyond. Given that it can happen— for example, at the King Solomon Academy or the Ark Priory primary school in London—I do not see any argument, whether from Rebecca Allen or from the hon. Member for Hyndburn, that cannot be countermanded by those examples. We believe strongly that every school in every area is capable of delivering the high-quality education that we see in the best schools in the country.
Steve McCabe
If the pupil premium is the chosen means for compensating for the difficulties or deprivation that some children suffer, how concerned is the Minister that the National Audit Office has said that there is no evidence that the pupil premium is having any meaningful impact on achievement? The NAO is deeply concerned about how ineffectively it has been spent in some areas.
Mr Gibb
Of course I am concerned about those conclusions. The pupil premium enables schools to adopt approaches that will ensure that every child progresses and achieves the level of education that we all want. However, it is also a matter of what happens in schools. Combined with the pupil premium, we have policies, for example, on phonics—the most effective way of teaching children to read—that evidence from around the world and from this country shows are effective. We are looking at evidence about how to teach children mathematics. We have had teacher exchanges between Shanghai and this country. Shanghai is three years ahead in mathematics achievements for 15-year-olds. We are looking at methods that bring about results. In the Shanghai approach, every child achieves what they call “mastery”. They manage to achieve the same level of fluency as the brightest children in the class, and we want to bring that approach to the United Kingdom. It costs money, of course, but it is not just money; it is also approaches.
Steve McCabe
Sir Alan, I really want to hear more about Shanghai, but will the Minister explain the point about the pupil premium first? Perhaps we can come to Shanghai later. He said that the pupil premium was the instrument he was using to compensate for these concerns. What about the fact that the NAO says that there is no evidence that it is doing what the Minister claims?
Mr Gibb
Well, we want to ensure that schools have the resources to enable them to tackle poor performance among children from poorer backgrounds. We want to help those children to achieve as much as, if not more than, children from leafy suburbs. It is a matter not simply of resources but of the approach to education. We have established the Education Endowment Fund, which is looking at methods and bringing evidence-based approaches into our education system so that we can see what is effective in helping children to achieve most effectively. So it is not a one-club approach. It is a multi-club approach that looks at the best ways to deliver education to help all children.
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is now up to the governing body to look into the effectiveness of the pupil premium and to report on how it is being spent? It needs to analyse what effect it has on the achievement of the children who get the pupil premium and the school as a whole.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend is right to describe her experience in Portsmouth. One requirement of the 2012 School Information Regulations, introduced by the previous coalition Government, is that schools state how they have spent the pupil premium and how effective they have been in raising educational standards for eligible children.
I shall move on to explain the definition of “coasting” for the purposes of clause 1. I have already set out the situation for secondary schools for 2016 onwards. I now want to set out the position for primary schools for 2016 onwards. For a school to be identified as “coasting”, it has to fall below both the attainment level and the progress measure. In 2016 the attainment threshold will be 85% of pupils meeting the new expected standard in reading, writing and maths. The progress measure will be calculated by comparing the results of pupils with similar starting points.
The key measures incorporated into both the primary and secondary coasting definitions will be introduced from 2016, giving schools time to prepare for the new arrangements. It will, therefore, be in 2018 that each school has three years of data reflecting those metrics. It is important, though, that we do not wait until 2018 to tackle coasting schools, so the draft regulations include interim measures for 2014 and 2015 data that reflect current accountability measures.
That approach will allow regional schools commissioners to begin identifying coasting schools from 2016 on the basis of three years’ data. In 2014 and 2015 only, a secondary school will be below the coasting level if under 60% of pupils achieve five or more A* to C grades, including English and maths, at GCSE; and if the percentage of pupils making expected progress is below the national median. We are not applying progress data retrospectively because that would be unfair for schools that have made curriculum choices that were reasonable for the accountability regime applying at the time of their choice.
A primary school will be below the coasting level if under 85% of pupils achieve level 4 in reading, writing and mathematics, and if the percentage of pupils making expected progress is below the national median.
Clause 1(3) would require the Secretary of State to notify a school when it is deemed to be coasting and, therefore, eligible for intervention. Once a school falls within the coasting definition, regional schools commissioners will consider whether the school has the capacity to secure the necessary improvements without formal intervention. In some cases, the school’s own leadership, perhaps a recently appointed head, may demonstrate that it has an effective plan to raise standards without significant external support. In other cases, more support will be necessary.
Coasting schools will have the opportunity to work with national leaders of education or stronger schools and other relevant experts to improve their performance. Where appropriate, the regional schools commissioners will use formal powers of intervention, including the new power in clause 4 to require the school to enter into arrangements such as collaboration with another school, or entering into a contract with another organisation to receive advice. Finally, clause 1 would also give regional schools commissioners the power to make an academy order in respect of a coasting school.
An explanatory statement sent to the Committee last week was clear that we will consult further on the definition of coasting, as the Bill progresses through Parliament and before regulations are finalised. That wider consultation will build on the discussions that we have already had with key organisations, many of which the hon. Member for Cardiff West listed as having an interest in the issue and submitting written evidence, including the Association of School and College Leaders, the NAHT, Ofsted, the National Secular Society and the Catholic Education Service.
Amendment 66 seeks to apply the statutory framework for defining coasting maintained schools to academies. Underperformance should not be tolerated in any school, whether maintained or an academy. There are now 5,043 open academies and free schools, the vast majority of which are successful, despite what the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley said. In the small number of cases where we have had concerns about the performance of an academy, free school or sponsor, we have taken swift action to require improvements. Since 2010, we have issued 108 formal warning and pre-warning notices. Where it is clear that the capacity to make necessary changes does not exist, we will make new sponsor arrangements, as we have done in 75 cases.
Chatham grammar school for boys is one school that has benefited from a change of sponsor initiated by the Department. In June 2013, Ofsted deemed the school inadequate, and it was transferred to Rochester grammar school’s Thinking Schools Academy Trust. Its new sponsor, Rochester grammar school, is an outstanding school that is in the top 1% for attainment nationally. Its executive principal, Denise Shepherd, is a national leader of education. When Chatham grammar school for boys was re-inspected in September 2014, Ofsted found it to be good and commented:
“The executive principal provides exceptional leadership. Her swift actions to address inadequate teaching and leadership have resulted in rapid and sustainable improvements.”
A further example of the Department acting quickly to address performance issues is Minerva academy in Paddington, which was judged to require improvement by Ofsted in January 2014. We had concerns that the sponsor did not have the capacity to bring about sufficient improvement. It was therefore arranged for the school to move to a new sponsor—REAch2 Academy Trust—in September 2014. At a monitoring inspection in March 2015, Ofsted commented:
“The REAch 2 trust has provided the school with extensive challenge and support.”
It said that
“the academy trust acted quickly to review how effective the school was in its work with pupils and parents. They identified where the school was in its journey towards becoming a good school and in tackling the areas that required improvement…the trust, the local transition board, leaders and staff have a sharp understanding of where the school is and what is necessary to improve the school.”
Ofsted continued:
“The comparison between pupils’ books from last academic year and this year is striking…Senior leaders have focused quickly on eradicating any inadequate teaching. This has been achieved and pupils across the school are making faster progress, as a result.”
Steve McCabe
Is there a cost for this commendable action whereby the Minister intervenes to switch sponsors for a school that has been lumbered with an inadequate sponsor? Some contractual arrangements must presumably change as a result of the switch. What is the average estimated cost, and who picks up the bill?
Mr Gibb
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman on the figures in a moment, but I want first to talk about the powers to intervene.
As my noble Friend Lord Nash made clear when he gave evidence to the Committee, we will be just as rigorous in identifying academies that fall within our coasting definition as we will be in the case of maintained schools. Just as I have outlined for maintained schools, any academy that falls within the coasting definition will be challenged and required to demonstrate that it can improve sufficiently or face further action.
John Pugh
The Minister describes commendable vigilance by the Department or heads of academy chains, but there will come a day when academies are perfectly standard, with lots of them right across the country. They may even form the larger proportion of the educational system. He is setting up a regime for identifying coasting schools, and he needs to make it future-proof. Is it not a very weak scheme if the only future-proof element is relying on the vigilance of future Ministers—Ministers who may not belong to his party and on whom he may not be able to rely to be vigilant?
The Minister must have a view on what will happen come the day when the majority of schools in this country are academies, some of which will be coasting. Do we not need an automatic trigger to indicate to the Department and other interested parties when things are not going as they should? To rely on the personal intervention of the Minister, Department or academy chain itself is a very weak system.
Mr Gibb
I do not agree, because we have established a network of regional schools commissioners. There are eight regional schools commissioners spread throughout England and they are supported with advice from local headteacher boards. That is the mechanism through which the Secretary of State and her Ministers can ensure that we are addressing failure in the academy system. The system is designed to address failure, not to intervene in success. Where schools and academies are successful, we do not want regional schools commissioners to intervene; we want to allow the devolution of power to the frontline, to teachers and headteachers.
John Pugh
I accept the Minister’s point; my own is simply this. In the Bill, there is an automatic trigger whereby one can identify coasting schools and address them in a particular way. Academies have no such automatic trigger. In terms of future-proofing the Bill, whether it be the schools commissioners, the academy chain or the Minister who have to act on the coasting element in academy chains or academies, there does not seem to be provision to avoid any lackadaisical approach by any of those parties. If they are not vigilant—and that is the only thing that the Bill in its current form relies upon—academies will coast and the intervention will not happen.
Mr Gibb
There are several points there. When one is dealing with a state education system one needs the elected officials to be vigilant—whether at local authority or national level. That is inherent in our democratic structure. If people are misguided enough to elect a Government in which Ministers are not vigilant, people have the right—as Nick Ridley famously said—to vote for unemployment. In a democracy, people have the right to vote for inadequate Ministers. I say that they ought not to do that; they ought to vote Conservative at every election to ensure that that will not be the case, but people in a democracy have that right and we see the consequences around the world.
On a more serious point, we will be updating the funding agreement to contain a comparable clause that defines the coasting definition. Of course, as the hon. Member for Cardiff West says, we cannot rewrite all 5,000 funding agreements, or however many there are. The way the system has worked is that those funding agreements have gone through an iteration process, so that when they are renegotiated and renewed, and when new schools obtain funding agreements, they will always be required to adopt the latest draft. Even before those provisions in the funding agreement, regional schools commissioners are very vigilant. They were appointed on the basis that they would be vigilant in identifying and tackling underperformance. They will now be guided by the definition of coasting in the way that they assess underperformance in the academy schools.
Kevin Brennan
Does the Minister recognise that accepting cases where academies have to be brought within public law provision shows that, in a system where more and more schools become academies, relying only on funding agreements is a completely inadequate approach? It was all very well when academies had targeted intervention with a limited number of schools, but when the majority of secondary schools have become academised, as they are now, it starts to look inadequate. That is why the Government have had to accept some provision of public law over academies.
Mr Gibb
I do not accept that. We now have more than 1 million pupils in good and outstanding schools, compared with 2010. Much of that was a consequence of the academies programme: 60% of secondary schools and an increasing proportion of primary schools are now academies. That is why we have a situation in which so many schools are now good schools. I am just trying to find the proportion of school academies that are rated “good” and “outstanding”—I will come back to that in a moment. However, as hon. Members are aware, academies are charitable companies. They operate in accordance with the terms of the funding agreements between the trusts and the Secretary of State. This was a regulatory regime that the last Labour Government established. The contractual funding agreement between the academy trusts and the Secretary of State includes a clear, formal framework for action where there are concerns about the performance of an academy. We have demonstrated that we will take—and are taking—these steps. Given this separate robust framework, it is unnecessary and inappropriate to apply the statutory regulations to academies, as Opposition Members propose.
We want the academies regime to be as similar as possible to the regime that applies to independent schools, with the exception that, under the funding agreement, the academies are funded by the taxpayer and are therefore free to parents and pupils. We want professional autonomy for headteachers and teachers. That is a key feature of the academies programme and has been successful in ensuring that we now have more than 1 million pupils in good and outstanding schools in this country.
Kevin Brennan
Thank you, Sir Alan. Of course I will follow your guidance. I am sure that we will manage to get through with your help and assistance.
I notice that in the Minister’s response to this group of amendments, he departed somewhat from the promise he made last week to adopt a one-in, one-out policy when mentioning the performance of schools. I am afraid that when he did mention the performance of an academy school, we did not get a similarly balanced response, highlighting a high-performing maintained school, although I mildly teased him about naming a maintained school that, in fact, was an academy.
I hope that the Minister instructs his officials to give him plenty of briefing material on high-performing maintained schools because that matters. It sends a signal to teachers, pupils, parents, communities and so on that Ministers care about it when their schools do well. It sends the message that Ministers think it is important, significant and should be celebrated, whatever kind of publicly funded school it is. Whether it is a maintained school or an academy, achievement needs to be celebrated equally, particularly as there are many examples, as the statistics have shown.
We can argue about the exact nature of the performance of the two different sectors, but there are many examples of great performance from schools in the maintained sector, as there are from academy schools. We should hold that achievement on an equal basis and be even-handed. I am happy and pleased to celebrate the performance of any school that is doing well by its pupils, whatever its structure. I hope that the Minister agrees with me.
Mr Gibb
I totally agree with the hon. Gentleman. In September, I will write to every primary school in the country that gets 100% of its pupils through the phonic check that ensures that those children are reading fluently. I will also write to every primary school, regardless of whether they are an academy or a maintained school, where more than 95% of pupils achieve well in the phonic check.
Kevin Brennan
Any praise that is equally and fairly distributed to schools for their performance will be most welcomed, I am sure, by everybody concerned.
Earlier, I indicated that amendments 67 and 77 really just probe the Government’s thinking. I think that the Minister understood that. It is not our intention to divide the Committee on those amendments. However, we remain concerned that there is not really a credible explanation of the way forward in relation to how academies will be included in the new regime of coasting schools. An opportunity has been missed to ensure that we have a robust system that would be applicable to all schools, regardless of status.
The Minister said that we need an education system that is needs-blind. I agree with that. We also need an education system that is, in a sense, structurally blind to the type of school that we are talking about. If a school is deemed to be eligible for intervention because it falls under the coasting regulations—we will argue later about whether the definitions are right—that eligibility should apply to all publicly funded schools.
Although the Minister said that he wants academies to be regulated as private schools are, there is one huge difference between academy schools and private schools: academy schools are funded by public money. We have to ensure that taxpayers’ money is being equally well scrutinised and spent on education in one form of taxpayer-funded school as in another.
In the absence of a credible explanation of how the coasting schools definition will apply and be enforced in relation to academies, and given that the Minister has admitted that it is impossible to amend the thousands of funding agreements for academies to achieve that, and that we have already brought academies into the public law system where there have been issues in the past, I will ask my hon. Friends to support a vote on amendment 66.
Question put, That the amendment be made:
Mr Gibb
May I take the hon. Gentleman back to amendment 72? His amendment says that there should be a delay of two calendar years between an academy order being issued and a funding agreement being entered into. Is he saying that we should wait two years before we take action? Is the Labour party not as impatient about improving standards as we are on the Government side? Is two years, as far as he is concerned, an adequate and sufficiently short period of time in which a school can languish as a coasting school before action is taken?
Kevin Brennan
Yes, indeed. My hon. Friend is right. It seems to me that it is important to understand what parents think about local schools and why it is that parents might choose to send their children to schools other than the one in their local area. It would give a bit more contextual information that could be useful for school improvement, a positive purpose. I wonder whether the Minister has considered this approach; it was something that was mentioned in our 21st century schools document some time ago. I should be grateful for the Minister’s response on that.
Mr Gibb
Amendments 68 to 72 and 78 all relate to how the Secretary of State will notify a school that it is being considered to be coasting. Clause 1 would insert proposed new section 60B into the Education and Inspections Act 2006. This provides that where a school has met the definition of coasting and the relevant regional schools commissioner acting on behalf of the Secretary of State has notified the governing body of that school that it is considered to be coasting, then the school will be eligible for intervention. The Bill takes the power for the Secretary of State to convert all coasting schools into academies. We are fulfilling the manifesto pledge to ensure that all failing and coasting schools become academies, unless of course the regional schools commissioner is convinced that the school has the ability to turn itself around so that it is no longer coasting.
Graham Jones
The Minister refers to all coasting schools. However, in my experience and drawing on my past comments, I do not believe that all coasting schools will fall under this remit or fall foul of the guidelines and regulations, because they are themselves subjective. These are the Government’s regulations and the Government’s definition of what it means to be coasting. I must place it on the record that this is a subjective measure, and some schools in affluent areas where there are excellent parents will be coasting. It is to my disappointment that those schools will probably not cross the Minister’s desk.
Mr Gibb
I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that there are some schools in affluent areas where the attainment level is so high that they will not fall within the definition of coasting. His argument is of course that those children have high attainment because of their parental and family backgrounds. However, this will be caught in due course, particularly at secondary level when the only measure to define a coasting school will be the progress measure.
Graham Jones
The Minister’s answer is illuminating. He says that this will eventually be caught at secondary school level. Surely that is unacceptable, and those children should also be given the best education at primary school level. Primary schools that are coasting should be caught too, because early years education is fundamental. We should not have to rely on coasting schools being caught at secondary school level. It seems to me that the Minister has highlighted a flaw in his own argument.
Mr Gibb
At primary school we have an attainment level as well as a progress measure. The attainment level is 85% of pupils at the school achieving the expected level in reading, writing and maths. That is a very high level of attainment, and in due course that level can be raised. We spent the previous Parliament tackling failing schools. As a result of measures that were regarded by many Opposition Members as controversial, centralising and draconian, 60% of secondary schools and a rising percentage of primary schools are now academies. More than a million pupils are now in “good” or “outstanding” schools as a consequence of that policy. In this Parliament we are continuing that remorseless tackling of failure. That is why the Bill brings in an automatic academy order in the case of a school in special measures.
We are also now turning our attention to coasting schools, which is a development of what happened in the previous Parliament. We are taking it a stage further. As a first stage we have an attainment level of 85% and a measure of progress, so that schools with lower attainment but very significant progress will not fall within the definition. If the hon. Member for Hyndburn wants to press us to have an even more rigorous definition of coasting—and I hope he will respond to the consultation measure—we are always happy to be pushed to do more faster when it comes to tackling failure and underperformance in our schools. We felt that this was a fair definition, with a very high level of attainment in the first instance.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that although Labour members of the Committee have mentioned the Conservative party manifesto, this is but one measure in a package with which the Conservative party aims to drive up standards and improve schools? Other measures such as fairer funding will also help in this area. Fairer funding for our schools in Dorset will certainly be a welcome measure as part of a package.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend never misses an opportunity to advocate on behalf of his constituency. He did it within days of arriving in this place and he continues to do it, arguing for fairer funding for those local authorities which, for historic reasons, have an unfair system. In fact, I am surrounded by hon. Members who continue to make this point, which has not failed to register with me and with the Secretary of State.
Graham Jones
The Minister rightly makes a clear distinction between primary and secondary schools. Secondary schools have larger catchment areas, are under greater scrutiny and are more likely to be identified as coasting. He draws on the issue of primary schools and I concur with his comments. I am deeply concerned that this is an issue about deprivation when, actually, it should be about schools in affluent areas. That is where coasting occurs and the Bill should be targeted at affluent areas where coasting schools exist. There are smaller schools, primary schools with small intakes in affluent areas, where the parents are doing the bulk of the work and the teachers, in some cases, are not stretching themselves and stretching the middle-class, or more wealthy, affluent pupils. I want the Minister to focus on that. He is right to say that the greatest problem of coasting may occur at primary school level in affluent areas. Let us move away from deprivation and focus on affluence, because coasting primarily occurs in affluent areas, in my experience.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. These are issues we have addressed and considered. A step-by-step approach is needed to tackle under- performance in our schools. We tackled failure in the last Parliament; we continue to tackle failure in this Parliament. We now have a definition of coasting for primary schools that includes attainment, but it is a very high level of attainment: 85% is a high measure of attainment in reading, writing and maths, combined with a progress measure. We think that that is the right approach for now.
Of course, we are always open to people responding to the consultation process, but our focus has been and remains on areas of deprivation. If Members are as concerned as we are—and I do not doubt that the hon. Member for Hyndburn is—about social justice and ensuring that young people from deprived areas get the best education possible, they will accept that it is necessary to focus the resources of the Department on areas of deprivation. That has been and remains our focus, but we are also open to hearing responses to the consultation process.
Graham Jones
My view is that we should be stretching all children—those in deprived areas as well as those in affluent areas.
Mr Gibb
I do not disagree: that is why we are looking at the progress measure of schools in affluent as well as more deprived areas. Regional schools commissioners will be looking at all schools where there is under- performance—we are determined to tackle coasting schools wherever they occur.
Mrs Drummond
Does the Minister agree that we also have Ofsted? If we do not pick this up through the regional schools commissioners, Ofsted will be there to pick up on schools in more affluent areas, as it is already doing.
Kevin Brennan
It is good that having abandoned the foxhunting vote, the Government are now moving on to skinning cats.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman, as always, makes a pithy intervention. The hon. Member for Hyndburn makes the very valid point that we have to address coasting schools and failure wherever they exist, but my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South is also right to say that we can use tools other than the definition of coasting to tackle underperformance. There are other measures that help schools deal with underperformance that do not always use the accountability regime but show how good schools around the country are delivering high standards of education. They include using synthetic phonics approaches to teach reading, Shanghai maths or a knowledge-based curriculum. Those measures and our other reforms to the curriculum and the examination system are all designed to raise standards right across the board.
Amendments 68, 69 and 70 would require the Secretary of State to specify in regulations exactly how and when she will make the notification. They would also add several procedural requirements to the notification process.
The measures that we have used in the definition of coasting are objective and transparent; they are not, as the hon. Member for Hyndburn said—or it may have been the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak—subjective. As the Secretary of State set out on Second Reading, the coasting definition is based on several principles. First, it is based on pupil performance data, not a single Ofsted judgment. Secondly, it takes into account the progress pupils make and whether they achieve their potential based on their starting point. Finally, it will be based on performance over three years—identifying schools that have been coasting for a period of time—rather than on the basis of a single set of results. The coasting definition is therefore based on data with which schools will already be familiar, and which headteachers and governors will already be monitoring each year. Schools will be able to assess for themselves whether they meet the coasting definition and most coasting schools are likely to identify that they meet the definition as soon as they receive their assessment or GCSE results, even before they receive notification from the relevant regional schools commissioner.
The regional schools commissioner’s notification to a school is the beginning of a process. Where headteachers and governors have an effective plan to ensure sufficient improvement, they will be given the time and space to do so. Only where the capacity to improve sufficiently is not evident will the regional schools commissioner require the school to accept additional support. Academisation with a sponsor will not be the right decision for every coasting school and some will have the capacity to bring about sufficient improvement themselves so that they are no longer coasting and need no further intervention.
Once schools have been notified that they are coasting, they will be allowed time to develop an improvement plan and to discuss it with the regional schools commissioner. If the regional schools commissioner agrees that the plan is likely to deliver improvements in academic standards, they will be allowed time to implement it. We will publish a new version of the statutory guidance on schools causing concern for consultation, reflecting the changes in the Bill and setting out how regional schools commissioners will exercise their discretion to support schools and decide when further intervention is necessary. Where appropriate, regional schools commissioners may signpost coasting schools to sources of school improvement support such as national leaders of education or the NAHT’s Aspire programme.
Amendment 69 proposes that the advice of Ofsted should be provided together with the advice of regional schools commissioners to governing bodies of schools that are considered coasting. The coasting definition is based on data, not Ofsted judgments. Ofsted judgments will of course remain significant for other purposes, as my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South said. They will determine when a school is failing and help to identify where other interventions may be necessary. Regional schools commissioners will want to consider recent Ofsted findings when deciding what action may be needed in a coasting school. In my view, amendments 68, 69 and 70 are therefore unnecessary.
Amendment 71 would require the governing body to notify parents when a school is deemed to be coasting. It would also require the Secretary of State to convene a meeting with parents to explain the implications.
The coasting definition uses performance data that the Department publishes. Parents are able therefore to monitor a school’s performance and challenge it if they are concerned that it is not performing well enough or that it meets the definition of coasting. Where a school is taking action to raise standards, it will want to engage staff and parents in discussions. We do not believe that it is necessary to include this requirement in legislation or require the regional schools commissioner to convene meetings directly. Schools should have the flexibility to engage with parents in the way most suitable to their circumstances. There is no requirement for local authorities or the Secretary of State to interact with parents in this way when schools become eligible for intervention via any other route under current legislation or elsewhere in the Bill.
I take the point that the hon. Member for Cardiff West raised about the importance of parental involvement. Parents have a very important role to play: they hold school leaders and governing bodies to account locally for what the school is doing to ensure that it makes progress. They challenge headteachers and governors where they do not think that enough is being done. As I said, performance data are available, so they can be used to hold schools to account. Schools will want to engage parents locally in their actions to bring about improvements. We believe that it is right for schools to make that decision about how and when to consult parents and that it is not a matter for legislation.
Kevin Brennan
One could observe that the last example is not a very good one, because in the case of London, the elected Mayor would cover all three of the regional schools commissioners that the Minister said were responsible for parts of London. However, I accept his point about his intentions for areas that should be covered by regional schools commissioners.
The issue of accountability will inevitably return. History shows us that Ministers being responsible for appointing officials with a great deal of influence and power is not ultimately an effective or appropriate way to run public services. We found that in the 1980s and 1990s with the quango-isation of a lot of the state. Appointing people to positions of great influence and power with command over public resources simply through a phone call from the Minister to someone they happen to know, have met down the club or think are particularly good is not a sustainable system in the longer term.
I accept that the system that the Minister has set up is new. However, with the powerful positions that he is creating outside statute, simply by virtue of their being appointed by the Secretary of State in a not terribly transparent manner, accountability will have to be more than accountability to a group of academy heads. Having said that, the amendments are probing, so I do not intend to press them to a vote.
We did not hear much from the Minister about the status of the White Paper from 2010. Will he respond to my points in writing?
Mr Gibb
I apologise for omitting that. The commitment in the schools White Paper was to consult on local authorities’ role in school improvement when they do not have any maintained schools left. As yet, there are no local authorities where all maintained schools have become academies, so there has been no need to consult in the way set out in “The Importance of Teaching” White Paper. We continue to consider the important evolutionary role of local authorities. We will consult on how the role has changed in the statutory guidance on schools causing concern, and discuss that with local authorities at a national and local level.
Kevin Brennan
I thank the Minister for that. It is helpful to know that the matter is still under consideration and that the White Paper commitment has not been completely wiped out as a result of subsequent changes. I will certainly reflect on his comments, which I welcome.
I would also like the Minister to consider my point about the role of parent councils. We feel that parents are largely missing from the Bill. They have been referred to as more of a hindrance than a help to the educational system, and he needs to reflect on that.
On academisation, there is likely to be a rapid expansion as a result of the Bill. Although the Minister said that the Government were implementing the manifesto commitment, that commitment appeared to be an assumption of automatic academisation of coasting schools. I welcome the fact that, according to the Minister’s remarks, that is not his plan. There are real concerns about the system’s capacity to deal with a rapid increase in the number of schools eligible for intervention, and there is a potential problem.
The TES article I mentioned earlier pointed out that only 3.6% of sponsorship applications have been rejected by the DFE. That is a very low percentage of rejections and suggests that the DFE is so desperate for sponsors that its quality control is not high enough. That is reflected in the failure rate among some sponsors. We cannot gamble with our children’s futures.
Kevin Brennan
I hope to conclude at this point. I therefore beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Education and Adoption Bill (Seventh sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan
I beg your pardon, Sir Alan. I apologise profusely.
I was getting very far ahead of myself and going on to the next clause, but amendment 37 is grouped as it is because it is designed to alleviate confusion for schools that are undergoing an intervention following a warning notice or a poor Ofsted rating. It does not really make sense to create more confusion and uncertainty for headteachers, senior leadership teams and the rest of the school community by having schools undergo various interventions, both from local authorities and the Department for Education. That would obviously not be conducive to effective school improvement, if that is the Government’s intention. If it is another means to force academisation on a school, which might have found a more effective and appropriate way to improve standards and outcomes for children, they will obviously not agree with this concept. We think that the amendment is sensible and hope that it will get a similarly sensible response from the Minister.
Amendment 38 would also amend clause 6. It requires 21 days’ notice to be given before the Secretary of State may act under proposed new section 70C of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, given that it will be extremely confusing for a school not to know how quickly the Secretary of State’s intervention under this section will take effect. The amendment would allow an orderly transition between interventions. We believe that the amendment is sensible and therefore anticipate that the Government should not really find any reason to reject it—but you never know, Sir Alan; they might come up with something.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Welcome back to the Committee, Sir Alan. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship yet again.
The amendments relate to the Secretary of State’s proposed powers of intervention in underperforming schools in order to secure the necessary improvements in standards, and in particular, they relate to the appointment of interim executive boards.
Clause 6, which is the next clause that we come to discuss in more detail, seeks to amend the Education and Inspections Act 2006 by adding three new sections: sections 70A, 70B and 70C. The first new section— section 70A—would ensure that local authorities and the Secretary of State notify each other when they intend to intervene in a school. The second—section 70B— would restrict a local authority’s intervention powers when the Secretary of State is using her similar intervention powers. The third— section 70C—would allow the Secretary of State to take control of a local authority-appointed interim executive board. The new sections aim to ensure that local authorities and regional schools commissioners work together in identifying appropriate interventions in underperforming schools to secure improvement.
Amendment 37, tabled and moved by the hon. Member for Cardiff West, seeks to amend the new section 70B. Clause 6(3) of the Bill states that when a local authority is notified by the Secretary of State that she intends to exercise any of her intervention powers, the local authority’s powers of intervention are suspended. Amendment 37 would mean that if the local authority was already exercising those powers, they would continue to be able to do so even if notified that the Secretary of State and the regional schools commissioners intended to intervene.
The amendment would therefore create confusion. The governing body would be required to comply simultaneously with directions from both the local authority and the regional schools commissioners. It would also mean that the local authority could continue with interventions that the regional schools commissioner for that area had considered to be ineffective. When the regional schools commissioner considers that a local authority’s action is having little or no effect, they should have the power to take their own action without the school being confused or distracted by conflicting interventions. Regional schools commissioners need to be able to take action to secure improvement in that school when improvement may have stalled.
The need to act swiftly and decisively when a local authority’s intervention is not working also leads me to resist amendment 38. It focuses on the proposed new section 70C, which would be inserted in the 2006 Act by virtue of clause 6 of the Bill. That section would ensure that if the local authority has put in place an interim executive board, the Secretary of State can take over the responsibility for and management of that board where necessary. Amendment 38 would have the effect, so ably described by the hon. Gentleman, of requiring the Secretary of State to give the local authority 21 days’ notice before taking over responsibility for that locally appointed interim executive board. In my view, that waiting period would add unnecessary delays to the intervention process in cases in which immediate action is needed. IEBs are put in place to secure rapid improvements in the schools in which they are appointed. Where that is not happening, the regional schools commissioner should have the power to take over the responsibility for the IEB members.
Under the new power in the Bill, the Secretary of State would have been able to take over the responsibility for the IEB members at the Pear Tree school in Derby. That school has a history of underperformance. The local authority appointed an IEB to the school in May 2012, but six months later, after being inspected in November 2012, the school was put into special measures. The Department tried to work with the IEB and issued an academy order, with a strong sponsor, in March 2013, but the IEB would not co-operate, so progress at Pear Tree school remains slow and attainment is not good enough. It is those situations in which the Secretary of State, through the regional schools commissioners, will want to intervene swiftly. Delaying that process by adding 21 days in all cases would not help the children who were being failed in their education.
Amendment 36 focuses on scenarios in which the Secretary of State makes a direction about a local authority IEB in respect of a Church school. The Churches are important deliverers of education in our system, but sometimes Church schools, like other schools, fail, and we have to be confident in our capacity to respond decisively and effectively in those cases, too.
Paragraph 10(2) of schedule 6 to the 2006 Act requires the IEB to comply with the same duties as applied to the previous governing body. That will include any duty to comply with a trust deed, as referred to by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. Members of a Church school’s IEB are therefore bound to preserve and develop the school’s faith character. That is the case even where the Secretary of State uses the new power under clause 5 of the Bill to direct the local authority to appoint specific IEB members. Proposed new paragraph (5B)(a) of that schedule, proposed by amendment 36, is therefore unnecessary, as it simply restates a requirement that already exists.
New paragraph (5B)(b), which is also proposed by the hon. Members for Cardiff West and for Birmingham, Selly Oak, is concerned with protecting the continuing involvement of the relevant diocese where a regional schools commissioner exercises the power under clause 5 to direct the local authority to alter the make-up of an interim executive board in a Church school. It would require the RSC to comply with any existing agreement between the local authority and the diocese about the membership and operation of the IEB.
An IEB is responsible for protecting the character of a Church school, as well as securing educational improvements. When making directions about an IEB in a Church school, regional schools commissioners will be expected to discuss the IEB with the diocese. That includes how it is constituted and what support the diocese might offer, as well as any specific concerns or requirements relating to the school’s character.
Kevin Brennan
I am obviously listening carefully to the wording that the Minister is using, because what we have on the record at this point will be very important in relation to what happens next. He said that regional schools commissioners would be “expected to discuss”. Can he confirm that by that he means that the regional schools commissioners will be required to discuss these matters?
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman should be aware that they are not “required” now. The memorandum that he referred to—the memorandum of understanding between the local authority and the diocese—is agreed only as a matter of practice and not a legal requirement. In the same way, we do not need a requirement in legislation to agree membership between regional schools commissioners and the diocese. However, we have reiterated, or I have done so just now, our desire that these two parties will work together and reach agreements in practice.
Kevin Brennan
May I press the Minister a little further on that point? Is he willing to say on the record that, in all cases, he expects RSCs to discuss these matters in the way he outlines?
Mr Gibb
One can never state on the record in parliamentary proceedings the situation in all circumstances, but I am happy to reiterate that, as a matter of practice, it is important that regional schools commissioners discuss the membership of an IEB with the diocese. There may be circumstances, although I am not aware of what they might be, when that is not possible, but the desire is the same kind of desire that is in the memorandum of understanding between local authorities and dioceses to continue with regional schools commissioners. The London Diocesan Board for Schools has submitted written evidence welcoming
“the Secretary of State’s willingness to become pro-active in the formation of IEBs as proposals initiated by the Diocese have not always been acted on as quickly by local authorities as we would like.”
There is therefore support for these measures from the Church.
The purpose of the power is to enable regional schools commissioners to intervene swiftly when they are not convinced that an IEB constituted by the local authority will secure necessary improvements. The amendment would restrict that power by requiring regional schools commissioners to endorse an IEB whether or not they have confidence in it. That contradicts the clause’s purpose, which is to allow the Secretary of State to act decisively on underperformance.
We value the Churches’ important role in our education system, a role that predates the role of the state. Indeed, I have already written to the Second Church Estates Commissioner, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), to reassure her of our continuing desire to work closely with the Church. My letter set out that if the Secretary of State is required to issue an academy order to a Church school that is inadequate under clause 7, there is a requirement under the Bill to consult the diocese on who might be the best sponsor for the school. In other cases of intervention, such as if a Church school is coasting or an underperforming church school has failed to comply with a warning notice, we will still seek the diocese’s views if we propose to make an academy order, as is required by section 4(1)(a) of the Academies Act 2010. We want to ensure that there are effective interventions in underperforming schools both to secure improvement and to protect their ethos. We already have non-statutory memorandums that set out the roles of the Church and the Government in relation to the academy programme. We have offered to review and update those memorandums with the Churches to reflect the changes in the Bill, as well as changes in the wider evolving party landscape. I am pleased that the Churches have confirmed their intention to work with us.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Opposition’s suggestion does not strike the right balance? If we allow discretion to be introduced, including a requirement would go too far and would be restrictive. The current draft strikes the right balance between consultation and inclusion, while allowing the intervention power to be exercised.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for his response. If I am going too far, it is only because I have been asked to go too far by the Catholic Education Service, which has been working closely with the Church of England on these issues. I am sure that they will have listened intently to the Minister’s response to the amendment and my interventions. I am pleased that he has put on record the Government’s thinking and their intentions with regard to the responsibility to preserve and develop the character of a school, which he says is covered elsewhere. I am glad that he has taken the trouble to put that on record. We will ponder what he has said carefully and, if necessary, return to the matter at a later stage of our proceedings. I do not intend to press amendment 36 to a Division.
On amendments 37 and 38, the Minister’s example of Pear Tree school did not seem to indicate that a 21-day notice period would be unreasonable. He said that there had been unreasonable delays because the Secretary of State did not have at their disposal the power conferred by the clause, and that if they had had that power, they would be able to act much more quickly in the case of Pear Tree school. Amendment 38 would simply provide for a reasonable period of notice.
I do not intend to pursue the matter further at this stage, but it would be useful to know what is considered to be reasonable. I know that the Minister is well meaning in his wish to take action if a school requires it, as we all do, but this reminds me of something that my father used to say to me: “Come here immediately, if not sooner.” Although our desire to act quickly is commendable, we must be reasonable. People must have the opportunity to respond to action proposed by the state, and we are simply trying to probe the Minister on what he believes a reasonable period to be.
Kevin Brennan
I have occasionally made the odd mathematical error while on my feet in the House of Commons, so I will not tease the hon. Lady about 21 days being four weeks, but I know what she means. I will interpret her remarks in a generous way by assuming that she is referring to working days, not that Government Members have always been so generous when I have made mathematical errors. I did get a grade A in my O-level which, according to the Minister, is at least a PhD in current parlance.
I take the hon. Lady’s point, but the purpose of amendment 38 is simply to probe the Minister on what he considers to be a reasonable period. I am not sure that we have found out the answer, but at some point I am sure that that we will.
Finally, I turn to amendment 37. As the shadow Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), pointed out on Second Reading, the clauses on the powers of regional schools commissioners and the actions of Ministers really show the disjuncture in the Bill between the centralisation of power with Ministers and their appointees, and the Government’s professed desire to devolve public services out to the regions. The way forward ought to be a process of pulling together combined local authorities, as the Government envisage doing in other contexts as a means of devolving power. Some might think that that process is a means of cutting expenditure, but let us take it at face value as a means of devolving power around the country. The Bill is not an example of that. Even if regional schools commissioners have local headteacher boards that are entirely made up of academy heads and principals, that is not the sort of devolution of power that is required. Ultimately, the combined authority approach would be much better.
Kevin Brennan
I will not test your patience, Sir Alan, by debating at length with the Minister what the OECD actually says; he and I have had such debates in the past. The OECD favours school autonomy in the education system, and we, too, believe that autonomy is important for schools and that they should not be held down unnecessarily by regulations. However, that does not necessarily mean that there should be no accountability in the system. Here, the accountability is simply to the Minister, who is a long way from those local schools.
The importance of having some accountability at the local and regional level began to be recognised with the appointment of regional schools commissioners. There is an understanding that Ministers actually cannot cope with all the schools that now come under their ambit—they cannot keep an eye on them. Things have gone wrong at lots of academies, and they have been allowed to go wrong because Ministers did not wake up quickly enough to what was going on at local and regional levels. In the past we have proposed ways of trying to bring accountability closer without interfering with the necessary autonomy that professionals and schools should have in running their affairs. That, in fact, has been a trend in our system for some considerable time. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The appointment of an interim executive board is one way in which a local authority can intervene in a school that is eligible for intervention. The clause enables the Secretary of State, via the regional schools commissioners, to direct local authorities as to: who the IEB members should be; how many members to appoint; what the term of appointment should be; and the termination of any appointment. That will enable the Secretary of State to contribute to the make-up and arrangements of the IEB when it is felt that the local authority is best placed to take that forward, without the need for the Secretary of State to take complete responsibility for the IEB under the new power under clause 6.
IEBs can be used to drive school improvement when there has been a decline in standards or a serious breakdown of working relationships in the governing body. When used effectively, IEBs can provide challenge to the leadership of a school and secure rapid improvement. The power will help to minimise the number of IEBs that are not working at their most efficient, either by being too big or by having members with incorrect skills sets. A poorly constructed IEB will take longer to make improvements and therefore deny children the quality of education they need and deserve. Regional schools commissioners will work with local authorities to ensure that IEBs secure solid platforms from which their schools can improve. The Bill is about making sure that intervention in underperforming schools is fast, effective and deliverable, and the clause will help to achieve that.
Kevin Brennan
Again, the Minister is taking the power to take over another part of the school improvement process pretty much whenever he wants. As always, no one knows when that power will be exercised because there are no criteria in the Bill to tell us when it might be appropriate, so local authorities will be looking over their shoulders and wondering when their decisions will be interfered with.
Why do Ministers want that power? Are sure that they always know best? Do they not trust anyone else to make decisions? Do they want to ensure that their favoured trustees get appointed? They have a degree of form in that respect, as they have appointed proposed sponsors to interim executive boards in a not very subtle way, thus pre-empting further due process with regard to academisation.
There is no transparency in the IEB-appointing process. No applications are invited, no criteria are published and no reasons are given for the decisions finally made. Those decisions may well be delegated—they probably will be—to regional schools commissioners. There should be a basic requirement for Ministers to take responsibility for those decisions and to be prepared to justify them in public, rather than in the secretive way they currently do. Removing a governing body from a school is a drastic step that will have a substantial and lasting effect. We have tabled an amendment that would require IEBs to be appointed by order so that there could be appropriate scrutiny and Ministers would have to justify decisions in a public forum.
Mr Gibb
The clause requires a local authority to notify the Secretary of State before using its intervention powers. The Secretary of State, through regional schools commissioners, is also required to notify the local authority before they use their powers. From the point that the regional schools commissioner notifies the local authority that they intend to intervene in a school, the local authority’s powers to intervene are suspended.
The clause states that if the local authority has put in place an interim executive board, the Secretary of State can take over responsibility for IEB members. If that happens, the notice given by the local authority to the governing body, setting out that it will consist of interim executive members, will be treated as having been given by the Secretary of State along with anything else done by the local authority in relation to the IEB. The Secretary of State will have as much responsibility for IEB members as the local authority had before.
Once a school is eligible for intervention, the local authority or the Secretary of State can use their powers of intervention. In practice, the clause means that the local authority and regional schools commissioners will need to work together in identifying the action that should be taken in underperforming schools. When the local authority has already intervened in a school and the regional schools commissioner feels that a different approach is needed, the regional schools commissioner can decide to exercise the Secretary of State’s powers. From that point, the local authority will be restricted from intervening further. The regional schools commissioner can give permission for the local authority to continue with its intervention if that is the best thing to do.
Many local authorities, such as Bristol and Essex, are working well with schools to improve educational standards and provisions, but some do not make full use of their interventional powers and are too slow to act in relation to underperformance and it is these authorities over which we expect the regional schools commissioners to exercise the Secretary of State’s power. The clause will allow regional schools commissioners to understand in which schools the local authority has intervened and to use the powers in the Bill to work with the schools to make improvements. This is all about improving standards in schools where they are not high enough.
Kevin Brennan
Listening to the Minister, I wonder why he does not go the whole hog by abolishing local authorities altogether and replacing them with appointments from the Minister because—[Interruption.] That was probably unwise. I am sorry; I might accidentally have prompted a Government amendment at a later stage of the Bill. Could we strike that from the record?
It makes me wonder: what is the role of a democratically elected local authority not only when the Minister intervenes occasionally when there is an extreme issue and a need for state power to be exercised at a local level in a draconian way, but when he has decided to appoint a group of unelected and unaccountable people who can exercise the Secretary of State’s powers on her behalf and, to use the Minister’s word, restrict what local authorities do? Local authorities have to go cap in hand and ask for the permission of these appointed persons to act in relation to the schools in their area. The Government need to think this through in relation to what is said everywhere else about devolution. There is a disconnect between that and what the Bill will do to our education system.
Clause 6 claims to sort out how the intervention powers of the local authority and the Secretary of State interact. The way that the Minister has described it, it is hardly an interaction. The key is proposed new section 70B, which basically says that the local authority must give way to the Secretary of State or the regional schools commissioner acting on the behalf of the Secretary of State whenever she, or they, want to intervene—no matter how involved the local authority has been and how effectively the local authority might have been working with the school or how effectively the local community thinks that the local authority was working with the school.
Similarly, proposed new section 70C allows the Secretary of State or the regional schools commissioner—an appointed person, accountable to no one other than the appointed Minister of the Crown—to take over an interim executive board that has been set up for the express purpose of taking over from a governing body and taking any action necessary to improve a school.
Kevin Brennan
I certainly respect the work that Sir Daniel has done in the field of education, although he is not entirely independent with regard to this issue. He showed in his evidence that he has a particular view about one particular means of school improvement, although the independent evidence does not show that it is the only one that can be successful.
I am certainly not saying that the Secretary of State should not have powers to intervene from time to time. I am just highlighting the extent to which those powers are being massively increased by the clause, and the fact that the general public have little understanding of who and what the people being appointed by the Secretary of State are and what resources and powers they have. The Bill is massively expanding all of that without accountability. At the same time, the Government are saying that the way to improve the quality of every other area of our public services is to devolve power and to encourage bodies that are democratically accountable locally to work together and with the Government.
Mr Gibb
This programme is about devolution to the academy level. The regional schools commissioners have no intention of engaging with or intervening in schools or academies that are performing well. In the majority of cases, we expect local authorities and regional schools commissioners to work together to decide where to intervene when there is underperformance, but some local authorities have been ineffective. There are 28 that have never appointed an IEB or issued a warning notice, and Ofsted has judged 12 to be ineffective, often for their poor use of their intervention powers. We need these reserve powers to intervene when there is insufficient action by local authorities.
Kevin Brennan
On the one in, one out rule, one could say that there are often academy trusts that fall into that category. I am sure that the Minister has seen Ofsted’s report on the focused inspection of the Collaborative Academies Trust, dated 25 March 2015, which points out that there are real problems with the rapid expansion of the academies programme and that there are serious weaknesses from time to time in the work of academy trusts.
Of course it is possible that local authorities will need intervention. My point is that the Government’s philosophical approach, which is to centralise all power with the Secretary of State, not genuinely to devolve power to a local level, is at odds with their approach elsewhere, and it will ultimately lead to the sorts of problems we have seen in lots of areas where there is not that level of accountability.
One has to call into question, as we have done—this has not been answered adequately—the capacity of regional schools commissioners to take on all these additional responsibilities. When we debate clause 1, we will discuss the fact that the huge expansion in the number of schools that will be eligible for intervention by regional schools commissioners will emphasise that capacity problem.
Kevin Brennan
May I take the opportunity to congratulate the school on achieving that outstanding rating from Ofsted? He is quite right. There are cases where academisation has been an extremely successful model for school improvement. In other cases, other models have worked, and it is only fair that we consider some of those.
The Catholic Education Service has kindly provided some examples in which it thinks other methods have worked well. For instance, St James the Great Catholic primary school in London used an executive headteacher. The school had a section 5 inspection in June 2012 in which it was given grade 3 for three categories except for leadership and management, which was given grade 4; the school received an overall grade 4 with notice to improve.
As I understand it, in such a case under clause 7 of the Bill, the Secretary of State will have no choice but to order the academisation of that school. St James the Great used an executive headteacher despite pressure from an academy broker to join an academy chain. The chain was not acceptable to the school because it is a Catholic school and did not want a non-Catholic sponsor. The diocese brokered a package with St John’s Catholic primary school in which the headteacher of St John’s became the executive headteacher of both schools. A school improvement plan was implemented immediately, which included teachers from St John’s going into St James the Great—we all know about that sort of approach. St James the Great was inspected a year later and as a result of that intervention it went up to an overall grade 2. That is a good example of an alternative approach to school improvement, brokered at a local level, which, effectively and astonishingly, will be banned by the clause. As the Minister wants to intervene, perhaps he can confirm that that is the case.
Mr Gibb
The point about those examples is that the bodies that oversee those schools have done so for many years, often decades. The question we are asking is: why had they not intervened until now to bring about school improvement? We have lost patience with allowing children, year after year and decade after decade, to go to underperforming schools. That is what we seek to deal with and that is why the Bill is so important.
Kevin Brennan
I think that is confirmation that the use of an executive headteacher in circumstances such as those would be banned by the clause.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman will have heard in earlier discussions on other clauses that the issuance of an academy order is step 1 of the process towards academisation. There is then a period of time when other intervention measures such as IEBs and executive headteachers can be used to try to get improvements happening before a sponsor is put in place. He is therefore wrong to say that other interventions are banned in the interim period before a funding agreement is signed.
Kevin Brennan
Indeed that is the case, which is an admission that the approach I am outlining can work and that, in effect, academisation is taking place only because of the ideological prejudices of Ministers to that approach, rather than because of evidence.
Case study No. 2 is Corpus Christi Partnership and St Joseph’s Catholic primary school in Crayford. The school had a bad inspection, as academies sometimes do, which led to an overall grade 4 with special measures. The diocese provided a support programme led by the headteacher of St Catherine’s Catholic secondary school in Crayford—in other words, its intervention used a partnership, with schools working together to try to bring about improvement. The school, which was inspected under section 5 a year later in June 2013, had improved in all areas and gained an overall grade 2.
That was so successful that all Catholic schools in Bexley—seven primary, two secondary and one sixth-form college—formed the Corpus Christi Partnership, a school improvement and support board in which the schools are committed to collaborative working and supporting schools where support is needed. That approach, however, will be trumped by the requirement of the Secretary of State to academise that school, despite clear evidence of the improvement brought about by that collaborative working and partnership approach.
Case study No 3: federation to try to bring about school improvement. The Regina Coeli Catholic primary school in South Croydon had a section 5 inspection in September 2013. It also had an overall grade 4 with special measures. An interim executive board was put in place—we just debated them—and again there was pressure from an academy broker and a local authority for the school to join a multi-academy trust, but the diocese did not agree that that was the best solution for the school. Again, that would be trumped by the Secretary of State’s requirement in the clause to academise.
The diocese arranged for the headteacher of St James the Great Catholic primary school in Thornton Heath to become executive headteacher of both schools until a permanent arrangement was agreed to join a local federation. Key staff from the other school, including the deputy head, who was seconded, were used to support staff in the weaker school. The school joined the federation of Catholic schools in Sutton on 1 November 2014. The Regina Coeli school benefited immediately from a well-established school improvement programme already in the federation, including the leadership of the existing headteacher. There was a significant and quick improvement, and a year and a half later, the school was graded 2 in all areas.
Kevin Brennan
I could equally ask if sponsors of academies are aware of the problems in academy schools before Ofsted comes in and frequently finds them to be inadequate. Of course, the diocese became more aware as a result of inspection. The purpose of inspection is to find out whether a school is working and up to scratch; that is the whole point of inspections, and it applies equally to academy schools and other schools. The point is that the diocese, having been made aware of real problems in the school as a result of the inspection, was able to find a solution and bring about genuine and rapid school improvement using methods other than simple academisation.
Academisation might well be the best solution for schools in many cases. Where it is, we all ought to support it. However, I have outlined alternatives such as the use of an executive headteacher, of partnership or of federation. Where such alternatives are available, they should not be precluded from being the means of school improvement simply because the clause says that the Secretary of State must—not may, must—academise a school found to be in this Ofsted category. Many academy schools are found to be in that category. If the answer is always academisation, what is the answer when a school is already an academy?
Mr Gibb
We expect the same effective oversight of academies by multi-academy trusts as we expect of local authorities. When we believe that a multi-academy trust is not capable of overseeing the schools within its group effectively, we take action to remove the sponsors of those academies. We have done so in the case of 75 academies so far, and we will continue to take swift action where we are convinced that multi-academy trusts are not engaged in proper oversight of the academies in their group.
Kevin Brennan
I am not disputing that the Government have done that, but they are saying, “The only answer is to academise.” The 75 schools that the Minister talks about have been academised, so the answer for those cannot be academisation; the answer is, “Let’s try something else. Let’s try an executive headteacher from another sponsor or better partnership working.” The simple act of academisation does not bring about school improvement. That is why the clause is so ludicrous, frankly; it fetters the Secretary of State’s freedom to act according to the evidence.
Mr Gibb
But those measures—an executive headteacher or collaboration between schools—should have been in place before Ofsted came in and awarded a “special measures” grading to the school. That is what we want to happen in local authorities and multi-academy trusts. If it is not happening under a local authority, the schools have to become academies with a strong sponsor. If it is not happening under a multi-academy trust, we will find a new sponsor for those academies. The essence of our approach is that we want strong oversight of academies and schools. If the local authority cannot do it, it will be in a multi-academy trust, and if the multi-academy trust is not doing it, we will find another multi-academy trust to run the group.
Kevin Brennan
Reductio ad absurdum is the Government’s policy here. Ultimately, what improves schools is stronger leadership, better headteachers, better trained staff, more effective organisation and all those sorts of things. I have given several examples of where that has happened without following the academisation path. The Minister has helpfully given many examples of where academisation has not resulted in school improvement and where inspectors have had to come in and rate those academies “inadequate”.
Putting in the Bill a requirement for the Secretary of State to academise a school is an example of not only a one-club golfer—the analogy we used earlier—but of what has happened to Rory McIlroy ahead of next week’s Open golf championship. He has effectively shot himself him in the foot by injuring himself before the tournament begins. He has hobbled himself, and he cannot carry out his job properly. That is what the Secretary of State will be doing if she has no discretion when Ofsted gives an “inadequate” rating.
Kevin Brennan
Can I confirm that I, too, am a parent? In fact, I come from a long line of parents. I therefore think that I am particularly eligible to run for the leadership of the Labour party, as the Government Whip just suggested. You will have to hold your breath on that one, Sir Alan. I have no intention of doing so—I want to prevent any rumours from starting, following this debate. I think that the Minister made a slip of the tongue. He probably meant to say “academies and maintained schools”.
For the Government to introduce a clause that states that the Secretary of State must follow one particular path of school improvement alone is, at the very least, not very sensible. Ministers seem to believe that there is only one pathway to school improvement heaven—so much so that they regularly descend to abuse anyone who disagrees with them in a manner that is not appropriate to their office. Their ideological position is to regard private sponsors as always better than a public authority —or even a Church authority, as in the example I gave. In particular, they regard private sponsors as better than local authorities, regardless of their party affiliation. They apply their contempt equally to Conservative-led and Labour-led authorities.
The amendment states that decisions should be made according to the circumstances of the particular case, which I think is an eminently sensible proposition. Ministers have all the powers that they need. Under the Academies Act 2010, they can already make an academy order for any school that has received an adverse Ofsted finding. With this clause, the Government are tying their own hands.
Even if a high-quality sponsor is not available—there will be a rapid expansion and there is a limited number of high-quality sponsors, so a number of low-quality sponsors have been given an opportunity to run the schools that our children attend—even if the local authority or diocese has a strong record of stepping in and improving schools, and even if the parents and the school propose a credible alternative approach that has proven evidence of success, Ministers will not even be able to entertain an alternative to their prescription. They are set on removing their ability to exercise discretion or make exceptions.
We know already that the Government have not been able to convert all the schools that they could have done in the past five years, and not just because of the opposition of ideologically driven local activists, who perpetrate and orchestrate campaigns for ideological reasons, otherwise known as parents. There are often delays and difficulties when the Government try to academise a school, including bureaucratic delays in the Department and other legal issues, which we will return to when we debate the later amendments. What makes the Government so sure that they will be able to manage the 1,000 more to which the Prime Minister has committed himself? In some circumstances, academisation will clearly not be the best route, but the clause will tie Ministers to it regardless of whether it will do the school any good.
I will speak briefly to the other two amendments that we have tabled. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central will speak to his amendment which is part of this group. Amendment 42 is intended to clarify whether the new provision applies to maintained schools and pupil referral units. There is some ambiguity about what is covered by the phrase “maintained school”. The amendment is designed to remove that ambiguity. Perhaps the Minister will make that clear in his remarks.
The provisions on academisation in the Bill are based on Ministers’ assertion that turning a school into an academy is always the best solution. That assertion has been widely questioned by a range of researchers. Neither the Government majority on the previous Select Committee nor the RSA/Pearson Commission set up on the assumption that academies were the future was able to say with conviction that there was clear evidence for the superiority of the academy model.
Amendment 45 would allow the Secretary of State to try to prove her case, so the Government should welcome it. The way to make schools improve is not just to cherry-pick a few anecdotes to illustrate the point, or to abuse statistics, at which the DFE has become infamous and expert in recent years. The independent UK Statistics Authority has had to rap Ministers’ knuckles about that on more than one occasion in recent years.
The Government should commission independent research from a trustworthy source into the impact of turning schools into sponsored academies. They should listen to the evidence and make policy that is driven by the evidence rather than by uninformed ideology. I know that that is a radical suggestion for the Government, Sir Alan, but commissioning independent research and listening to the evidence would be a good way forward.
Mr Gibb
Was it uninformed ideology that led Lord Adonis in the previous Labour Government to adopt this very policy for failing schools and turn them into academies? By the time the previous Labour Government left office, there were 200 such academies. Are they all based on ill-informed ideology?
Kevin Brennan
No, it was not, Sir Alan. I supported Lord Adonis in what he was doing. He was making a targeted intervention, which was very well supported by Ministers and quality sponsors, and using it to try to turn around schools. As I have made clear, I am not opposed to that. I am opposed to the idea that only one solution can ever be attempted and that Ministers should not even be allowed to attempt another solution to bring about school improvement.
We are moving to a system in which many more schools will be subject to academy orders, and Ministers will be scrabbling around looking for suitable sponsors for those schools. We already have plenty of evidence, even from the current academy programme, that low-quality academy sponsors have had schools removed from them because they have failed to do their job properly.
Kevin Brennan
As ever, my hon. Friend has put it far better than I could; he is absolutely right. Amendment 45 would allow the Secretary of State the opportunity to prove her case, by commissioning that independent research in order to see whether only this pathway is the right one for school improvement.
Mr Gibb
I am pretty sure that the hon. Gentleman was here when we debated clauses 2, 3, 4 and 5, which are packed full of other interventions that can be implemented to ensure that schools improve. Clause 2, for example, includes issuing warning notices, and clause 4 would make schools enter into contractual arrangements with school improvement organisations. Those are other types of interventions. We are discussing just one clause here, clause 7.
Education and Adoption Bill (Eighth sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
I want to speak briefly in support of amendment 40, which allows us maturely to reflect on the need for academisation before the Secretary of State imposes her will on an underperforming school. Before the break, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West laid out many examples of alternative methods of school improvement and made the case that academisation is not the only option. In 2012, 559 schools were judged inadequate. Of the 294 that remained maintained, and therefore were not engaged in the academisation process, only nine remained inadequate a year later. On re-inspection, 152 were deemed good and six were rated outstanding. We have heard today that local authorities are not taking the necessary action to improve standards in schools, but those figures clearly suggest otherwise. Furthermore, sponsored academies are twice as likely to stay inadequate as maintained schools.
Does the Minister agree with the Local Government Association, which commented in evidence to the Committee that governance—or structure—is
“a distraction in all of this.”?––[Official Report, Education and Adoption Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2015; c. 18, Q36.]
Does he not think it logical for the Secretary of State to consider the case for academisation first, given that it is not the silver bullet that the Minister seems to think it is? Rather than placing a duty on the Secretary of State to force academisation, it would be good practice to allow the Secretary of State, in consultation with the chief inspector of schools at Ofsted, to make a decision based on the available evidence and the circumstances of individual schools. Amendments 40 and 39 would allow the Secretary of State space to use her judgment, rather than having her hands tied arbitrarily. In the event of a warning notice being issued, a school having been found to require significant improvement or a school being in special measures, the amendments seek to give the Secretary of State time to consider the case for academisation properly.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Welcome back to our proceedings, Mr Chope. It is again a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.
Amendments 39, 40, 46, 42 and 45 all relate to clause 7, as does amendment 24, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Sefton Central. Clause 7 places a duty on the Secretary of State to make an academy order for any maintained school that Ofsted has rated inadequate, removing any doubt about how we will intervene in failing schools: they must become academies with the support of an effective sponsor to give them the necessary support and challenge to turn the school around. The clause is therefore a crucial new power to strengthen our ability to deal with failure and to do so more swiftly.
Amendment 39 seeks to make the duty to issue an academy order dependent on whether the Ofsted chief inspector advises that such an order should be made. The Government of course greatly value the independent advice of the chief inspector on school performance, but I consider the amendment to be unnecessary and likely to lead to a less efficient process for taking the necessary action quickly once a school is identified to be failing. Ofsted judgments on a school’s performance are made under the powers of Her Majesty’s chief inspector, as set out in the Education and Inspections Act 2006. When Ofsted judges a school inadequate, the chief inspector has already sent a clear signal to the school, local authority and the Secretary of State that he judges the school to be failing to provide an adequate education. Once a school is deemed inadequate, there should be no further question about whether the school should be converted into an academy. In such cases, the school is failing to provide an adequate education and requires academisation as quickly as possible. Regional schools commissioners are then responsible for taking the necessary action to secure improvements, and they are accountable to Parliament through the Secretary of State.
The amendment would create a further review stage for the individual school before an academy order is issued, but when Ofsted has already given a clear judgment that the school is failing. That additional step is unnecessary and runs against our aim to make intervention more effective and efficient. In short, we will have already asked for the opinion of Her Majesty’s chief inspector, and that will have been provided when Ofsted awards a school a category 4 grading.
Amendment 40 would remove the requirement for the Secretary of State to make an academy order when a school is found to be inadequate. In every case in which a school is found to be inadequate, it must have a fresh start immediately, secured through an academy solution with an effective sponsor. The duty that the clause places on the Secretary of State to make an academy order in respect on any maintained school that Ofsted has rated inadequate removes any doubt about how we will intervene in failing schools: they must become academies, with the support of an effective sponsor.
Since 2010, sponsors have taken on more than 1,100 such schools. The replacement of the governance of a failing school with the support of a strong sponsor is an effective way to secure rapid improvement. By 2014, results in sponsored secondary academies open for four years had risen by an average of 6.4 percentage points compared with their predecessor schools. During that same period, results in local authority schools rose by an average of 1.3 percentage points—[Interruption.] In previous sittings we have debated whether that is a valid judgment. I contend that it is, because it puts in perspective what those 6.4 percentage points mean in terms of how standards are rising overall through the system.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
As the Minister is using that same statistic again, will he ask his officials to crunch the numbers for schools that were in similar positions and tried other methods of improvement to see what results were produced? Officials have had several days to do that, so I would have thought that he would have those numbers in his notes by now.
Mr Gibb
We are always crunching numbers when comparing schools and we are always looking at how individual schools and academies are faring. We pore over all kinds of crunched numbers the whole time. That is a particular role of the regional schools commissioners, who do similar analysis to identify schools, and indeed academies, that are failing.
We do take swift action when academies are failing. Thetford academy, for example, was put in special measures in March 2013. The sponsors acknowledged that they did not have the capacity to make the required improvements, so the Department brought in the Inspiration Trust, who took the school on in July 2013. Results in the next academic year showed that the number of students achieving five or more A* to C GCSEs including English and maths increased by 10 percentage points. In December 2014—just a few months later—Ofsted judged Thetford to be “good”, with outstanding leadership. Its report described the school as “transformed beyond recognition” and said that the trust’s leadership and support had
“created a strong culture where only the best is good enough.”
That demonstrates that we are equally as rigorous when dealing with underperforming academies as we will be when dealing with underperforming maintained schools under the Bill. The difference is that we have the powers to deal with underperforming academies through the funding agreement between the trust and the Secretary of State. We do not have similar powers for maintained schools; that is what the Bill is about.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
The Minister is generous in giving way. The example he gave was of a failing academy being removed from a chain. Do powers exist to remove coasting academies from their chains with the same enthusiasm? It has been reported to me many times that good academies trapped in bad chains struggle to get the same freedom to move between chains that he proposes for schools to break free from local authorities.
Mr Gibb
We will use the Bill’s definition of coasting schools to assess the performance of academies. The regional schools commissioners will start a similar discussion with academy trustees or the chief executives of those trusts where schools or academies in the trust are coasting.
There are no plans to allow schools to leave academy chains; that is not how they work. If we are unhappy with the governance of a school in a chain, it is the sponsor that we are concerned about. We would be concerned not just about that one school, but about every school in that academy chain.
Peter Kyle
It is interesting that the Minister outlined the process by which you can engage in conversation with governors at such times, yet previously you talked about the need for efficiency in dealing with maintained schools. Do you think that the process is more important when dealing with academies, and that, when dealing with a maintained school, efficiency is the priority?
Mr Gibb
We are taking the same approach. Clause 7 deals with schools that have been awarded category 4 in an Ofsted judgment. Therefore, we will take swift action to turn that school into an academy. When a school is coasting, whether it is maintained or an academy, those discussions start. If the regional schools commissioner is convinced that there is an adequate plan to deal effectively with that coasting, they will support that plan. It is only after those discussions lead the regional schools commissioner to believe that it does not have an adequate plan that the Secretary of State will use the powers under other provisions in the Bill to move towards academisation.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister said that the Bill gave power to the Secretary of State in those circumstances. Will he confirm that under the 2010 Act the Secretary of State can make an academy order in relation to any school that has received an adverse Ofsted finding? Therefore, the Secretary of State has the power. What this proposal would do is restrict the type of action that the Secretary of State is able to take.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman is right. There is a “may” power. The Secretary of State may issue an academy order under that provision of the 2010 Act. The provision in clause 7 would make it automatic, so that the academy order is automatically issued on the day or day after Ofsted awards a judgment of “inadequate” for that school. That fulfils our manifesto commitment to take action from day one, when a school is demonstrated to be failing. We make no apology for bringing in a Bill that changes that “may” into a “must”. That demonstrates the seriousness of the swift action the Government intend to take with failing schools.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I want to clarify something the Minister said because I do not know if I misheard. In response to my hon. Friend the Member for Hove, the Minister said that it would not be possible for an academy—an individual school—to leave the chain. There is no provision for that. If there were a problem, he would seek to deal with the sponsors. Is he saying that schools are locked in in perpetuity under this arrangement? Is that what we are legislating for?
Mr Gibb
No. There are many examples where the Secretary of State has removed academies from chains. For example, the E-ACT and AET chains have both had their academy rebrokered into other academy chains. There is scope for doing that. I am talking about the provisions about leaving a federation that do not apply to academies leaving an academy chain.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Will the Minister confirm that, if a school wants to leave, it cannot? The examples he gave were of chains in trouble, which had to be broken up because there were very real concerns from the centre. If an individual school wants to leave, I cannot think of a single example where that has been possible. In fact such schools have less freedom, not more, than they had in the maintained system. Will the Minister confirm that is the case?
Mr Gibb
Yes, I can. There is no power for a governing body of a school within an academy chain to vote to leave that academy chain. One can see the reasons for that. If a school is underperforming and objects to improvement measures, those measures need to go ahead. The governance of that individual academy within an academy chain should not be able to avoid those measures by leaving the chain. We want academies tied in to strong academy arrangements, so schools cannot choose to leave a strong arrangement. The Secretary of State can change sponsors when there is evidence that they are not delivering high-quality education. Through that mechanism, the Secretary of State can move academies from an underperforming academy chain.
Steve McCabe
I want to pursue this, because I wonder whether this is really where the Minister wants to end up. What would happen if a school was locked into a particular sponsor chain, but all the surrounding schools were locked into another, possibly because they academised later? If the rationale for the school leaving and joining the second chain were that it would lead to a more efficient distribution of the service in the area, is the Minister saying that that would not be permitted?
Mr Gibb
One of the things that my noble Friend Lord Nash has done is to ensure that academy chains and groups, as they grow, evolve around geographical clusters. That does not mean a geographical monopoly with all schools in one chain. That would not be desirable, but nor would it be desirable for an academy chain to be dispersed throughout the United Kingdom, which would make the practical issues of travel and efficiency very difficult.
Altering clause 7, as amendment 40 proposes, would have the effect that the Secretary of State does not have to make an academy order when a school is found to be “inadequate”, which would create unnecessary delays and uncertainty. We all have a responsibility to ensure that failing schools improve as quickly as possible.
Amendment 46 seeks to prevent clause 7 from applying to schools that are judged “inadequate” by Ofsted before January 2016. As I have just said, we think it is wrong for a child to spend time in any school that is failing to provide the level of education that all children deserve. We want to raise standards swiftly across the board, which means turning around all failing schools with the same urgency. We would not achieve that by applying an arbitrary date for the new power granted by clause 7, as proposed by the amendment. A school judged “inadequate” is failing, regardless of whether the judgment was made before or after 1 January 2016. After the Bill receives Royal Assent and the provision is commenced, proposed new section 4(A1) will apply to all schools judged “inadequate” by Ofsted at that point.
Amendment 42 seeks to prevent the Secretary of State’s duty to make an academy order from applying to maintained nursery schools and pupil referral units. All children are entitled to a good education, regardless of their circumstances, and that includes children in pupil referral units. We are committed to taking swift action where that is not happening. As with maintained schools, the Secretary of State can impose an interim executive board to replace the management of a pupil referral unit that has been rated “inadequate” or a pupil referral unit that the Secretary of State is satisfied is underperforming.
The Secretary of State also has the power to make an academy order in relation to a pupil referral unit judged by Ofsted to be “inadequate”. If a pupil referral unit is failing and is not viable, the Secretary of State also has the power to direct the local authority to close it. When that happens, the local authority must provide the Secretary of State with information about the arrangements it is making to ensure pupils receive suitable education. There are already many “good” or “outstanding” alternative provision academies. For instance, there is the Bridge alternative provision academy, which was rated “outstanding” by Ofsted in May 2013. It has gained national prominence, and is frequently visited by representatives of other schools and local authorities to see what lies behind its success. At present, clause 7 does not apply to pupil referral units. The Secretary of State will therefore not be under a duty to make an academy order for any PRU that is rated “inadequate”. It will be possible, however, to apply such a provision through regulations in the future if the Government wish. We therefore do not want to exclude the possibility of doing so now, so we are able to consider whether we want to take that approach with pupil referral units.
The amendment also seeks to confirm whether clause 7 applies to maintained nursery schools. I can confirm that it does not. Current legislation does not allow maintained nursery schools to become academies, and the Secretary of State cannot make an academy order for such provision. That is because maintained nursery schools do not fall within the definition of maintained schools for the purposes of the Academies Act 2010.
Amendment 45 proposes that before we make an order commencing proposed new section 4(A1), the Government must publish an independent report demonstrating the improvement of academised schools. Under section 11 of the Academies Act 2010, the Government are already required to publish an annual report on the performance of academies. The latest report, focused on the 2013-14 academic year, was published on 30 June 2015 and sets out many examples of the progress made by academies. At Wyndham Primary Academy in Derby, for example, which is sponsored by the Spencer Academies Trust, after just two years, 90% of pupils are achieving the expected level in reading, writing and mathematics—up from 64% at its predecessor school.
Making an academy order enables us to move quickly to replace poor leadership and governance under the guidance of an expert sponsor. The last Ofsted annual schools report, published at the end of last year, said:
“Overall, sponsor-led academies have had a positive and sustained impact on attainment in challenging areas”.
Nothing in the Bill removes the requirement under section 11 of the 2010 Act to publish an annual academies report, containing information on the academy performance. I hope that I have satisfied the concerns of the hon. Member for Cardiff West and that he feels able to withdraw his amendment.
Amendment 24, tabled by the hon. Member for Sefton Central, would require the Secretary of State to arrange for an independent assessment of the impact of conversion before issuing an academy order in respect of a school rated “inadequate” by Ofsted. When a school has been found to be failing, the best solution for that school and all its pupils is a fresh start, delivered through an academy solution with an effective sponsor. It is precisely because the Government are committed to securing the highest standards for all children, including those with special educational needs or from disadvantaged backgrounds, that we are introducing the Bill to turn around failing and coasting schools. The amendment would simply add bureaucracy and delay improvements.
Between 2013 and 2014, key stage 2 results for pupils eligible for free school meals in sponsored academies improved at a faster rate than those in local authority schools. The proportion of free school meal pupils achieving level 4 or above in reading, writing and mathematics improved by seven percentage points in sponsored academies, compared with four percentage points in local authority schools.
Steve McCabe
Will the Minister say why a specific requirement to consider the needs of children with special needs, which I am sure he will concede is the most overlooked group in the education system, before a school changes to an academy would simply be extra bureaucracy or administration? Is he not concerned about that? It is too late to be concerned after it has happened.
Steve McCabe
Perhaps the Minister looks at different schools from me, but it is perfectly possible to have an effective, highly performing school that has a lousy record on kids with special needs. In fact, some of them are so highly performing that they go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that youngsters with special needs cannot get access. It is not extra bureaucracy to say that this particular category of children deserves a bit more attention.
Mr Gibb
May I disabuse the hon. Gentleman of that last comment? Academies do play their part in providing for children with special educational needs. Sponsored academies actually have a higher proportion of pupils with special educational needs than the average across all state-funded schools. In January last year, 22.1% of pupils in sponsored secondary academies were identified as having some form of SEN, compared with 17.8% of pupils in all state-funded secondary schools. The figures are similar for primary schools.
Kevin Brennan
The hon. Gentleman is correct, because that is not the interesting comparison. It is hardly surprising that sponsored academies have a higher number of children in that category since they are the schools that were likely to have been causing concern. The real test would be comparing the number of special needs pupils in those schools, now that they have become sponsored academies, with the number they had before. The Minister is no doubt about to supply us with that statistic.
Mr Gibb
I hope to be able to do that, but in the meantime I can tell the hon. Gentleman that academies perform well as far as children with special educational needs are concerned. Between 2013 and 2014, key stage 2 results for pupils with special educational needs in sponsored academies improved at a faster rate than those in local authority schools. The proportion of SEN pupils who achieved level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths improved by six percentage points in sponsored academies, compared with four percentage points in local authority schools.
Kevin Brennan
The statistic that the Minister just read out—inadequate as it is, as we have already pointed out—shows that academies are doing worse with special needs pupils than with other pupils, given the statistics he read out earlier.
Mr Gibb
No doubt one would see similar disparities across the system.
The hon. Gentleman keeps asking about a like-for-like comparison. The Department has published detailed analysis comparing the performance of sponsored academies and similar maintained schools. Analysis published in 2012 and 2013 showed sponsored academies performing at a faster rate than maintained schools with similar prior attainment, levels of deprivation and pupil starting points. Last week, the NFER published data comparing the 2014 GCSE performance of academies open for two to four years with those of matched maintained schools. It found that the percentage of pupils achieving five or more A* to C GCSEs in sponsored academies was 2.9 percentage points higher than in similar local authority schools. With that statistic, I hope to have put this debate to rest once and for all.
Bill Esterson
Far from it. The Minister accepted the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak about children with disabilities and SEN not making the same progress as other children, whether in academies or elsewhere. That is surely why the amendment is so important. There must be a proper review of children with the greatest needs before any changes are made.
Bill Esterson
The Minister says that he does not want delays to academisation. Ofsted finally published today its report from three months ago about the Collaborative Academies Trust. One of its concerns was the failure to close the gap between the most disadvantaged children and everyone else. Does that not show that the rush to academisation is the problem? We need this kind of amendment in the Bill so that there is a proper review, especially for the most disadvantaged children.
Mr Gibb
We are working with the Collaborative Academies Trust to ensure that it has a robust action plan to help make improvements in its schools. Whenever there are failures in sponsored academies, we take swift action. The record shows that we take swifter action in those circumstances than has historically been the case in many local authorities, where there are examples of schools languishing in special measures for many months, if not years.
Kevin Brennan
On that point, will the Minister confirm that every time an academy receives an “inadequate” Ofsted rating, it will be removed and given to another sponsor the very next day, in the same way that he proposes maintained schools should be academised or have an academy order issued the day after receiving that Ofsted rating? That would show he is serious about parity of treatment.
Mr Gibb
We are certainly taking swift action. The difference that the hon. Gentleman fails to understand is that a new system of academy chains is now developing. There are more than 400 academy chains of at least two academy schools evolving into successful chains. Some are taking time to become effective in their overall governance and school improvement support services. Where they are struggling, we take action to remove the sponsor or to insist that reform takes place.
We are trying to make the evolving system work so that we have a collection of effective academy groups and chains that we can see developing. We have Ark and Harris at the top of the performance table, but other academy chains such as Outwood Grange are busy developing effective models of how to run multi-academy trusts. I am optimistic and excited that, in the future, we will have a very effective governance system. Be in no doubt that where we see academies graded as category 4, we will take swift action with their multi-academy trusts. If we believe that they are not capable of managing their school improvement, we will take action to remove that sponsor.
Steve McCabe
I have an awful feeling that, in a little under a decade, we may well find ourselves saying, “We told you so,” as we recognise that the mad rush to academisation at all costs had some downsides that the Minister is blinded to at the moment. However, to return to special educational needs, he said that he is not against analysis but he does not want a proper, thorough assessment because that would be excessively bureaucratic. What will happen to children with education, health and care plans who are currently on the roll of maintained schools? Who will guarantee that the provisions in their plans are carried over in total to the new arrangement?
Mr Gibb
That is a good point. The law is clear: under part 3 of the Children and Families Act 2014 at section 43, academies are treated as maintained schools and so can be named in a pupil’s education, health and care plan, which means that that school—that includes academies—must take that pupil.
Steve McCabe
I apologise; perhaps I was not terribly clear. When a child already has an education, health and care plan, the maintained school that they currently attend will be listed. Without excessive bureaucracy, how will that be transferred across? Will we have to modify such plans? Who will be responsible for ensuring that that happens and that the plan is transferred in total to the new arrangements?
Mr Gibb
That is a technical point. My instinctive answer is that, of course, if an education, health and care plan names a maintained school that converts to be an academy, that plan will apply equally to the successor academy school. However, given the technical nature of that point, I will ensure that I have got my answer correct, so I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.
I hope that I have managed to deal with hon. Members’ concerns and that, on that basis, the hon. Member for Cardiff West will withdraw his amendment.
Kevin Brennan
We have had an interesting debate on this group of amendments, in which we have teased out some interesting points from the Minister. One is that when academy schools and chains are deemed “inadequate” by Ofsted, he is happy for them to evolve—I think that is the word he used—out of the situation. Evolution is the preferred option for academy schools that are found to be “inadequate” by Ofsted.
The Ofsted report on the Collaborative Academies Trust mentioned Lumbertubs primary school in Northamptonshire, which was a predecessor school before it was academised. It received grade 3 in its final inspection before academisation, which means that it was definitely requiring improvement; there is no question about that. However, in the school’s most recent section 5 inspection since academisation, it was given grade 4—special measures. The school was turned into an academy and went from a grade 3 to a grade 4.
Under the Bill, if that school were a maintained school, the Secretary of State would have absolutely no choice but to issue—the very next day, we have been told—an academy order for the school to be academised. That is a bit difficult when the school already is an academy and has gone from grade 3 to an “inadequate” special measures situation. Under those circumstances, it is allowed to evolve out of the situation in which it has been deemed “inadequate”. As I said on Second Reading, so much for the Secretary of State’s professed view that no child should be allowed to languish in an inadequate school for one single day. If it is an academy school, it is all right because it will have plenty of opportunity for evolution to take place—that is, by the way, if the school teaches evolution. Some of the schools being contemplated by some sponsors apparently have doubts about one of our greatest ever scientific achievements—the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. Anyway, we will leave that aside.
We have teased at least that point out of the Minister and have had a good knockaround with the amendments. So much more could be said, but I think we have said most of it. We want to move on to the debate on clause stand part, so I will not press our amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The clause places a duty on the Secretary of State to make an academy order for any maintained school that Ofsted has rated “inadequate”, whether by virtue of being in special measures or of being judged to have serious weaknesses. This removes any doubt about how we will intervene in failing schools: they must become academies with the support of an effective sponsor to provide the support and challenge necessary to turn that school around. The clause is therefore a crucial new power to strengthen our ability to deal with failure and to do so more quickly.
We are clear that becoming a sponsored academy is an effective way rapidly to transform a failing school. There are numerous success stories of failing schools being turned around by the leadership of a sponsor, and of the huge improvement that can make to performance. For example, Meopham school was judged inadequate by Ofsted in 2012. Attainment across all subjects, especially mathematics, was poor. The Swale Academies Trust took on sponsorship of the school in 2013 and appointed two new assistant headteachers who were both specialists in maths. Extra classes were introduced to support students. Ofsted described the impact of the trust as transformative and judged the school to be good in 2012.
By requiring the Secretary of State to make an academy order in respect of a failing school, the clause will make it automatic that failing schools must become sponsored academies. When a school is found to be failing, a transformation needs to be able to take place from day one. Our experience over the past five years shows that in many cases where it was most needed, transformation was delayed by unnecessary debate, delaying tactics and obstruction of a process. The Bill seeks to put an end to such delays, which do nothing to improve the quality of education that pupils receive.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister keeps referring to this as a new power. As I pointed out, the Secretary of State already has the power to academise. This is not a new power; it is a new restraint on the Secretary of State. It limits their power to take another action that might be the appropriate one when a school is found “inadequate” by Ofsted.
The Minister went on to describe academisation as an effective way—he did not use the definite article—which suggests there may be other effective ways. That is the case we have been making and he himself has accepted by saying that those ways could be used in the interim prior to the academy order finally taking effect. He went on to describe and give an example of where academisation has been accompanied by an improvement in the school’s performance. Earlier I gave an example of where academisation did exactly the opposite, where it resulted in the school’s performance declining, with the school going from category 3 to 4; that is, from requiring improvement to inadequate.
I want to make it clear that we are completely on board with the concept that, in certain circumstances, the use of a sponsored academy can be the right approach to school improvement. If there are the right sponsors and real quality, it can be a powerful way to turn a school around. However, the clause would place a requirement on the Secretary of State to issue an academy order the very next day, according to the Minister, no matter the circumstances or how many sponsors are available, their quality or whether they are to be trusted with a large number of schools.
Whatever their previous record, without their being vetted—another issue, Mr Chope—the Secretary of State must hand over the school, via an academy order, to an academy sponsor whatever the current circumstances. That means the Secretary of State does not have to take professional advice or worry about whether it is appropriate. The decision is, in effect, taken in advance under this clause. It is not surprising that there is opposition to the clause from all sorts of quarters.
I quote from the NASUWT briefing on clause 7 of the Bill:
“The lack of guidance on the face of the Bill on how the Secretary of State should exercise these discretionary powers could lead to uncertainty across the system and unacceptable variation between the ways in which different cases are handled. It should be a minimum expectation that these powers should be used in a way that is transparent and consistent. This clause seeks to apply an ideological ‘one size fits all’ approach to school improvement, regardless of local circumstances or evidence.”
That is exactly the point that we have been making. We gave copious examples of other forms of school improvement during the debate on the amendment. We think that the clause is not fit for purpose. The debate is not about whether academies sometimes work; it is about the proposition that they always work, and that nothing else ever works as well. In making those presumptions the Ministers are ignoring what the Select Committee said. The cross-party Select Committee—with a Conservative majority—in the previous Parliament called on the Government to “stop exaggerating” with regard to the success of academies.
“Current evidence does not prove that academies raise standards overall or for disadvantaged children.”
I am glad the Minister in his last remarks provided us with some new data we can get our teeth into, and we will enjoy doing so. Perhaps he could stick to that in future rather than the pointless comparisons that he sometimes makes.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector, said at the end of 2014:
“There could be little difference in school improvement under an academy chain or a council.”
He argued that,
“a new name and a breathless new motto”
was all that some schools received after exchanging local authority governance for a chain of academies.
The RSA Academies Commission found that,
“it is increasingly clear that academy status alone is not a panacea for improvement.”
It went on to say that,
“the evidence considered by the Commission does not suggest that improvement across all academies has been strong enough to transform the life chances of children from the poorest families.”
Kevin Brennan
I agree with everything the hon. Lady said in the first part of her intervention, and I am very pleased about the success of the intervention in her constituency that she talked about in the second part of her intervention. She said that that kind of improvement can take place in the maintained sector or under a sponsored academy programme. She was lucky that the Collaborative Academies Trust—those great experts who are supposed to take over and improve our schools—did not take over the school in her constituency, because if they did the school might have ended up in special measures. That example makes my point that we must not tether the Secretary of State to a particular course of action, which is what clause 7 does. Turning around an “inadequate” school requires the right course of action, with the right leadership, the right people and the right solution.
We need more evidence about the degree to which the fragmentation of what is intended to be a national system of schools is linked to the concerns my hon. Friends expressed about the treatment of special needs pupils and the socioeconomic segregation between schools. We need to look carefully at that. Professor Stephen Gorard of Durham University pointed out in his written evidence that we should be very careful about that fragmentation and ensure it does not cause socioeconomic divides and issues around special needs, which we spoke about earlier. On that basis, I ask my hon. Friends to join me in opposing clause 7 stand part.
Mr Gibb
The Bill is not driven by ideology but by tackling underperformance, and we are happy for local authorities such as Bristol to do their work. GCSE results in Bristol have risen for 10 years in a row. Ofsted has judged 85% of primaries and 90% of secondaries to be “good” or “outstanding” and 100% of nursery and special schools are now judged “good” or better.
Kevin Brennan
I am pleased to hear that, but the clause says that should a Bristol school have an Ofsted inspection tomorrow and receive an “inadequate” rating, the Minister would not be prepared to work with the local authority and an academy order would be granted the very next day.
Mr Gibb
Yes, that is right, because Bristol’s oversight of that particular school, of which it would have had oversight for decades, would have been proven not to be effective. We are not prepared to tolerate or risk a further decade of unsuccessful oversight. We are looking at underperformance. Where regional schools commissioners see high performance in schools, they are simply not interested in using their resources to intervene. That is the system to which we are moving.
Bill Esterson
I was pleased to hear the Minister praise a local authority for the quality of its support—I have not heard him do that often—but if Bristol or another local authority is doing a good job and an academy in that area is classed as category 4, would the Minister consider allowing the local authority to take over from the existing sponsor? The process seems to be moving in one direction only.
Mr Gibb
The school will have changed into an academy x months ago from that local authority. The local authority will have had the chance to improve the school but did not succeed, so the school then became a sponsored academy. If it fails, the wrong answer would be to send it back to the local authority. The right answer is either to ensure that the multi-academy trust is developing an effective school improvement service or to move the school to a new sponsor.
Bill Esterson
The Minister has forgotten what has been happening for the past few years. A large number of “good” or “outstanding” schools have been converted into academies. In fact, for a time, they were allowed to convert only if they were “good” or “outstanding”. If those schools end up in category 4, the logic of the Minister’s argument suggests that a good local authority should be able to take them over.
Mr Gibb
Those schools will have converted voluntarily and many still stand alone. Collaborating with other academies is the long-term answer even for stand-alone academies. That is happening. We now have 400 or 500 sponsored academies, many of which started life as “good” or “outstanding” schools. When a converter academy goes into special measures, we would expect it to collaborate and be taken over by a successful sponsor, because, as Ofsted said in its annual report at the end of last year,
“sponsor-led academies have had a positive and sustained impact on attainment in challenging areas”.
It is because of judgments such as that, and because of the experience of the academies movement, that we are determined that that must be the right approach to dealing with failure.
Turning to two of the points made by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, I can confirm that the technical answer I gave him regarding education, health and care plans is correct. Also, he said in an intervention that clause 7 has stripped us of all flexibility in all circumstances, but that is incorrect. Clause 12 gives the Secretary of State a power in certain exceptional circumstances to revoke an academy order made under proposed new section 4(A1) or section 4(1)(b) of the Academies Act 2010. The Secretary of State has the flexibility in some circumstances to revoke her own order, but we will discuss those rarefied circumstances when considering clause 12.
Question put, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kevin Brennan
What a shame—I really thought that we might have won that one!
Under the Academies Act 2010 there is a duty to consult on an application for academy status, albeit a fairly loose one, put on the governing body to consult who “they think appropriate”. Such a consultation can happen before or after an academy order is made and it is only on whether a school should be an academy. There is no such duty on the Department for Education, despite the fact that in many cases it will require the conversion to happen, nor is there any consultation on who should be a sponsor.
On schools eligible for intervention, the clause removes all requirements to consult, which is a familiar theme in the Bill. Earlier last month, we heard the Secretary of State present the Government’s true intentions in the Bill: it is seen as a way to
“sweep away the bureaucratic and legal loopholes previously exploited by those who put ideological objections above the best interests of children”—
otherwise known as parents. The objections she referred to are mostly those of parents with affected children and members of the local community. It really has come to something when parents’ genuine concerns about the Government’s rather dogmatic approach to schools policy are treated with such contempt by Ministers.
Amendments 47 and 48 would rescue the requirement to consult, which vitally gives a voice to the local community that the schools in question serve. It has been said that, under the clause, governors will no longer have a duty of care to their children; instead they will have a duty to implement Government policy, and that that in itself is an attack on freedom of speech. It is not surprising that governors around the country are concerned.
The National Governors’ Association said:
“The proposed Bill removes the requirement to consult parents, pupils and staff on the decision to change the status of the school, if the school is eligible for intervention and subject to an academy order. We accept in clear cut situations, school improvement should not be delayed, but in the interests of transparency, NGA suggests that the case of an academy order over and above other forms of interventions, in particular an IEB, should be made public.”
We know that the Department has a history of favouring closed-door policy making and believes that it always knows better than everyone else, so it is a slight inconvenience for the Department that we live in a democracy. The Government do not always know best, so we should not assume that they always do.
Mr Gibb
Clause 8 removes the requirement to consult where a school is eligible for intervention. An academy order will be made either under the existing section 4(1)(b) of the Academies Act 2010, where a school is eligible for intervention, or under the new section 4(A1), where an academy order must be made because a school has been rated “inadequate” by Ofsted. The effect of the clause is that, where a school is eligible for intervention, a consultation is not needed on whether it should become an academy, but a governing body will still need to consult if it proposes to convert to academy status by choice and is not eligible for intervention.
Amendment 48 would require the governing body to consult when a school is to become an academy as a result of intervention by the regional schools commissioner. The Bill makes it clear that any school judged by Ofsted to be “inadequate” will become a sponsored academy. In some cases, a regional schools commissioner may also require schools that are eligible for intervention for other reasons to become sponsored academies, such as where a school has met the coasting definition and the regional schools commissioner has judged that it does not have a sufficient plan to improve. Where a school is underperforming and an academy solution is required, we want the improvements in standards to begin immediately. The process should not be delayed by ongoing debate about whether the school should become an academy. An academy solution, with the support and leadership of an effective sponsor, is the best way to turn around that school.
Our experience over the past five years shows that, in many cases where it was most needed, transformation has been delayed by unnecessary debate, delaying tactics and obstruction of the process. Twydall school, for example, was judged to be inadequate in March 2014. The Department wrote to the school and to the local authority within five working days of the Ofsted judgment to outline that an academy solution should be considered, and in May 2014 the governing body voted to become an academy. Subsequently, however, there has been a series of drawn-out consultations, which have prevented a sponsor from being agreed and put in place. Between June 2014 and May 2015, Ofsted conducted four section 8 monitoring inspections and found that the education of pupils at that school has continued to suffer throughout the period of delays caused by consultation. The Bill seeks to put an end to such problems, which do nothing to improve the quality of education that pupils receive. Amendment 48 would serve only to defer those essential improvements, which is why I urge colleagues not to accept it.
The position is different for high-performing schools that wish to benefit from the additional freedoms that academy status provides. Such schools are currently required to consult on academy conversion. They should discuss that decision with staff, parents and others who have an interest, and they should take account of those views before entering into academy arrangements with the Secretary of State. Clause 8 makes it clear that that requirement will continue, but amendments 47 and 48 propose that that approach should change, and that the consultation by a governing body that proposes to convert voluntarily would have to take place before the school applies for an academy order, rather than, as currently required, before conversion is finalised—a later stage in the process.
There are good reasons why it is usually most appropriate for a formal consultation to take place after the academy order is made. Before the order is made, the governing body will prepare an application to the regional schools commissioner to convert to academy status, and that application may not necessarily be accepted. For example, the RSC may judge that a school that has applied to convert to being a stand-alone academy should instead join a multi-academy trust or benefit from the support of a sponsor. For that reason, it will generally be most appropriate to consult after the regional schools commissioner has considered the application. If the application is approved, the regional schools commissioner will make an academy order. This is an enabling order. It is a first step in the administrative process that a school will go through to become an academy. It acts as an agreement, in principle, that the school will be permitted to become an academy, but it is not a guarantee. There are further processes between an academy order being made and a school becoming an academy to work through, such as the arrangements for the transfer of staff, land and assets. By consulting after the academy order is made, the governing body has more details about the implications of conversion that will help inform the views of staff and parents.
The crucial decision-making point is when the school and the Secretary of State enter into academy arrangements, which is when the funding agreement is signed. It will therefore be more meaningful for schools voluntarily converting to academy status to consult about whether to enter into academy arrangements with the Secretary of State at that point in the process, so that staff and parents can give informed consideration to what is best for the future of the school.
Although the statutory consultation generally takes place after an academy order has been made, governing bodies are able to carry out some consultation before making their application, if they wish. For example, they may informally consult the staff prior to making an application and then consult more widely after the academy order has been made. Clause 8 does not prevent the first informal consultation from happening for schools voluntarily converting. I therefore do not agree that the approach to consultation proposed by the hon. Members for Cardiff West and for Birmingham, Selly Oak in amendments 47 and 48 is necessary or appropriate. I urge them not to press their amendments.
Kevin Brennan
We remain concerned about the withdrawal of consultation in the Bill for all sorts of reasons. It is not my intention to press the amendments to a vote, but we have laid our concerns on the record and they remain. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Kevin Brennan
I beg to move amendment 49, in clause 8, page 6, line 24, leave out “any” and insert “a majority of”
Currently, legislation does not require a majority decision of the Governing Body of a Federation to apply for a federated school to become an Academy. This amendment rectifies this position.
This is a probing amendment, which reflects the fact that legislation currently does not require a majority decision of the governing body of a federation to apply for a federated school to become an academy. It might be a sensible provision that the majority of the governing body of a federation applying for a federated school to become an academy should agree with that decision. If a majority of concerned governors oppose the academisation of a federated school, it seems that, superficially, the desires of that majority ought to be honoured. I should be grateful if the Minister would elucidate that point.
Mr Gibb
The amendment seeks to change the consultation process required for a federated school to become an academy. It proposes that the decision on who to consult when making an academy order application for a federated school should be made by a majority of the governing body, not simply by the governing body, as explained by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. The amendments would have no material effect because all decisions of a governing body, including who to consult, are already made by majority vote. Therefore, we resist the proposed amendment.
If, however, the intention of the amendment is to change not the consultation process, but the application process for a federated school, I can confirm that the Department has recently consulted on changes to regulations to require at least 50%—not 100%—of prescribed governors to approve an academy order application. The consultation closed on Friday 3 July and we are now considering the response. Any changes will be made to the regulations in September. Therefore, there is no need for the matter to be addressed through the amendment or in primary legislation. On that basis, I urge the hon. Gentleman to withdraw the amendment.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for that clarification. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
Clause 8 inserts into the Academies Act 2010 a new section 5 concerning consultation on academy conversion. The new section 5 preserves the requirement to consult on the proposed conversion in the case of schools that are voluntarily proposing to opt for academy conversion, and maintains the freedom of the school’s governing body to carry out such a consultation before or after the academy order, or an application for an academy order, has been made. As now, consultation must be with those the governing body think appropriate. The significant difference made by this clause is that the new section 5 provides that where the academy order is to be made because the school is eligible for intervention, there is no duty to consult.
Where a school is underperforming and an academy solution is required, we want the transformation to take place from day one; we do not want the process to be delayed through debates about whether a school should become an academy. Our experience, as I have said, is that in many cases where it was most needed, transformation was delayed by such debate, delaying tactics and obstruction of the process.
I have spoken already about the case of Twydall school. Another example in which the principle of conversion was agreed but the process became unnecessarily drawn out involved Bydales school in Redcar and Cleveland. That school was found by Ofsted to require special measures in December 2013, but did not benefit from a sponsor until February 2015. Outwood Grange, a high-performing sponsor with a strong track record, was identified for the school, but the governing body and the local authority were not supportive. The process was delayed while the local authority attempted to persuade others to sponsor the school, despite none of the alternatives having the experience and track record of Outwood Grange. That resulted in the process taking twice as long as it should have done, while the school remained in special measures.
Louise Haigh
Outwood Grange operates an academy in my constituency, and if Outwood Grange were about to take over another school in my constituency, I would want parents and pupils to be aware of its track record of governance of that school, because it has expelled a number of SEN pupils and pupils from backgrounds of high deprivation. Headteachers of other primary schools in my constituency have expressed grave concerns, as have staff at the school. I am particularly interested to hear the Minister give the example of Outwood Grange, given my experience and the experience of parents and pupils in my constituency.
Mr Gibb
I cannot comment on the specific example that the hon. Lady gave, but Outwood Grange as an academy sponsor is highly effective; and so far as the school that I cited, Bydales school, is concerned, it is still early days since Outwood Grange took it over, but the indications are that it is making good progress.
The Bill seeks to put an end to the delays that I have described. They do nothing to improve the quality of the education that pupils receive. We want the transformation of a failing school to begin from day one. However, this clause retains the requirement that where the governing body of a school is proposing voluntarily that it should become an academy, it must consult on whether the conversion should take place. In these schools, the governing body is expected to take account of that consultation process in deciding whether to go ahead with becoming an academy.
Kevin Brennan
Clause 8 represents an extraordinary departure from the normal processes of governmental decision making. The Secretary of State is empowered under this clause to make a decision without making any attempt whatever to listen to pupils, parents, teachers, governors, employers—anyone at all who might be thought to have some knowledge of the situation on the ground. In fact, concern has been expressed by the NASUWT in its briefing that the provision might breach article 26(3) of the universal declaration of human rights:
“Parents have a…right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.”
Of course, we know what the Secretary of State thinks of other people’s views, because her press release about the Bill said that
“campaigners could delay or overrule failing schools being improved by education experts by obstructing the process by which academy sponsors take over running schools.”
That is really the attitude expressed in the Bill to any concerns, or anybody who ought to be consulted. Of course, it is based on the absolute presumption that the Secretary of State’s view and solution is always best, but as we have demonstrated time and again during our debates, that is not always the case. To put it generously, there is no evidence that her case has been made and that academy conversion is more likely to lead to improvement in an inadequate school than adopting other school improvement approaches in particular circumstances. And there is plenty of evidence, from Ofsted and from the DFE’s own analysis of results, that there is enormous variation in effectiveness among sponsors. That is why, as we found out earlier, Ministers always mention good sponsors when talking about academies but never really emphasise the bad sponsors until we press them and make them do so. The idea that every sponsor who comes forward has some unique level of expertise is frankly not true.
What is most likely to improve a particular school in particular circumstances is a matter of judgment. Exercising judgment requires evidence, and gathering evidence means listening to those who have views. Dismissing those who have different experiences and different views is not an acceptable, or even a sensible, way to carry out any branch of government. It inevitably leads to bad decisions, and certainly worse decisions than would have been made in general, had they been made after obtaining the views of those who have some knowledge locally.
There is a case generally for consultation and a case for consultation on specific issues. Local communities should not have particular sponsors imposed on them without having some say in the matter. They are not just interchangeable; they have different and particular approaches to managing schools and the curriculum, and they have different records in terms of their effectiveness and of managing public money. Despite the strenuous efforts of Ministers to prevent Ofsted from inspecting academy chains, we know from Ofsted how inadequate some chains are. From the Select Committee evidence, for example, we know that one chain, the Kemnal Academies Trust, takes pride in having sacked 26 out of 40 headteachers and holding the axe over the heads of the rest, with targets to be met every six weeks. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Ofsted did not think much of its record.
Communities are entitled to say that they do not want this regime locally, and then there are the cases in which the proposed sponsor is given the job of carrying out the consultation. That is hardly a way of guaranteeing that the process is open and above board. It is wrong that it is done behind closed doors—not only in principle, but it makes the whole process of improving a school harder than it needs to be. A sensible Government negotiate and seek to persuade local people. They listen and are prepared to amend their views, and recognise that there is not only one source of wisdom. Schools are not lollipops to be doled out to Ministers’ friends, supporters and party donors. Government should not leave themselves open to the charge that they have favourites and will support them regardless of evidence to the contrary.
It may ultimately be that after consulting, the Government decide to carry on with their initial view. That is fine, but not to consult at all is wrong. On Second Reading, I thought my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) put it very well:
“Amazingly, the Bill says that parents should not be consulted, so the very people who know about a school will not be allowed to have a say. In this country, we consult, we do not dictate, and that is one of the key areas that judges will look at in considering whether a decision is lawful.”—[Official Report, 22 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 684.]
The Minister and the Government are opening themselves up to that kind of challenge. I agree with my hon. Friend and we will continue to pursue this matter as the Bill progresses, although we will not press clause stand part to a Division.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Consultation about identity of Academy sponsor in certain cases
Louise Haigh
New clause 3 goes a bit further than the amendments tabled by my hon. Friend. It amends the Academies Act to require that a certain number of people are consulted over an academy order in respect of any maintained school, including the chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills; registered pupils of that school; and any other persons that the Secretary of State thinks appropriate. The Government are not fond of consultation—that was made very clear by the 2011 legislation—but the official Opposition are big fans of democracy and accountability. We do not believe that they and school improvement are mutually exclusive.
The amendments are important because, as both sides of the Committee accept, there are good and bad academies. There are “outstanding”, “failing” and now “coasting” academies, and those terms apply to maintained schools as well. If pupils and parents do not have a say in whether their school becomes an academy, it is right that they should have a say in who runs it. If an academy chain such as the Harris Federation was going to run the school, that would be a very different story from its being run by a chain such as E-ACT, which has had so many schools removed from it.
It is important to include the chief inspector on the list of consultees, to ensure that as much information as possible is available, particularly given Ofsted’s press release last week. I know it has been referenced several times, but it is important to the Committee. It included information about the inspection of the Collaborative Academies Trust, which is sponsored by EdisonLearning. Nine academies are in the trust: three in Northamptonshire, five in Somerset and one in Essex. Ofsted found:
“Too many academies have not improved since joining the trust”
and that at the time of the inspection,
“there were not yet any good or outstanding academies in the trust.”
The amendment is important because if a school is to become an academy, parents, pupils and all other relevant stakeholders should have a choice in whether the academy is run by a trust such as EdisonLearning or perhaps a local federation, an outstanding local school that can sponsor schools or, possibly, a co-operative trust. If I were a parent—I assure the Committee that that is a thoroughly hypothetical situation—I would want a choice over which sponsor was going to run the school. I would want to know its background, as well as the governance arrangements, and to be given as much information as possible. I am sure that parents and children across the country feel the same. I hope the Minister will seriously consider the amendment and the new clause in his response.
Mr Gibb
I will take amendments 50, 51 and 52 and new clause 3 together. The amendments and the new clause relate to clause 9 and the consultation about the identity of academy sponsors.
For schools that have failed and have been judged “inadequate” by Ofsted, there should be no debate about whether urgent action is required. It will be secured through an academy solution with an effective sponsor. The regional schools commissioners will decide on the most appropriate sponsor to turn around a failing school.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Surely the question is whether the sponsor identified by the regional commissioner is necessarily the best sponsor. It may be that the people whom the Minister wants to exclude from the consultation have pertinent information. The Government have had to restrict 14 or 15 chains of sponsors from looking after schools. If they had had that information earlier, presumably they would not have got into such a mess in the first place.
Mr Gibb
Actually, those consultation were taking place, leading up to this point. We are trying to prevent formal consultation from delaying the process of conversion. I will give the hon. Gentleman an egregious example. In May 2012, Roke primary school in Croydon was given a notice to improve by Ofsted. DFE officials began discussions with the local authority and the school about it becoming a sponsored academy. Opponents reacted angrily, describing it as a “hostile takeover”. In April 2013, almost a year later, Ofsted revisited the school and put it into special measures. The move to academy status was heavily opposed, and a “Save Roke” committee was set up. Due to objections from opponents, the academy consultation had to be extended. At one point, the proposed sponsor, Harris Federation, received a batch of 100 questions to answer. A petition of opposition attracted 2,500 signatures, including some from Australia, for some reason.
The school opened as an academy, sponsored by Harris Federation, in September 2013. In summer 2014, its results had improved from 65% of pupils achieving level 4 in the previous year to 94%. In June 2015, Ofsted inspected the school and judged it “outstanding” in all areas. By becoming an academy, Roke truly has been saved, yet we delayed that whole process by at least a year—a year’s lost education for the children in that part of Croydon.
Steve McCabe
I congratulate the Minister on finding an example to support his argument. If I were the parent of a child who attended one of the schools that was going to be taken over—by, for example, the Djanogly Learning Trust, the Grace Foundation, the Landau Forte Charitable Trust, the Lee Chapel Academy Trust, the South Nottingham College Academy Trust or the Learning Schools Trust—would I not be entitled to say that I thought there was a risk in that trust being allowed to take over the school? The Minister is going to prevent that. In each case, if there had been consultation, the problems would not necessarily have arisen.
Mr Gibb
Except where underperforming schools have, in the past, been transferred to those trusts, there has been consultation. The hon. Gentleman is presumably asserting that those academy chains are not performing as well as they should. However, the decision about which academy group is responsible for an underperforming school will now be left to the regional schools commissioner, who knows the academy chains and the area and will choose the appropriate chain.
Kevin Brennan
By what logic would there be fewer failures in academy chains if we wiped away consultation?
Mr Gibb
It is not the success or failure of the process at stake. I am simply pointing out to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that the school acquisitions he cited took place with consultation. He may be critical of their outcomes, but they happened with consultation.
My objection to amendment 50 and new clause 3 is that they will delay the process. In the example that I cited in Croydon, a year of children’s primary school education was wasted. We would have had significantly more children getting good literacy and mathematics results if that process had happened when it was meant to.
Kevin Brennan
What about the academy chains that were appointed and failed those children? What about that waste? By what logic would that be less likely to happen if we do not bother to consult anyone?
Mr Gibb
The issue with consultation is time. If we take steps out of the process, we reduce the time. The issue of whether a particular academy chain is good or poor is one that we take swift action on. We take much swifter action now in dealing with underperforming academy sponsors than local authorities have in the past in dealing with underperforming schools, which in many instances—not all, but many—have languished in special measures for far too long. The whole academisation process is designed to speed up the process. Where we find that academy chains are underperforming, we take equally swift action to deal with the sponsors.
Steve McCabe
If the issue is time, why does the Minister not create a time limit? Why does he not issue guidance automatically excluding the signatories to a petition from Australia? Why does he not take normal, sensible steps, rather than denying people the right to express a view, and the right to peruse the information? That would deal with the question of time. He is denying people a voice.
Mr Gibb
We are denying campaigns such as the “Save Roke” committee that call measures to improve a primary school a hostile takeover. Such ideologically-driven campaign groups are interested not in raising the academic standards in schools but in delaying the process. They are ideologically opposed to the concept of academies. My understanding is that the Opposition are not ideologically opposed to the academisation process; so I would expect them to support measures to increase the speed of the process when a school is demonstrably underperforming.
Peter Kyle
The example that the Minister gave has resonance for me because in my constituency before the election there was a similar debate and similar protests about a school called Hove Park school. During the lunch break, I introduced the Minister to some of its students. The campaign was vigorous and campaign groups from outside the school community used it as a political football in many ways, and I share some of the Minister’s concerns about how that unfolded.
However, the point for me, as I said at the time, was whether it was possible to deal with people driven by ideology separately from parents, students and teachers who have their own views, wishes and concerns. It seems to me that we do not want to exclude and punish the school community because people campaign for ideological reasons from outside it. Does the Minister agree that it is possible to take that approach?
Mr Gibb
I think that the hon. Gentleman is right that the community should be consulted when the governing body of a “good” or “outstanding” school wants to pass a motion that it should convert to an academy. I think that there is also a case for discussing an improvement plan with staff and governors of schools in category 3, rather than 4—coasting schools—where the regional schools commissioner wants to try measures short of academisation,.
However, when Ofsted puts a school into special measures it is an extreme thing. It affects a tiny minority of schools. When schools have reached that point of underperformance, we must act so swiftly that there is simply not time to engage in formal consultations. Why was the “Save Roke” committee not established a few years earlier, to try to deal with the underperformance of Roke primary school? I could say the same about Hove Park. It was a pleasure to meet year 9 students from Hove Park academy, if I have the name right.
Mr Gibb
I understand that that school voluntarily applied to convert to academy status, so it would not fall under the measures in question. I could tell from the teachers I met that it is a good school that has voluntarily sought the freedoms that come with academy status.
Amendment 51 would require the Secretary of State to consult about the identity of a sponsor when there was a change of sponsor. In the vast majority of cases, the sponsor matched to an underperforming school would be successful in delivering the necessary improvements. Those successes include large sponsors such as REAch2, which sponsors the largest number of primary academies in the country. Its schools have improved, on average, at three times the national average rate. I pause in case the hon. Member for Cardiff West wants to jump in. He has not, so that is another fact that we can treat as established.
There are also successful local sponsor arrangements. For example, in the Tall Oaks academy trust, White’s Wood academy, an outstanding academy with a national leader of education as its head teacher, turned around Mercer’s Wood, which was previously in special measures. Since joining the trust, that school has been judged “outstanding”, too.
However, in the scenario where a sponsor is not improving the school, or not doing so fast enough, or where there is any other concern about the sponsor’s ability to support that school, we will not hesitate to take steps to intervene. Regional schools commissioners, acting on behalf of the Secretary of State, can issue warning notices demanding urgent action to bring about substantial improvement. Any such notice will set out what must be done to improve in a given timescale.
Mr Gibb
Amendment 53 covers the scrutiny of academy sponsors and the academy trusts that they establish. Sponsors are high-performing schools or other organisations that have been approved to sponsor underperforming schools through the academy trusts that they have established. The trusts become responsible for the governance and the educational and financial performance of such schools, in place of the former governing body and local authority.
In amendment 53, the Opposition propose that the Secretary of State should be required to approve such bodies before they are allowed to take on sponsored academies. In practice, the Secretary of State already subjects sponsors and trusts to thorough scrutiny through regional schools commissioners, which consider all new sponsor applications in their regions and approve those that demonstrate that they have the capacity and expertise to turn failing schools around. For example, in October 2014 a member of the north of England headteacher board did detailed work with a prospective sponsor to help it to make sure that its governance structure was fit for purpose. As a result, the sponsor revised its governance arrangements and proposed a small strategic body with a good mix of skills, which the regional schools commissioner judged to be entirely appropriate for a sponsor trust.
The regional schools commissioner applies a rigorous assessment process, advised by the headteacher board of outstanding academy leaders, to ensure that prospective sponsors have a strong track record in educational improvement and financial management, and that the proposed trust has high-quality leadership and appropriate governance. Since 2013, the Department for Education has published monthly a list of approved sponsors. All those non-statutory arrangements have been in operation since September 2014, and I see no reason to place the process into legislation now.
The amendment also proposes that the chief inspector at Ofsted should be required to provide approval. Most academy sponsors—75% of all new sponsors since January 2014—are schools, so they are already subject to Ofsted inspection, and the regional schools commissioner considers their latest Ofsted report as part of the assessment. Ofsted plays an important role in holding schools and sponsors to account. The arrangements for focused inspections of schools within multi-academy trusts provide the opportunity to report on the quality of education support that approved sponsors give to the academies in their trusts. I do not believe that there is any need to give the chief inspector a further role and add a layer of unnecessary bureaucracy to an already rigorous process.
In amendment 54 Opposition Members propose that the words “academy sponsor” should be defined in the Bill, and they offer a definition. The term does not appear in legislation, and we see no need to introduce such a definition, given the success of current arrangements.
A point that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak raised in our debate on the previous clause relates equally to this matter. He read out a list of sponsors, all of which have been paused by regional schools commissioners, so no further brokerage of schools to those sponsors will take place pending improvements in their school improvement service. That process is already in place, and I am absolutely convinced that the system allows us to approve and monitor sponsors, so we do not need to change the legislation.
Kevin Brennan
It is interesting to hear the Minister confirm that all the academy chains and sponsors on that list have been paused by regional schools commissioners. Presumably, those sponsors were approved, and deemed to have the capacity and expertise to turn around schools, in the first place by the same regional schools commissioners and Ministers. That makes our point for us: regional schools commissioners and Ministers do not have the capability to assess accurately whether sponsors have the capacity and expertise to turn around schools. If they had, they would not have had to pause them before taking on any more schools, and we would not have had the failures of academy sponsors and chains that we heard about earlier.
There are real issues with the current arrangements, despite the Minister saying how wonderful and successful they are, and it is absolutely sensible that there should be a rigorous assessment process beyond the current process, which he says is rigorous but which is creating the need to pause the particular academy sponsors on the list that my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak read out.
Mr Gibb
Can I just point out to the hon. Gentleman that there are 735 approved sponsors, and that 597 of them are responsible for 2,675 academies and free schools? When he cites one, two, or half a dozen academy chains that have been paused, it is a very small number out of 735 approved sponsors. I think that 14 is the number that were paused, and the number on the list that he was going to read out is a very small proportion of the total number.
Kevin Brennan
At least my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak gives out examples in 14s rather than in ones and twos, as the Minister does when he wants to prove his case. I thought that my hon. Friend was being very generous in providing all those examples; he might have held some back for later on in our proceedings and just leaked them out one by one, in the same way that the Minister does. I do not think that the Minister has proved his case.
The point is that, yes, there are a large number of approved sponsors, but that number will become even larger, and therefore we might expect that unless there are some changes in the quality of the assessment of academy sponsors, the number of failures and the number of pauses in future will increase by the same proportion; there is no reason for us to believe that that is not the case. Therefore, there is every need for a better level of quality control, which is, of course, what we propose in the amendments.
Once again, I think we have won the argument, but I sense that we might not win the vote if we pressed the matter to a vote at this stage. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The clause inserts new section 5A into the Academies Act 2010, which imposes on the Secretary of State a duty to carry out a consultation when, under section 4(A1), my right hon. Friend makes an academy order in respect of a foundation or voluntary school with a foundation before entering into academy arrangements in relation to the school. In such a case, the Secretary of State must consult about who she proposes should be the sponsor, and that consultation must be with the trustees, the foundation and, where the school has a religious character, the appropriate religious body.
For schools that have failed and been judged inadequate by Ofsted, there should be no debate about whether transformation via academy conversion is needed, and urgent action is required. A new start is needed, to be secured through an academy solution with an effective sponsor. That is why we have sought through this Bill to impose on the Secretary of State a duty to make an academy order in such cases.
However, we appreciate the great contribution of the foundation schools, which is why there is an exemption for church schools and dioceses that have taken on the role of supporting struggling schools.
On that basis, I urge that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Kevin Brennan
The clause limits the requirement to consult about an academy order to foundation schools and voluntary schools with a foundation. We see no reason to limit consultation in that way, for the same reasons that we have outlined in debates about other parts of the Bill. We will not vote against the clause standing part of the Bill, because at least it allows for some consultation; there is a little bit left after the Minister has swept through the consultation landscape in the way that he has proposed. At least there is some consultation and we hope that it will be expanded further on Report or when the Bill reaches another place, given the sheer illiberality of sweeping away consultation. However, on that basis, we will not vote against the clause standing part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 9 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 10
Duty to facilitate conversion
Kevin Brennan
Amendment 55 is a probing amendment and seeks to discover the Government’s thinking behind why some people are placed under a duty while others are not. It is not necessarily about whether the Opposition think that the duty itself is the correct approach. The other two amendments are a consequence of amendment 55.
Clause 10 places a duty on a school governing body and the local authority to “take all reasonable steps” to help the conversion of a school when forced academisation is required under clause 7 or when the Secretary of State chooses to go down the forced academisation route for another reason. If the Secretary of State notifies a school and local authority that they want a specific academy sponsor, the school and local authority must “take all reasonable steps” to help the Secretary of State and the sponsor to reach a funding agreement.
Clause 11 enables the Secretary of State to give specific directions to school governing bodies and local authorities about the forced academisation process, presumably when they think that the local authority or school governing body are not taking reasonable steps. Such directions relate to section 8 orders regarding the transfer of staff, contracts for photocopying, cleaning, school dinners and so on, moveable property such as minibuses, intellectual property used by the school and part 1 of schedule 1 orders to do with the transfer of land owned by the local authority and not by a governing body, foundation body or trustees, which is covered by part 2 of schedule 1 of the 2010 Act.
Bodies other than the maintained school governing body and the local authority have a role to play in expediting academisation, the most important of which is the owner of the school building and land when they are not owned by the local authority or a foundation school without a trust. Voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools and foundation schools with a trust are likely to be occupying land owned by bodies that may not be directly concerned with the academisation process. In particular, the bodies listed in new section 5A(2) to the Academies Act 2010, as inserted by clause 9, are bodies that either own the school land and buildings or have an interest in preserving the religious identity of the school on forced academisation, including the trustees of the school, the person or persons appointed by the foundation governors and, in the case of a school with a religious character, the “appropriate religious body”—defined for Church of England and Roman Catholic Schools as the diocesan authority, but all faith schools are included.
I accept that this is a complex area, but we need clarity. There was a time when any proposal by the state to remove Church-owned land occupied by Church schools from Church control might have resulted in some considerable controversy, but times have changed. Sorting land ownership on academisation can be a lengthy process that has nothing to do with the school governing body or local authority. These amendments are designed to probe why such bodies are not included in clauses 10 and 11, without accepting the premise of the clauses.
When the ownership of land is transferred, lawyers get excited and get involved. Lord Nash agreed with me when I raised the matter. He said:
“Lawyers do argue on those issues”.––[Official Report, Education and Adoption Public Bill Committee, 30 June 2015; c. 90, Q211.]
He commented that the delays were not “extensive”, but they are delays nevertheless. Perhaps the Ministers can quantify those delays. One of the law firms with a financial interest in such things is Lee Bolton Monier-Williams, which has helpfully placed an article on its website that analyses the issue:
“Neither the school governors of voluntary or foundation schools (acting in their capacity as the trustees of the GB as a charity) nor the site trustees of such schools may be required to facilitate conversions or directed to do so if to comply would result in a breach of their trust. This is not recognised in the Bill as it stands and appears to us to be a major defect.”
In other words, these lawyers see the difficulties arising from the dual responsibility of school governors who are charity trustees when the Secretary of State selects the sponsor in a forced academisation process. They continue:
“Secondly the question will we think inevitably arise as to whether an academy (or a school about to be converted into an academy) may lose its religious character without closing and being re-opened as a new institution. The DfE has imposed ‘as is’ in respect of gaining or losing a religious character with regard to conversions under s4(1)(a) but we suspect may want to remove a religious character without closure in respect of conversions under s4(1)(b) or under the new s4(A1).”
New section 4(A1) of the Academies Act 2010 is about the forced academies route. The briefing goes on:
“The Bill certainly reads as though this is either expected to be the case or the issue has not been considered and will become a problem. We argue most strongly that removal of religious character without closure is not possible and that the power in Regulations for the Secretary of State to remove independent schools from the list of those designated with a religious character cannot be exercised if the objective criteria governing designation still apply.”
As the Government have not sorted out that issue, lawyers are likely to get involved. That means delay and cost, which are likely to be borne by the local authority as the maintaining authority, so there will be an overall increase in costs to the public purse.
Ministers should know what is going on and what is delaying academisation. Helpfully, the Commons Education Committee inquiry asked about the academisation process and faith schools. Regrettably, only three local authorities responded. One of those authorities, Kent, which has many Church schools, commented:
“The proposed sponsor sometimes makes considerable extra demands upon the LA and its financial and capital resources towards the end of the process of transfer of a school to an academy chain. This slows down, and can hinder the conversion process and can interfere with the urgent school improvement work required.”
That sounds like the point in the academisation process where lawyers start to make their money, and it could result in significant delay to an academy order. That delay is caused not by the issues outlined by the Minister—ideologically driven people, otherwise known as parents—but by the legal minefield involved.
Kent County Council’s response to the Education Committee continues:
“Considerable public resource and LA Officer time is expended unnecessarily waiting for sponsors to decide to proceed with their initial interest.”
Perhaps it is the sponsor who should have a duty under the Bill to take reasonable steps. By imposing a duty on one party to take reasonable steps in the academisation process, the Government seem to be granting a charter to the other party to make unreasonable demands at a late stage in the process. What estimate has the Minister made of the cost of legal fees incurred when lawyers make last-minute demands on behalf of sponsors? How does he see the Bill affecting that trend in the future?
Mr Gibb
We are now considering clauses 10 and 11. Clause 10 inserts a new duty on governing bodies and local authorities to facilitate the conversion of a school into an academy. Clause 11 inserts a new power to give directions to governing bodies and local authorities when progress is slow and direction is needed. Both the duty and the power are placed on governing bodies and local authorities because they are the responsible bodies that must take swift action to ensure an academy can open.
The hon. Gentleman’s amendments seek also to place that duty on any trustees of the school, the person or persons by whom any foundation governors are appointed and, in the case of a school with a religious character, the appropriate religious body—he has lifted the list of consultees from new section 5A(2) of the 2010 Act. The amendments will place duties on independent charitable bodies, such as dioceses or historical foundations, that do not have a direct relationship with the Secretary of State and are not accountable to Government. In this context, placing a direct duty on independent bodies would be disproportionate. Local authorities and governing bodies are in a different position as public bodies that are funded by the state. The Bill does, therefore, place them under a duty to facilitate conversion. Putting an additional duty on trusts, dioceses and charitable bodies would be unnecessary as their interests are already engaged through their stake in the school’s governing body, which will be under a duty to facilitate conversion. I hope that, with that explanation, the hon. Gentleman will withdraw the amendment.
Kevin Brennan
Well, I did say that they were probing amendments. I have raised very real issues, which I hope the Minister will take some time to ponder. I do not know whether he—having received some in-flight refuelling—wishes to say anything further on it. I would have paused a bit longer if he did, but he does not. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Kevin Brennan
Amendment 57 seeks clarification about the meaning of “reasonable step.” Amendment 58 requires direct parliamentary accountability for the use of the new power by the Secretary of State to direct bodies to carry out unspecified actions to facilitate the conversion of a school to an academy. Amendment 60 requires the Secretary of State to pay for the cost to local government of her directions, and we have already heard how those costs for academy conversions can spiral—I understand, sometimes into six-figure sums.
Amendment 57 is about the loose phrase, “reasonable step”. What may seem reasonable to Ministers may not be quite so reasonable to someone else. The amendment seeks to put some limit on what can be required by saying that it should not require additional expenditure by a school or local authority.
Amendment 60 is designed to protect the financial position of the local authority by requiring the Secretary of State to meet revenue costs and any loss of capital assets in the process. Amendment 58 says that, when the Minister is making a specific direction, it should be done with transparency and with the possibility of parliamentary and public scrutiny. Those directions are likely to be about property, and significant amounts of money will be at stake. It is essential that there is a proper process for ensuring that public assets are protected. I am sure that the Public Accounts Committee and the National Audit Office will be interested to ensure that as well.
Mr Gibb
The amendments relate to clauses 10 and 11. Clause 10 inserts new section 5B into the Academies Act 2010, ensuring that, when a failing school has been issued with an academy order, the school’s governing body and local authority
“must take all reasonable steps to facilitate the conversion of the school into an Academy.”
Those steps include working with an identified sponsor.
If that does not happen, clause 11, which adds new section 5C to the Academies Act, allows the Secretary of State, via regional schools commissioners, to direct the governing body or local authority to take specified steps for the purpose of facilitating that conversion into an academy. The effect of the two clauses is to require local authorities and governing bodies to facilitate, proactively, the conversion of failing schools into academies, removing the roadblocks, which have sometimes delayed necessary improvements to underperforming schools. The measures will not place any additional burdens on the governing body and local authority but will ensure that they work efficiently to progress an academy conversion.
Amendment 57 seeks to ensure that a local authority or governing body does not incur additional costs as a result of the duty in the Bill to facilitate academy conversion. I recognise that there are costs to the schools involved in academy conversion. The Department contributes towards those costs by providing a grant. High-performing schools converting so that they benefit from the freedoms of academy status receive £25,000. Failing schools that become sponsored academies receive a higher start-up grant. The value of that grant depends on whether it is a primary or secondary school, and on the scale of change required. We currently expect the local authority or governing body to fund any additional costs not met by the grant. That will remain the case under the Bill.
Suella Fernandes
Does my hon. Friend agree that the clause allows governing bodies and local authorities to be involved in the conversion process, which is key to the local connection and will only bolster the leadership and transformation to academy status?
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend raises an important point. This is about requiring involvement where it seems to be being resisted. She is right to make that point.
It would be wrong to introduce a new requirement for the Secretary of State to compensate local authorities in these circumstances. The clauses do not require the local authority or school governing body to do anything more than would be required for an academy conversion. As a school converts to an academy, it will be granted a 125-year peppercorn lease to operate on its land. The land continues to be used for educational purposes, and the local authority retains the freehold. In view of that, I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendments.
Kevin Brennan
I thank the Minister for that full explanation. As I indicated, these amendments were intended to probe what the Government meant by “reasonable steps” to facilitate conversion. Once again, the Minister used examples of successful academies, but I emphasise that things can go wrong from time to time. We hear news that the much-lauded Perry Beeches III academy—part of the Perry Beeches academy chain in Birmingham visited by the Prime Minister; there are copious photographs of that occasion—has been rated “inadequate” by Ofsted.
Superficial examples of superheads are all very well, but we need to look at the evidence. We all know how from time to time particular academy sponsors might superficially present an effective PR case for their school, so we need to be careful about requiring people to take reasonable steps when they might have reasonable concerns.
On the basis that we have registered our concern on this matter through the debate on these proposals, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
With your permission, Mr Chope, I will speak to clauses 10 and 11, as the powers that they take are inextricably linked. The purpose of the two clauses is to tackle the long delays and blockages that governing bodies and local authorities can create in securing a sponsored academy solution. Where a school is underperforming and an academy solution is required, we want the transformation to take place from day one. We do not want the process to be delayed unnecessarily.
Our experience is that governing bodies and local authorities have used delaying tactics, including long debate. One example of progress being unnecessarily delayed was when the City of Derby academy opened in place of the failing Sinfin community school in 2013. The school has come out of special measures and improved its GCSE results in the first year of its academy status. Ofsted confirmed that since becoming an academy, the quality of teaching has improved, pupils are progressing more rapidly and pupil behaviour and attendance has improved. Unfortunately, the turnaround was held up by a prolonged campaign that sought to delay the school becoming an academy.
Clause 10 will ensure that, where regional schools commissioners make an academy order in respect of a school that is eligible for intervention, the governing body of that school and the local authority must take all reasonable steps to facilitate the conversion of that school into an academy. Clause 10 will also ensure that where the regional schools commissioner tells a governing body and a local authority that they are minded to enter into academy arrangements with a specific sponsor in respect of that school, the governing body and the local authority must take all reasonable steps to facilitate the making of academy arrangements with that sponsor.
In the majority of cases, the effects of clause 10 should ensure that governing bodies and local authorities take the necessary action to ensure that a sponsored academy solution is in place quickly, but clause 11 is still necessary in the event that they do not. Where an academy order has been made in respect of a school that is eligible for intervention, clause 11 allows regional schools commissioners acting on behalf of the Secretary of State to direct the governing body or local authority to take specified steps for the purpose of facilitating the conversion of a failing school into an academy. Under section 8 of or part 1 of schedule 1 to the Academies Act 2010, a direction may in particular require the governing body or local authority to prepare a draft of a scheme relating to the transfer of property.
Clause 11 also allows regional schools commissioners to specify the period within which any steps for facilitating the conversion must be taken. Where a governing body or a local authority fails to act according to the duties in clause 10 and is not taking all reasonable steps to facilitate conversion, the regional schools commissioner can more specifically direct them to take certain steps by particular deadlines. It is crucial that regional schools commissioners have the powers in both clauses 10 and 11 to prevent delays in transforming failing and underperforming schools and to ensure that improvement is brought about as swiftly as possible.
The Chair
Following the Minister’s lead, I am happy to accept a joint debate on the two clauses.
Kevin Brennan
I am also happy to accept that approach. Clauses 10 and 11 are intended to avoid delay in academisation, but when the Government are asked for evidence on the details of delays beyond one or two of their favourite anecdotes, Ministers can be surprisingly unforthcoming.
Recently, I asked a question of Ministers and received an all too typical non-answer in the form of a written answer from the Minister for Children and Families—I presume that the Minister for Schools is a bit too grand to answer written questions these days. The question, at column 2649, was:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools whose governing body had made an application for an Academy Order on or before 31 May 2012 had not been included in an Academy Agreement with her Department by 1 June 2015”—
in other words, after three years.
I asked another question, at column 2650:
“To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools which had an approved Academy Order on or before 31 May 2012 had not been included in an Academy Agreement with her Department by 1 June 2015.”
So, my questions covered the schools that had made an application and those that had had their academy order approved.
The answer that I received was as follows:
“We publish a list of open academies and academy projects in development at”—
and then there was a Government web address. The answer continued:
“The list includes all schools that have applied to convert and those that have received an academy order. It is updated monthly…Since the Regional Schools Commissioners took up their positions in September 2014, the individual decisions to approve or decline an academy order have been published on their website”
and there was another helpful hyperlink, before it continued:
“Schools may withdraw from the academy process at any stage prior to signing their funding agreement.”
I thought, perhaps naively, that my question would have been much easier to answer than it turned out to be for Ministers and their civil servants. If I asked you, Mr Chope, how many cups of tea you drank yesterday—I do not know whether you drink tea, but it is a hypothetical example—you might say three or five, or, if you could not remember exactly, you might say, “Somewhere between four and six.” I would not expect you to refer me to your website to try to find the answer, or even to someone else’s website, as I was referred in the second part of the answer to my question.
As my question to you would have required, Mr Chope, the question I asked Ministers simply required the correct number to be given as an answer. After digging through all these websites, doing the work of Ministers and civil servants for them, it was possible to find the answer, if one had to hand the 2012 list—which has long since been removed from the DFE website so is not readily available at the hyperlinks provided. The answers to the questions about how many schools had applied for an academy order but had yet to be converted, and how many already had an academy order but had yet to be converted, were 160 and 95 respectively.
Why has the Minister not properly analysed the real reasons for all these delays? They are not all caused by ideological individuals—otherwise known as parents. Such analysis might show that the real reason is not orchestrated campaigns but departmental bureaucracy, complications of ownership, private finance initiatives and, as I pointed out earlier, sponsors using expensive lawyers to get one over on the taxpayer, which is what is actually going on in many cases. Perhaps clauses 10 and 11 are further examples of legislation being made up on the hoof in order for the Government to be seen to be doing something tough, based on prejudices, rather than on the evidence that I was seeking to illicit from the Department through my written questions.
Kevin Brennan
I would expect that, which is why I did not ask about those schools that are in the process of converting; I asked for those that had taken more than three years to get to this stage, and I ended up with those figures. I am not sure whether they are right—perhaps the Minister has the actual figures—but from digging around myself, I believe them to be 160 and 95 respectively. In the case of the second group, that is three years after an academy order has been granted. I put it to the Minister that that cannot be down to the reasons that he has given. That is why we are legislating here, for the most part.
Kevin Brennan
My hon. Friend is right. Indeed, every academy that is rated “inadequate” is the responsibility of the Secretary of State, and is now the responsibility of the regional schools commissioners. Their failure has to be accounted for according to the logic of the Government’s approach.
I simply ask, given the rhetoric of the Secretary of State, how on earth the Schools Minister can square such rhetoric with the reality of the clause. Is it not the case that the freeing up of governors mentioned in the Secretary of State’s speech was just empty rhetoric? Removing their freedom is the reality.
Mr Gibb
I sense that the hon. Gentleman simply does not have the same sense of urgency to deal with underperformance as we on the Government Benches have. I accept that he wants to improve schools and that he accepts the academy programme as a good programme in certain circumstances, but given the accumulation of his amendments and the points that he made in his speech, I sense that he does not have the impatience and sense of urgency that we have to improve the education of children in schools that are underperforming. That is where we will have to agree to differ.
Kevin Brennan
I will not agree to differ in this sense—I am impatient, but I am also impatient with reckless decision making that can lead to unsuitable academy sponsors being selected, as we have already seen. That is why we need good-quality decision making. We will agree to disagree on many things during the course of the Bill, but I am glad that he acknowledges that we can both agree that we want to see schools improve rapidly.
Mr Gibb
The policy that the hon. Gentleman proposed of some form of combined local authority approach will not deliver the sense urgent improvement that we absolutely have to have in our schools.
May I also address the hon. Gentleman’s point about the numbers? I will ask my officials to check his figures to see if they are correct and to get to the bottom of what they represent.
Mr Gibb
Superficially, it appears that some of those schools that are taking more than three years to go from an academy order to a funding agreement are actually schools that have voluntarily converted. They might have had the academy order, but have not finished—perhaps there are concerns about land or all kinds of other issues. I do not know. We will get to the bottom of that. To the extent that those are underperforming schools where there is some resistance, that provides an argument for us to take the powers to push the process forward faster.
Kevin Brennan
We can probably expedite things by saying that we will both be interested to see the breakdown of those figures and the reasons for the delays.
Mr Gibb
Good. On the face of it, however, it sounds like an argument in favour of the measures that we are taking in the Bill to improve the speed with which schools are moved from an academy order to a funding agreement. That is what, in particular, the measures in clauses 10 and 11 seek to do by requiring local authorities to get their act together and to provide all the required information about pensions, land transfers and so on. For that reason, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will support clauses 10 and 11 stand part.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 10 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 11 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered, That further consideration be now adjourned.— (Margot James.)
Education and Adoption Bill (Fifth sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan
I understand that we will have the pleasure of your company all day today, Sir Alan. We are very happy to serve under your experienced chairmanship.
This morning we continue the process of steadily reversing towards the beginning of the Bill, having disposed of clause 13 last Thursday. We are now considering clause 2. Clause 13 was about the adoption part of the Bill. We now move to the element that deals with schools. As we consider amendments 14, 15 and 21, I want to observe what the House of Lords Constitution Committee said last week about the Childcare Bill that is progressing through Parliament. I have a copy of the Constitution Committee’s report on that measure, and it is apposite to the amendments to the Education and Adoption Bill. At first I thought the report had nothing to say about the Childcare Bill, because when we open it, the pages are blank, but if we look carefully, on the first page there are three short paragraphs about it. These words are relevant to the Education and Adoption Bill and the amendments:
“In our last report, published in June 2015, we drew attention to a concerning trend—a tendency by the Government to introduce vaguely worded legislation that leaves much to the discretion of ministers.”
That might describe the provisions that we are discussing today. It goes on to describe the Childcare Bill as
“a particularly egregious example of this development.”
That is why that Bill is now in a little trouble in the other place.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
This Bill is very specific. The hon. Gentleman will have had details of the regulations that we intend to table on the definition of “coasting” schools. The clauses that we will debate are very specific and do not leave much discretion to Ministers. As for the definition of “coasting”, detailed regulations will be scrutinised by a Committee of this House.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for his intervention. I understand why he felt the need to put that on the record. When this Bill makes its short journey through Central Lobby to the other end of the building, I am sure their lordships’ Constitution Committee will look carefully at our deliberations and at the content and detail of this Bill. They will also note the way in which we have been conducting our business here.
We are on clause 2, having completed clause 13. Detailed regulations were not available in time for Second Reading or the beginning of Committee stage but were published at 10 pm on the evening before evidence sessions began. Our witnesses did not have the opportunity to look at the draft regulations before giving evidence, other than the one who stayed up for hours in the night to study and attempt to make sense of them. Those witnesses might have views about the constitutional propriety and legislative sense of doing business in that way, but we shall have to wait and see.
The amendments look at the period within which a governing body must issue warning notices, with the purpose of probing Ministers’ intentions. A warning notice is currently issued by a local authority to tell a governing body that it must take specific action, or further intervention will occur. The Bill provides that the Secretary of State can issue a warning notice to a maintained school directly. That notice will give the governing body roughly three weeks—15 working days, in effect—to take the action specified. The Bill does not set a time limit, and Ministers’ intentions are therefore not entirely clear. I hope that the Minister will be able to clear that up in his response to the amendments.
For example, Ministers might envisage much more significant actions being required during the period of a warning notice. If so, warning notices might be in place for much longer than currently envisaged. If that is the Government’s intention, will the Schools Minister elucidate the maximum time he envisages a warning notice lasting? We would like to have a reasonable idea of what period we are talking about. Is it four weeks, rather than the current three weeks? Is it six weeks, 12 weeks, six months, a year or years? As the Bill is drafted, we simply do not know what Ministers’ intentions are. Can the Minister give some examples of why it might be necessary to have lengthier warning notices than are currently issued? If that is Ministers’ intention, why is it necessary?
On the other hand, it is possible that the opposite is true. With the Bill effectively removing the right to object or appeal against warning notices, we want to be sure that the warning notice system is used fairly and transparently. In other words, do Ministers envisage a shorter period than 15 working days for a warning notice? Again, as the Bill is drafted, we do not know.
To probe that, amendment 14 proposes that the minimum period of compliance be restored, so that we can at least know Ministers’ intentions. If a longer period is appropriate, we would want the flexibility to achieve it, provided that we have the clarity I mentioned from Ministers about their intentions. If governing bodies are to engage seriously with the process of warning notices, they need assurance that they have the appropriate amount of time to do so properly.
There is only so much a school can do in 15 working days. Simple changes of rules or procedures could be possible within that period, but developing a complex action plan takes time, and implementing it takes even longer, as does negotiating with potential partners. It cannot be done quickly. That is why the requirements of a warning notice need to be reasonable, though no doubt Ministers always believe that they are reasonable in their actions. That is why amendment 15 would introduce reasonableness.
An example of a warning notice from Ministers is that sent by Lord Nash to the Gloucester academy on 16 December 2013. Hon. Members might be surprised that Ministers occasionally send warning notices to academies. Ministers usually say that academies are the answer to everything and that academising schools will solve all the problems of the education system. Surprise, surprise, it turns out that academies are also schools and just as likely to fall into problems as any other school, because they are institutions made up of human beings. They are not infallible and changing the name on the front of the institution from school to academy does not guarantee that they will not have to be subject to an intervention.
Kevin Brennan
It does, although we will deal with that in more detail when we get to the part of the Bill that relates to coasting schools. I am not surprised that my hon. Friend is anxious to reach that element since it is clause 1 and he might reasonably expect that by now we would have reached it. We are in a curious time warp, which the Government introduced, whereby we have travelled forward in time to clause 13, are now back to clause 2, will gradually move through clauses 2 to 12 and eventually re-enter the time machine to go back to clause 1 next week.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister is keen on science and I am sure his purpose is to remind the Committee that time is relative. That is why we are enjoying time being shifted around by the Minister rather like in “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban” where a time-turner is given to Hermione so that she can attend more than one lesson at once. That is another proposal that the Minister might possibly be considering.
Before we get too confused about where we are, I referred to the intervention that Lord Nash issued to an academy, because currently Ministers can issue warning notices to academies. The clause would give them the ability to issue warning notices to maintained schools directly.
Here is that example of the warning notice. The school in question, the Gloucester academy, had one month to respond to it. The Committee might think that sounds rather generous, compared with the 15 working days that I mentioned earlier as the period in the amendment and in current legislation. In fairness, the Minister gave that academy one month, although that included Christmas and new year. Perhaps it was not quite as generous as it first sounded.
Under that warning notice the requirements were:
“Implementing the necessary strategies to (1) improve the quality of teaching and learning, including the quality of feedback and assessment and the use of teaching spaces in the new building, (2) improve the attitudes of a significant proportion of students towards their learning, (3) improve the knowledge of faculty leaders about appropriate use of additional funding to support those relevant groups of students, (4) improve staff morale”.
These could all be said to be reasonable things to expect a school to undertake under a warning notice. I have no objection to any of those proposals—they all seem eminently sensible—but a new timetable also had to be written by the beginning of the January term. Anybody who has, like myself, been involved in timetabling —albeit my experience was in an analogue age—knows how complicated that is. It is not just a case of drawing numbers on squares on a board in the senior staff room; it involves having the right staff for the right lessons at the right time and not clashing with anybody else. The timetable had to be written by the beginning of the January term and specialist teachers found for every class in every year group, all within the period of the warning notice.
Nowhere does it say what level of progress would need to be made within the one-month compliance period. There is no indication of the expectation of the level of progress that could reasonably be made within this period. Neither does the warning notice offer, as one might expect that it would, any support or advice as to how all these things might be achieved in a school that, we must assume, already lacks capacity to improve itself; otherwise, it would already have been in a position to have done so. It seems to me that it is necessary for a warning notice to set reasonable targets, as we have set out in amendment 15. By requiring actions that are reasonable, schools can be given targets that are precise and genuinely achievable within the compliance period.
Kevin Brennan
Yes. I apologise for not having that answer to hand myself. I am sure that if the Minister does not have that number before him or in his mind, he will—through the well-established process of parliamentary in-flight refuelling—be able to obtain that information by the time he gets to his feet.
Kevin Brennan
We are, as ever, mightily grateful to the Minister for his remarkable memory. I thank him for the almost magical way in which he brought that figure to mind for us.
Will the Schools Minister explain what capacity there will be within the offices of regional schools commissioners to have the ability to issue and carry through warning notices if, indeed, that is how he envisages the process? Would he elucidate a little more the process and the involvement of regional schools commissioners in the ministerial issuing of warning notices? In the oral evidence session, we heard about the capacity constraints on regional schools commissioners. Is the Minister able to tell us more about that? I look forward to his responses and to any other contributions from members of the Committee. Does he agree with us that in clause 2 it might be reasonable to set out the minimum reasonable requirements?
Mr Gibb
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan, as we begin the clause-by-clause scrutiny of the schools elements of the Bill following thorough scrutiny of clause 13 last week. The Bill gives regional schools commissioners and local authorities the power to intervene to secure swift action in schools that are not providing children with the quality of education that will enable them to meet their potential. There are several ways that underperformance manifests itself in our schools and the Bill ensures a strong strategy for dealing with each of the situations that can affect schools and lead them to underperform.
The key legislation is the Education and Inspections Act 2006, which gives local authorities, and in some circumstances the Secretary of State, the power to intervene when schools are underperforming. The Committee will remember that this legislation, introduced by the last Labour Government, only found its way on to the statute book because the Conservative Opposition voted for it. Had we not done so—had we abstained or voted against the Bill—it would have fallen. It was a piece of principled opposition, under the leadership of the then newly elected Leader of the Opposition, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witney (Mr Cameron). In my judgment, it was a key decision that led to the election of the Conservative-led coalition in 2010. If I were giving advice to the Labour Party to help it win an election in the future, I would say that it needs to look at the lessons that we learned after 2005 and to adopt that approach to opposition. Though, of course, I am not here to give such advice to the Labour Party.
Clause 2 amends section 60 of the 2006 Act. As currently drafted, that section gives power to local authorities to issue a warning notice to schools when there is a real concern about standards, or the safety of pupils or staff at a school is threatened, or there has been serious breakdown in the way that the school is managed or governed. This is what section 60 is designed to address, but the grounds for intervention are different from those for failing schools—those judged inadequate by Ofsted—which are set out in sections 61 and 62 of the 2006 Act. They are also different from the powers that we are seeking in order to tackle coasting schools, which have been touched on briefly in this debate and which would appear in proposed new section 60B of the 2006 Act, introduced in clause 1 of the Bill. Coasting schools are automatically eligible for intervention.
The purpose of clause 2, which allows for the issuing of warning notices where there is concern about the performance of a school, is to give the same power to the Secretary of State that currently exists only for local authorities. The clause thus changes the words “local authority” in section 60 to “relevant authority”, which is defined as including the Secretary of State as well as the local authority. This relevant authority would be able to issue a warning notice to the governing body of a school. Critically, the clause allows regional schools commissioners, on behalf of the Secretary of State, to issue such a warning notice rather than having to wait for the local authority to do so.
Despite the existence of these powers, 51 local authorities have never issued a warning notice to any of their schools. Where action is needed, because a local authority has failed to act or has acted ineffectively, it will now be possible for regional schools commissioners to move quickly and directly. A warning notice gives a school the opportunity to show that they can make the necessary changes but, if they cannot, regional schools commissioners and local authorities can take further steps.
Kevin Brennan
I am sure that the Minister has anticipated what I will ask. If his concern is that 51 local authorities have not issued warning notices to any of their schools, yet he took the power in the 2011 Act, which amended the 2006 Act, to enable the Secretary of State to direct them to do so, why has it happened on only four occasions?
Mr Gibb
The power to direct a local authority to issue a warning notice was included because a high number of local authorities—51, as I said—have never issued warning notices. The power is complex and time-consuming, because we have first to direct a local authority to consider issuing a warning notice and we can only do so where it refuses. Also, the local authority is still able to make a judgment on its compliance with a warning notice, even when directed to do so by the Secretary of State. There have been circumstances in which an obstructive local authority that does not want to intervene can block the process. That is why we are introducing these powers for the Secretary of State to intervene directly without having to go through the indirect process of directing a local authority.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister says that local authorities have obstructed that process on occasions. Will he give us some examples, so that we understand why the position is so pressing that the Minister has to legislate in this way?
Mr Gibb
I was giving a hypothetical example of where a local authority could obstruct—[Interruption.] I understand that there may be circumstances where a local authority can obstruct and will endeavour to find specific examples to give to the Committee.
It is clear from the way that the Bill is drafted what has to happen when the Secretary of State issues a direction to a local authority to issue a warning notice: the secondary process has to be gone through. Of course, the key issue is that the local authority then judges whether a school’s governing body has complied sufficiently with that warning notice. We want to sweep away those intermediary steps so that we can take swifter action to deal with underperformance of schools.
I understood from the opening remarks of the hon. Member for Cardiff West that there was agreement in the Committee and that the Labour Opposition wanted to take swift action to deal with underperformance. If, as it appears, there is no desire by the Labour Opposition to intervene swiftly in schools that are not providing the quality of education that a young person needs, it would be good to get that on the record.
Kevin Brennan
As the Minister has directly challenged me, let me say that, of course, we want swift and appropriate action to be taken: that is our position. He has to explain to us why the clause is necessary, but as yet Committee members—certainly, Labour members—have not been convinced by his arguments, not least because he is unable to give us any examples of obstructionism under the current process, and because the powers to direct local authorities to issue notices already exist. We are yet to be convinced.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
If the Minister does not have examples of local authorities that have been obstructive, will he give examples of situations where he would have liked to issue an order but could not do so, because of the difficulty and complexity involved?
Mr Gibb
I am sure there are plenty of examples of underperforming schools where this provision would have been helpful. We are trying to avoid the situation in schools such as Downhills, where assiduous campaigning prevented standards from being improved and tried to prevent academisation. As a consequence of introducing measures, there has been a huge improvement in the quality of education that young people there receive. We are taking these powers to deal with those kinds of issues, to act directly, not indirectly, and ensure that we can take action swiftly.
Let me deal with the amendments. Amendment 14 would amend clause 2 by introducing a minimum compliance period of 15 days for a warning notice. Under current legislation, there is a fixed 15-day period within which governing bodies are required to comply with a warning notice, regardless of why it was issued. This restricts the use of notices in many cases, so it makes sense to give schools more time, in certain circumstances, to bring about the necessary change. In other instances, of course, more urgent action is needed.
Under the changes that the Bill proposes, we will remove the requirement for compliance with a warning notice within 15 days. Regional school commissioners and local authorities will be able to set timescales for compliance on a case by case basis. We expect that flexibility to be supported by local authorities as well as regional school commissioners, given that these changes will undoubtedly make warning notices a more effective tool and therefore more likely to be used.
There is a need for flexibility in setting a compliance period in some cases. Local authorities and regional school commissioners might want to allow more time for improvements to show up—for example, in exam results. That could be when a school was on a downward trajectory but new leadership had been brought in, or where a national leader of education is working with a school. In those cases, regional school commissioners and local authorities would have greater confidence and would want to review the impact before any further action was considered. On the other hand, regional school commissioners or local authorities might in some cases want to set the compliance period at less than 15 days—for example, to address a breakdown in leadership and governance or a threat to the safety of pupils and staff. Here there may well be circumstances where a local authority or a regional schools commissioner cannot wait 15 days to see whether a governing body will act to address an issue. Amendment 14 would take away the flexibility for regional school commissioners or local authorities to act swiftly in some of the most urgent cases.
Kevin Brennan
I appreciate the clarification about both the longer and shorter period. One of my questions was whether the Minister envisages any maximum length of time during which a warning notice could be hanging over a school. By the same token, does he envisage a minimum period in which it will be reasonable to comply, even in the instances that he has outlined of an emergency?
Mr Gibb
We do not envisage a maximum period. There are certain powers in the 2006 Act, for example, the power of the Secretary of State to direct a governing body to enter into arrangements or the power to suspend delegated budgets. There is a two month period within which the powers can be used if there has been a failure to comply with a warning notice, but that is not quite the same thing as a period in which to comply with a warning notice. We want flexibility for local authorities and regional school commissioners to act more swiftly than within 15 days—or, in terms of compliance, less swiftly, when a longer period is needed to demonstrate that standards have improved.
Amendment 15 would amend clause 2 to state specifically that governing bodies can be required to take only reasonable action to remedy matters identified in a warning notice. I can understand the hon. Gentleman’s concern that regional school commissioners and local authorities should act reasonably when issuing warning notices. However, I can reassure him that the Secretary of State is reasonable and always acts reasonably. I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point that we cannot assume that every future Secretary of State will be as reasonable as my right hon. Friend. We have to prepare for the worst, such as the prospect—unlikely though it is—of a Labour Secretary of State. Let me reassure Opposition Members that the Secretary of State and the regional school commissioners acting on her behalf have a common law duty to act rationally and reasonably—the same common law duty that applies to local authorities. It would be unlawful for them to require a governing body to take any action that a governing body could not reasonably be expected to carry out.
Kevin Brennan
Am I right that the Minister is proposing to the Committee that, rather than ensure that the test of reasonableness is contained in the Bill, he would prefer that this was fought out in the courts, perhaps in some sort of lengthy dispute about whether the Secretary of State or regional school commissioners had acted reasonably? That is the very thing I thought he was trying to avoid with this Bill.
Mr Gibb
It would not make any difference whether the phrase was in the legislation or we were relying on common law. This is a long-established common law principle, on which there is a whole raft of case law. It is not necessary for it to be in the Bill because it applies to all legislation on the operation by public sector bodies of these kinds of powers and duties. It should also be borne in mind that regional schools commissioners are exercising the Secretary of State’s powers and the Secretary of State is accountable to Parliament for any decisions that regional schools commissioners make.
Amendment 21 aims to restore the definition of the term “working day” to the Bill. The reference to working days in current legislation exists only to help with the interpretation of the fixed compliance period of 15 working days. As the Bill proposes to remove this fixed period, there is no need to define working days. Regional schools commissioners and local authorities will now be able to define their compliance period in terms of months or end date, for example, as well as days, whichever is clearest and most relevant to the circumstances. On the basis of those explanations of the purpose of this part of clause 2, and our response to the amendments, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel that he does not need to press them.
Kevin Brennan
I thank the Schools Minister for his response. I should have mentioned, as he rightly did, that amendment 21 is purely a technical amendment that it was necessary to table because of our proposal to restore the minimum time period for complying with a warning notice.
In some ways, the Minister’s contribution raises more questions than answers, and we need to ponder those further. He said that we were considering the Secretary of State’s acquisition of this particular power because local authorities had been obstructing the current process. As I said, that process was introduced by the amendments to the 2006 Act that the Schools Minister made in 2011 to enable the Secretary of State to direct local authorities to issue notices. It would be concerning if local authorities were deliberately obstructing the law passed through Parliament in 2011 so, perfectly reasonably, I asked the Minister for examples of when and how local authorities had carried out obstructionist tactics to try to get in the way of the Secretary of State exercising her lawful power of instructing local authorities to issue warning notices. He was not able to give us an example.
We are legislating here. This is the law of the land we are creating, so we ought to be able to say to Ministers, “If this is your justification, show us the practical real-world examples of where there has been genuine obstruction of Ministers exercising their lawful power.” If that were demonstrable in any serious manner, we would, as reasonable people, have to take that very seriously indeed when taking our views on the clause and the Bill. However, he was not able to give us an example, even after a reasonable pause for in-flight refuelling, so I am concerned by the justification that the Minister has for the clause. Can he provide compelling evidence that what he said is correct—that there is genuine, systematic obstructionism that prevents the Secretary of State from being able to exercise her lawful power in this area?
The Minister alleged that local authorities were obstructing the Secretary of State’s power to instruct them to issue warning notices. Following that, he perhaps slightly gave the game away about whole swathes of what the Bill is about when he expanded further and remarked—I think that this is an accurate quote, but I am sure that Hansard will check—that the intention was to “sweep away…intermediary steps.” What that actually means is to wipe out locally and democratically elected voices and institutions from the whole process. That is not because there is any systematic evidence of obstructionism in the process by those locally and democratically elected institution because, despite the Minister’s allegations, he could not provide us with a single example of that happening, let alone any systematic evidence.
Mr Gibb
Clause 2 also enables local authorities to issue warning notices more efficiently and quickly, so it does not sweep away the involvement of local authorities in dealing with underperforming schools. It helps local authorities to act more swiftly, and it also enables the Secretary of State to do that more swiftly, through the regional schools commissioners.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for that intervention, but “sweep away intermediary steps” were his words, not mine. It was he who made the allegation that local authorities—to which he now says he is keen to give more power—were actually an obstruction in this process, and that that was why the Secretary of State needed to take further powers. The picture becomes even more confused as a result of what the Minister says.
Mr Gibb
Let me help the hon. Gentleman. Section 60(1)(c) of the 2006 Act assumes that, in relation to the powers of local authorities, the governing body could make representations to the chief inspector of Ofsted
“against the warning notice during the initial period”.
That is an intermediate step, and we are sweeping it away for local authorities just as much as for the Secretary of State.
Kevin Brennan
I have a feeling that we will return to that, perhaps when we discuss the next group of amendments or others down the line, but the Minister’s statement about the reason why the Government are taking these powers for the Secretary of State to be able to issue warning notices directly, albeit by using regional schools commissioners, still stands on the record. Incidentally, regional schools commissioners are individuals or bodies that have no description in statute, as far as I am aware. They were invented without the then Secretary of State feeling a need to put the proposal in legislation and to bring it before Parliament. Nevertheless, the power to issue these warning notices, as envisaged in the clause, will be devolved on behalf of the Secretary of State.
Mr Gibb
We have had quite an instructive debate. It is clear from the tone and nature of the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, and how he introduced them, that there is not the same determination among Opposition Members to tackle underperformance in our schools as there is among Government Members. What drives this Government—indeed, what drove the previous coalition Government—is a determination to raise education standards in every school, so that every local school is a good school, which means taking powers to tackle underperformance wherever it exists. When we talk about social justice, we mean ensuring that every young person has the best education that they deserve. That is what the powers are about; that was what the whole of the previous Government’s reform programme was about; and it is what this Government’s reform programme is about.
This is also about one nation. There are pockets around the country where some local authorities are presiding over schools that are letting young people down year after year. We want to ensure that we tackle schools in those local authority areas, which is why the Secretary of State is taking the powers through the Bill.
Kevin Brennan
It really does not do the Minister any credit to characterise the proper scrutiny of the powers that he and the Secretary of State have taken as in some way suggesting that the Opposition have any less concern than him about raising standards or, indeed, social justice. It would probably make a lot more sense and save us a lot of time if he were to acknowledge that we are all sincerely trying to raise standards and to promote social justice, and that it is perfectly legitimate to ask probing and detailed questions about whether Ministers’ powers will be effective in that mission.
Mr Gibb
I am pleased to have elicited that response. We do need to work together to ensure that there are high standards for all our young people in our schools.
In his careful scrutiny of the clause, the hon. Gentleman raised the question of cases in which there has been obstruction by local authorities. There have been very few cases, as we have issued only four notices. In the case of Henry Green school in Coventry, we directed the local authority to give a warning notice. Not only did it refuse, but it launched a judicial review against the direction from the Secretary of State. Over time, the school’s results improved, so we agreed not to continue with that direction. However, we maintain that the action was lawful and justified at the time. It is a relief that the school’s standards improved as a consequence of what happened.
The process has been cumbersome. We have first to direct a local authority to consider issuing a warning notice. We can direct the local authority only when it refuses, so that is a step that delays matters. The local authority is then responsible for judging whether the school has complied with the warning notice, even when it has been directed to do so by the Secretary of State.
Steve McCabe
I recall the Minister’s colleague last week extolling the virtues of judicial review. Is the Minister seriously saying that if an authority decides to seek a judicial review, that is evidence of the authority being obstructive?
Mr Gibb
Of course judicial review is a perfectly valid and reasonable system to check the actions of the Executive, but it seems odd to use that power when action is being taken to try to improve standards in a primary school.
I want to address the issue about capacity. In the previous Parliament, 1,100 schools became sponsored academies, which is one of the reasons why 1 million more pupils are in good and outstanding schools today than was the case were in 2010. The fact that we have already issued 107 warning notices to academies demonstrates that regional schools commissioners have the capacity to tackle underperformance. They are advised by bodies made up of heads from their areas. Advisory bodies are attached to all the regional schools commissioners. The commissioners have the discretion to decide whether a warning notice is required and they draw on the knowledge of their headteacher board.
John Pugh
I listened carefully to the Minister’s exchange with the hon. Member for Cardiff West about the redistribution of powers that the Bill facilitates, especially the powers of local authorities and the Secretary of State. I think he said—he will correct me if I am wrong—that the powers of local authorities à propos governing bodies to deal with representations are implicitly increased by the Bill. Will he clarify that point?
Mr Gibb
I am grateful for that intervention. Clause 2 changes the reference to “local authority” in the 2006 Act to “relevant authority”, which covers the local authority and the Secretary of State. The other changes that we are making to section 60 therefore apply to the local authority and to the Secretary of State. I cited earlier that the original section 60(1)(c) of the 2006 Act states that a maintained school was eligible for intervention if
“either the governing body made no representations under subsection (7) to the Chief Inspector against the warning notice during the initial period or the Chief Inspector has confirmed the warning notice”.
Subsection (7) of the Act is deleted by clause 2. That provision was introducing delay in tackling underperforming schools, and we are removing it, not just for the Secretary of State, but for local authorities.
Mr Gibb
I am not sure that I have understood the hon. Gentleman correctly. I wonder whether he would reiterate that. I do not think that anybody is in a weaker position than before. Section 60 is about issuing a warning notice to a school. It is not the same provision as clauses 1, or clause 7, under which an academy order is issued automatically for schools in Ofsted’s category 4. This is about schools that are not in category 4, but about which there is concern on the part of the local authority or the Secretary of State, or the regional schools commissioners. The provision enables them to take action that may lead to discussions with the school. We hope that everyone will work together with local authorities and the regional schools commissioners, and with the school’s governing body, to try to bring about rapid improvement of the problems causing underperformance.
If there are no further interventions, I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West asks leave to withdraw the amendment.
Kevin Brennan
As I mentioned, we do not intend to press the amendments to a Division. At some point, I suppose that we should explore a little bit further the single example that the Minister has given of obstructionism by a local authority. Although I understand that the school in question improved without the warning notice coming into effect, it will be interesting to find out more details about that case. I am sure that, during the Committee’s proceedings, the Minister will provide all the other examples that have led him to think it necessary to legislate in this way, rather than providing just one example of a local authority’s thinking that a warning notice was not necessary. Perhaps it had already taken action or thought that the Secretary of State was exercising their power incorrectly. Judicial review exists so that individuals and corporate bodies may challenge the Executive if they think powers are being used inappropriately, and it is then for the law to decide whether they are correct.
We are not, thank goodness, in a country where Ministers can simply direct people on any matter in a way that they see fit, with no legal challenge available for people if they think that the Executive’s power is being used inappropriately. I should hope that, in this anniversary year of Magna Carta, all Committee members from all parties subscribe to that principle; otherwise, we are all in trouble.
The Minister made a rather political point—I do not object to his making political points: we all do—claiming that Labour Committee members do not have the same objectives and do not want social justice and school improvement. I spent 10 years teaching and was privileged to work with young people, trying to do exactly that. That remark is unworthy of the Schools Minister. I hope that he accepts that, even if we disagree sometimes about how that should be achieved, all of us are trying to enable young people and children to fulfil their potential and play a full part in our society.
The objectives may be the same, but it is up to the Government to justify their solution and to argue for and prove to the Committee and Parliament, and the country, that their proposed solution is best. That is why we are here and why the Minister is here. He must continue to do that throughout our proceedings.
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Kevin Brennan
We should all be concerned to ensure that any school, whatever its character, delivers on behalf of its pupils, and that these interventions take place. We support academisation as one means of school improvement, but we simply say that it should not be used exclusively as the only way to bring about school improvement.
I would welcome a much more level playing field in the debate on this. Now that 60% of secondary schools are academies—the Minister has pointed that out several times—the whole issue of school improvement in academies will become bigger and bigger. If the answer to a failing school is to academise it, we need to know in much greater detail what the answer ultimately is to a failing academy. That is going to be a live debate during the passage of the Bill and in this Parliament.
Amendment 23 relates to clause 3. New Members may be surprised to know that the way we do things in this place means that from time to time we debate amendments to other clauses if they relate to the amendments contained within a previous clause, but we may decide upon them at a later stage. At this point we are debating clause 3; although, technically speaking, it occurred slightly later in the Bill, it has been grouped here. It removes the requirement that the Secretary of State must be informed about a section 60A warning notice in order to probe why the Government think it necessary to legislate that the Secretary of State should be informed.
The National Audit Office report of 30 October 2014, “Academies and maintained schools: Oversight and intervention”, made it clear that the Department for Education does not know in any detail what is happening in schools. Perhaps there are times when it needs to get out of the way a bit and allow others who do know what is going on in local schools to do a proper job—that was the view expressed in the NAO report. That view is shared not only by Labour Members but by Conservative representatives at a local level, so it would be extremely useful to hear the Minister’s response to that and to our amendments.
Mr Gibb
One aim of the Bill is to simplify the complex process of warning notices. The current process for performance standards and safety warning notices is set out in section 60 of the 2006 Act, which is the section that clause 2 of the Bill amends. The current process for teachers’ pay and conditions warning notices, to which some of the hon. Gentleman’s amendments apply, is set out in section 60A of the 2006 Act. That is the section that clause 3 seeks to amend. The Bill seeks to improve the effectiveness of both types of warning notices by freeing up the time scale for compliance, as we discussed when we debated the previous group of amendments. It enables the Secretary of State to give performance standards and safety warning notices and it removes the process by which governing bodies could make representations against the warning notice, which had drawn out the process in the past.
The changes to the time scale for compliance are being made both to performance standards and safety notices and to teachers’ pay and conditions notices. The Bill sets out in clause 2(2)(e) that where the Secretary of State has issued a performance standards and safety warning notice, the local authority cannot then issue one of its own to the school in question. That change is not about preventing local authorities from issuing warning notices. In fact, this legislation deliberately retains the power for local authorities to issue warning notices. As I said when we debated the previous group of amendments, it improves the flexibility and efficiency of the process for local authorities as well as for regional schools commissioners. We know that 51 local authorities have never issued a warning notice. Where local authorities have been inactive or less effective than we would wish, we want regional schools commissioners to be able to step in quickly. In cases where that is necessary, it is right for a local authority’s power to issue a warning notice to that school to be frozen, preventing the school from being subject to potentially conflicting requests from two different statutory bodies.
Bill Esterson
I am curious about something that the Minister just said. He said that this improves the ability of local authorities to issue a warning notice. Yet clause 2(2)(e) says:
“after subsection (4) insert—
“(4A) If a local authority are notified that the Secretary of State has given a warning notice to the governing body of a maintained school the local authority may not give a warning notice unless or until the Secretary of State informs them that they may.”
I do not understand how that makes it easier for a local authority to issue a warning notice.
Mr Gibb
Because clause 2(2) is all about how the conflict of two different bodies issuing warning notices is resolved. Where a local authority has issued a warning notice and there is no conflict, it is now more flexible and easier for it to do so. Clause 2 is about regional schools commissioners intervening in cases where they are unhappy that the local authority has not taken sufficient action to deal with an underperforming school, or where a local authority has intervened but has done so in such a way that the regional schools commissioners, as advised by the headteacher boards, are unhappy that sufficient progress is being made or the right action is being demanded by the local authority. The purpose of that paragraph is to remove the conflict of powers.
Kevin Brennan
I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central. I did not realise that he was seeking to intervene again. I am sure he will do so in a moment.
I wanted to clarify what the Minister just said. Exactly what happens to a local authority warning notice when the Secretary of State, through the regional schools commissioner, issues one as well?
Mr Gibb
Clause 2(2)(e) is very clear. It says:
“(4A) If a local authority are notified that the Secretary of State has given a warning notice to the governing body of a maintained school the local authority may not give a warning notice unless or until the Secretary of State informs them that they may.”
It goes on to say:
“(4B) If the Secretary of State gives a warning notice to the governing body of a maintained school, any earlier warning notice given to the maintained school by the local authority ceases to have effect from that time.”
It is very clear in the Bill, which should please the hon. Gentleman. He is keen for these things to be in the Bill and those provisions are explicitly stated with admirable clarity.
Bill Esterson
The Minister still has not dealt with the point I raised. The Bill clearly states that the local authority is depending on the decision of the Secretary of State, as he said. I do not see how that makes it easier for a local authority. It seems to me that that is giving the local authority a massive hoop to jump through by having to rely on the Secretary of State first.
Mr Gibb
Well, no. In normal circumstances, if a local authority is concerned about the standards in a particular school in its area, it can issue a warning notice under section 60. If this Bill goes through, we will have made that easier because there will be no appeal to the chief inspector. The regional schools commissioners will only intervene in those circumstances if they are unhappy about the quality of the warning notice and the action that has been recommended and demanded by the local authority. In most cases where a local authority is issuing a warning notice—and unfortunately there are 51 local authorities that have never done so since the power to issue warning notices was introduced—if the regional schools commissioner is unhappy, then they will intervene. If they are happy with what is happening, they will not intervene: they will be happy that the local authority is taking the necessary action to deal with an underperforming school.
Steve McCabe
I notice that this is the third or fourth time that the Minister has cited the example of 51 local authorities not issuing warning notices, in order to persuade the Committee that there is a problem here. Would he concede that in those 51 authorities there have been many negotiated action plans which have resulted in satisfactory outcomes, and therefore there has been no need for warning notices?
Mr Gibb
That is an assertion that the hon. Gentleman is making. What I do know is that in a number of local authorities, the overall level of educational attainment and progress is significantly lower in those local authorities than it is in others. That is the problem that we are seeking to address.
I return to the amendments tabled by the hon. Member for Cardiff West. The changes to clause 2 would mean that regional schools commissioners could begin to tackle underperformance or serious concerns about the issue of management or tackle issues that relate to safety swiftly, without having to rely on the local authority to act. That also means that regional schools commissioners would be able to act without having to go through the complex process of directing the local authority to consider and then to issue a notice. These processes have such uncertain outcomes that they have been used on just four occasions, as we have debated in the last group, with little success in driving improvements or bringing schools into eligibility for intervention where necessary.
Amendments 16 and 17 seek to ensure that teachers’ pay and conditions warning notices are unaffected by the changes we wish to make to the performance standards and safety warning notices. The amendments proposed say expressly that a pay and conditions warning notice already in force would remain in force despite the regional schools commissioner having issued a performance standards and safety warning notice.
The amendments also propose that a local authority that is prevented from giving a performance standards and safety warning notice by virtue of the RSC having issued one, could still give a pay and conditions warning notice. I hope that I can reassure Opposition Members that it is not necessary to make such changes, because the Bill already does what the amendments purport to do. The type of warning notice that clause 2 applies to is clearly identified in the first sentence of clause 2, which says:
“The Education and Inspections Act 2006 is amended as follows”.
It talks about the performance standards and safety warning notice in the next subsection. Nothing in the Bill therefore removes the effect of a previously issued teachers’ pay and conditions warning notice, nor does it stop a local authority from subsequently issuing one, even where the regional schools commissioner goes on to give a performance standards and safety warning notice to the school. They are separate issues under separate sections of the 2006 Act.
Turning to amendment 18, I believe that the hon. Members for Cardiff West and for Birmingham, Selly Oak, are seeking to ensure that a school is not subject to simultaneous warning notices, which may be conflicting and will certainly be confusing. I understand that intention, which is why the Bill already proposes to suspend a local authority’s power to give a school a warning notice where the RSC, the regional schools commissioner, has notified the local authority that it has given such a notice. However, the Bill does not propose to provide for a corresponding suspension of the regional schools commissioner’s new powers, as drafted in the Bill, to give a warning notice where a local authority has already given one, as amendment 18 proposes. That is because the new power for the regional schools commissioners to act and give warning themselves is intended for where local authorities have failed to act, or there are delays putting at risk plans for swift school improvements.
We want local authorities to be able to continue to give their own warning notices and to do so effectively. If they did so effectively, there would be no reason for the regional schools commissioners to take action themselves and no need to prevent them from doing so. But recent experience shows that there are too many examples where local authorities have been too reticent to issue warning notices. I cited the 51 local authorities, but there are 28 local authorities that have never issued a warning notice or installed an interim executive board.
Kevin Brennan
Rather than local authorities failing to issue warning notices, which we have already discussed, surely what the Minister is saying is that the regional schools commissioner’s warning notice would trump the local authority’s warning notice, because it was deemed to be inadequate. Can he give us some examples of local authority warning notices that are deemed to be inadequate where the power for the regional schools commissioner to trump those warning notices would be appropriate?
Mr Gibb
If the hon. Gentleman got out a little more, he would know that there are local authorities around the country that have standards that are clearly lower than those of other local authorities serving the same demographics as those local authorities. That is what we are trying to tackle in this Bill—giving the regional schools commissioner power to deal with local authorities that have over a period of years failed to provide the quality of education that we want for our young people.
Kevin Brennan
I shall have to give up my hermit’s lifestyle and get out a little bit more often than I do.
The Minister avoided my point by having his little dig at me. My point was about the examples he will cite. Where are the examples of where local authorities have issued warning notices, where it would be necessary for the regional schools commissioner to step in and trump them with their own warning notices? I do not dispute that there might be examples of where that is necessary; I simply ask the Minister to provide some for the benefit of the Committee, some of whom may not get out as much as he does.
Mr Gibb
I will endeavour to do so during the debates. From looking at the performance tables and the performance of various local authorities, it is clear that some are not issuing warning notices, and many local authorities are not providing the same quality of education that we see in the best-performing local authorities serving similar demographics.
Amendment 20 seeks to retain the power of the Secretary of State to direct a local authority to issue a performance standards and safety warning notice, a power that we propose to remove. If, as the clause is currently drafted, the regional schools commissioners are able to give the performance standards and safety warning notice themselves, the need for them to direct the local authority to act is no longer needed, so the new arrangements will be a more streamlined and efficient way of securing improvements. The Bill takes away a power that the Secretary of State had and no longer needs.
Amendment 22 seeks to change specific provisions in section 62 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, which enables a local authority to take immediate action to prevent or end a breakdown of discipline in a school. The amendment expands the grounds on which local authorities can take action to include educational performance, leadership and governance and wider safety concerns: the same grounds on which they can already use their powers to give warning notices. Those are two separate pieces of legislation. The first, in the 1998 Act, is a long-standing provision that enables local authorities to respond immediately where there are serious issues of safety and discipline that demand urgent attention. That should not be diluted.
The second, which is in the spirit of the Bill and improves the warning notice regime, is about ensuring that schools can be required to demonstrate robust action to improve performance in a school where there are wider concerns. It surely cannot be right to blur the lines between the two pieces of legislation with different aims, as the amendment would appear to do. We want to ensure that the powers available to both local authorities and regional schools commissioners are clear and proportionate to bring about improvement. I therefore urge the hon. Gentleman not to conflate two distinct but equally important issues.
Amendment 23 proposes to remove the requirement in the Bill that the Secretary of State be informed about a local authority’s use of a teachers’ pay and conditions warning notice. We propose to amend the process for issuing performance standards and safety warning notices to schools as part of a wider package of improvements to the intervention system for underperforming schools. We are also making amendments to teachers’ pay and conditions warning notices to maintain some consistency between the two processes and to make improvements where they are appropriate. We consider that requiring a local authority to inform the Secretary of State about the issue of teachers’ pay and conditions warning notices ensures that any action that the regional schools commissioners might wish to take in an underperforming school—to issue a warning notice to tackle serious concerns about governance—is consistent with any action that the local authority was already taking on pay and conditions. In view of those comments, I urge the hon. Members for Cardiff West and for Birmingham, Selly Oak not to press their amendments.
Kevin Brennan
We have had an interesting and informative discussion on the amendments. Again, it raises interesting questions. On the academisation issue, we are interested to find out how many schools fail only after they become academies. We may explore that later. The Minister has made it clear that the regional schools commissioner is being given the power effectively to trump any warning notice issued by a local authority. Again, we are not given a tremendous amount of compelling detailed evidence of the need for this power.
Mr Gibb
No inspiration from this Minister at this moment. However, the hon. Gentleman might like to visit Blackpool or Suffolk. Those are two of 12 local authorities that have been judged ineffective by Ofsted. Those two local authorities were criticised for the lack of pace in securing Ofsted’s required improvements. Those are two places he could visit.
I would say to the hon. Gentleman that in most cases we do expect local authorities to work well with regional schools commissioners to agree the action needed. It is only sometimes that some local authorities will be too slow and it is those examples that we want to use these powers to tackle.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister, though disappointed as we were hoping for a moment of inspiration and an example of the sort of warning notice issued by a local authority that would be so inadequate that it would be necessary for a regional schools commissioner to come in and trump it. There are no doubt examples of this; the Minister would not be legislating unless there were. I am not saying that there are no examples. I am just saying that the Committee is entitled to have one or two laid before it in order to consider whether this is the right way to deal with a problem the Minister has identified but for which he has not provided the practical evidence. That is rather disappointing because we would like to see the evidence.
The Minister once again cited the fact that 51 local authorities have never issued a warning notice. That is a perfectly valid observation, but the Minister ought to be able to demonstrate to the Committee that, in taking that approach, those are the local authorities that have a far worse record than those that have issued many warning notices. I do not know the reason; the Minister has the full panoply of the civil service to advise him. It may be that those local authorities that have not issued warning notices have very good schools and have not had to do so, or they may have taken a different approach to school improvement which has borne fruit in a way as productive as the route of issuing a warning notice.
Simply saying that there are 51 local authorities that have not issued warning notices does not demonstrate anything, unless the Minister can tell us that when the numbers have been crunched, the statistics show that those 51 local authorities are clearly performing more poorly than the average of all the other local authorities that issue warning notices or, indeed, than the 51 top local authorities that issue warning notices.
Education and Adoption Bill (Sixth sitting)
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Brennan
With her usual acuity, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is an additional argument. We will be hearing from her later about her amendment, and I look forward to that immensely.
Amendment 19 proposes a minimum, light touch, democratic and parliamentary safeguard against a clause that introduces ministerial fiat into the Bill. Members might not be aware of this, but even the closure of a motorway slip road has to be done by statutory instrument through this place, yet apparently the Secretary of State, under the Bill, will be able to intervene in a school without any parliamentary accountability being necessary.
The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
Does the hon. Gentleman think that, were the local authority to use the powers under discussion, those interventions should be subject to a negative resolution procedure in the House?
Kevin Brennan
Preferably, another route of appeal would be available when the power was exercised by a local authority, namely an appeal to Ofsted. Given that the Minister is sweeping away any right to an appeal to Ofsted on behalf of governing bodies—presumably because he has lost all faith in Ofsted’s being able to deal with it—there must be some alternative. I am interested to know whether there is such an alternative, and whether that might be through a statutory instrument. That is particularly apt when the Minister, who is after all accountable to Parliament, would be making such an order—or, indeed, such a direction—unless the amendment is accepted.
Louise Haigh
It is a great pleasure, Sir Alan, to serve under your chairmanship on my first Public Bill Committee. I support amendment 19 and I shall further examine the impact on subsection (2)(h). First, I ask the Minister for a clarification. Paragraph 19 of the explanatory notes state:
“The governing body’s entitlement to make representations against the warning notice to the local authority, and the local authority’s obligation to consider those representations, is removed by clause 2(2)(h)”.
However, the actual effect of this subsection, which removes subsections (7) to (9) of section 16 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, seems to be to remove the entitlement of the governing body to make representations against the warning notice to Ofsted, which may then uphold the warning notice or not. Perhaps this is just another symptom of the unnecessary haste with which the Bill was drafted and put before us, but it would be helpful if the Minister clarified his understanding of this provision and, if necessary, issued corrected explanatory notes.
I want to talk briefly about the real impact that the already highly stringent accountability regime is having on hard-working, dedicated teachers across the country and why I want some right of appeal to be maintained. On Friday night, I hosted a meeting with local teachers to hear about their experiences in the profession. I am sure the Minister will want to advise me on better ways to spend my Friday nights, but following the Minister’s response in the evidence session last week, when he told me there had never been a better time to be a teacher, I was interested to hear from those working on the front line whether they agreed. A wide range of staff attended, from lunchtime assistants, teaching assistants and newly-qualified teachers to teachers with 20-plus years of experience and heads of primary and secondary schools. We covered a range of issues that are currently affecting the profession, from the impact of academisation and the lack of CPD to the increasing use of teaching assistants and unqualified teachers in place of fully-qualified and experienced teachers, but what came up from every single person in the room was their fear of the current inspection regime. They fear that they will be judged as failing, inadequate or, as a consequence of the Bill, coasting. That is why this amendment, securing natural justice, is so important to those teachers.
One teacher with 18 years of experience in the profession broke down in tears in the middle of the meeting, describing working 50-plus hours a week, constant box ticking and evidence taking and excessive marking and paperwork—all things that she described as having nothing to do with why she originally chose to take up this vocation. Perhaps that would be worth it if it were all genuinely necessary to guarantee the best education for all our children, but there was a very strong feeling that the accountability regime cannot always be relied on to provide an accurate measure of quality.
My concern is that the clause will only add to the pressures outlined. For a governing body not to be able to make representations to Ofsted on the basis of a notice it believes to be based on inaccurate claims simply ratchets up the pressure.
I note that one group of teachers was not at the meeting on Friday; there was no one over the age of 50. Perhaps that is a consequence of the increasing number of teachers who retire early. Dealing with “inadequate” or “coasting” schools will ultimately rely on good teachers, such as the one who broke down in front of me who is now selling her house, so that she can leave the profession—something that she never thought she would have to do and least of all wanted to do.
The measures in the clause are perhaps minor compared with the Bill’s impact as a whole, but the direction of travel is important. We should remember that the effect of legislation is not just on processes and procedures, but ultimately on the professionals who operate them and, of course, the pupils, and we all want them to succeed. I hope that the Minister will consider these points and those made by my hon. Friends, and I look forward to his response.
Mr Gibb
Welcome back, Sir Alan, after our short break. I will start by responding to the hon. Members for South Shields and for Sheffield, Heeley. First, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley is absolutely right: the teachers whom she met on Friday are right about the workload that teachers endure at the moment. TALIS—the teaching and learning international survey—shows that teachers in this country are working significantly longer than the OECD average, perhaps by eight hours a week, yet the teaching hours that they work, according to that survey, are similar in this country compared with the OECD.
What is happening in those extra eight hours if it is not adding to the sum total of teaching in our schools? The answer is the sort of things that the hon. Lady is talking about: data collection, lesson preparation and marking. When we asked the teaching profession about its concerns about workload in response to TALIS and to what people were telling us, the issues that came top of the 44,000 responses were first, data collection and processing; secondly, the concept of deep marking; and thirdly, issues to do with lesson planning and so on.
We are taking measures to deal with these issues. We are setting up working groups, following that workload challenge, and looking at issues such as what is called dialogic marking to see whether that is the right approach. From my discussions with teachers, including the National Association of Head Teachers and other unions, I think that that is not the right approach to marking. We are absolutely looking at that to see how we can take away the pressure that is emanating from somewhere in the education world to insist that dialogic marking is used to give feedback on pupils’ work. We are also looking at data collection and resources that teachers use. We are absolutely committed to taking on the challenge of teachers’ workload, and we are determined to address it.
The hon. Lady referred to the explanatory notes, and again she is spot on. There is an error in the explanatory notes, which incorrectly refer to schools making representations to the local authority when, in fact, we are talking about representations made to Ofsted. She is right and that explanatory note will be corrected.
The hon. Member for South Shields referred to several issues where the Secretary of State will not have to answer. I have to disappoint the hon. Lady, but the Secretary of State does have to answer for everything that she does. She answers to us in the House at least once a month in Education questions, but also in other debates—Opposition day debates, Adjournment debates, Back-Bench debates and so on—so the hon. Lady is wrong to say that the Secretary of State will not have to answer, because she will.
Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)
My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields pointed out in her speech that teachers were feeling extra pressure from the additional inspection regime that will be added under the Bill. I notice that the Minister has not addressed that aspect in his remarks, and I wonder whether he will come back to it. As my hon. Friend expressed powerfully, in addition to the local authority and Ofsted, an additional level of inspection will put extreme pressure on some teachers. Will the Minister address that point before he moves on?
Mr Gibb
I was struggling to understand the precise point about Ofsted; there is no additional inspection regime under Ofsted. The coasting issue is outwith anything that Ofsted does. In fact, we will debate this when we come to clause 1, which should be very soon I believe. We have set out clearly the metrics for the definition of a coasting school; it is based not on Ofsted judgments, but on performance measures, both attainment and progress, as set out in the regulations. We will debate that when we come to clause 1, but it is certainly not based on Ofsted judgments.
Amendment 19 relates to the power that we seek under clause 2, which was discussed earlier today and which will amend section 60 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, to allow regional schools commissioners to give a performance standards and safety warning notice. Amendment 34 relates to the power that we seek under clause 5, which will amend schedule 6 of the Education and Inspections Act by adding proposed new paragraph 5A to provide that, where a local authority appoints an interim executive board, the Secretary of State, via the regional schools commissioners, could give directions on the IEB’s size and composition and on its members’ terms of appointment. This power will help to minimise the number of IEBs that do not work effectively—for example, they might be too big or not appropriately skilled—and help to ensure that they can make effective decisions on improving their schools.
Amendments 19 and 34 would achieve similar aims of requiring that any warning notice or direction about an IEB was made by an order contained in a statutory instrument under what will be section 181 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. Under section 182(1) of that Act, such an order would be subject to the negative procedure. I understand hon. Members’ desire to ensure that there is due process behind any intervention, whether issuing a warning notice or giving directions about an IEB. Amendments 19 and 16, however, would introduce a different level of scrutiny of the Secretary of State’s power to issue warning notices from that which currently exists for local authority warning notices. That would involve unnecessary scrutiny of IEB direction and serve only to create more delays and bring more complexity into the system, which we are trying to reform to reduce delays and complexity. As hon. Members will know, statutory instruments are more properly used for changes in regulations or closing motorway slip roads than for tackling school underperformance.
When a regional schools commissioner issues a performance standards and safety warning notice directly to the governing body of a school under the new proposal in the Bill, they will do so only when they are convinced that the underperformance, the problems with governance or the safety issues warrant taking such action. Similarly, any direction in respect of a local authority IEB will be made only when the RSC judges that such action would be beneficial for the school in question. RSCs will be advised, of course, by their headteacher boards, which are there to support them in making effective decisions. Therefore, an appropriate level of challenge will be built into the system. Using a parliamentary procedure for secondary legislation would be disproportionate. As RSCs are exercising the Secretary of State’s powers, the Secretary of State is, as I mentioned in response to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley, already accountable to Parliament for the decisions that they make.
The hon. Member for Cardiff West made some references to Ofsted and the removal of the appeal to the chief inspector that is in this clause. Ofsted has had 40 representations against warning notices and has only upheld two of those appeals. The appeals process slows down action because the warning notice is paused while Ofsted considers the appeal, and the compliance period only begins again once the warning notice is confirmed.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I am trying to understand this general truth. An appeals process slows down action in any circumstances, but the purpose of the appeal is that the action might not be appropriate. That is why it is being challenged, so it is funny to use that as a defence.
Mr Gibb
Yes, but we are not talking about an appeal against a fine or a prison sentence; we are talking about an appeal against a warning notice to a school to require it to improve standards. That is a whole different ball game.
In any case, warning notices have to be reasonable. The Secretary of State will be accountable in Parliament for notices issued by regional schools commissioners. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services has long called for this step to be removed, as has Ofsted, which wants to see the process of warning notices streamlined and to ensure that schools take steps to improve as soon as possible. This is about swift action to ensure that school standards improve.
Peter Kyle
I do not want to try the Minister’s patience with my interruptions, but in recent weeks 40% of Ofsted inspectors have been released from their contract because they were not able to perform their duties to the standards expected. Does that not illustrate why appeals are so important? In the past, it might have been not the challenge that was incorrect but how that challenge was dealt with at the other end. We need to look at the appeals process, but now that we know that some of the inspectors making the judgments were, themselves, not up to the job, might the schools not have been right in the past?
Mr Gibb
We are talking about an appeal to Ofsted, so the hon. Gentleman’s query is rather strangely worded. What is happening at Ofsted is a reform process that Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector, has been preparing for some time. Inspectors are now directly employed by Ofsted, rather than through various subcontractors, which is a better way of managing inspections. It is a worthwhile reform, and I commend Sir Michael for what he has achieved in his determination to improve the quality and consistency of inspections. With those final words, I hope that Members now feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Kevin Brennan
I listened with great interest to what the Schools Minister had to say. We had an interesting discussion about this group of amendments, with good contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for South Shields and for Sheffield, Heeley, as well as interventions from other hon. Friends—with the exception of our Whip, who stays quieter than most of us for most of the time.
As I have said, we are concerned about the removal of any kind of appeal. I take seriously the Schools Minister’s point; we do not want any encumbrance in the system that would prevent swift action being taken in schools when necessary. We all take that seriously, but it is not a reason to sweep away any notion of natural justice. People who are often working extremely hard to run a school may feel that they have been the subject of an injustice in how the notice has been issued.
We should be extremely cautious about sweeping away any means of appeal. I hoped that the Minister might propose some alternative that would overcome his concerns about the potential misuse of an appeal to Ofsted in a process that he clearly does not think is appropriate, or that he might come up with some alternative means for people to have such decisions reviewed or to appeal against them. We do that all the time with constituents who come to us with concerns about a decision made by the Executive, the bureaucracy or a powerful institution. People feel that they are voiceless and do not have an opportunity to appeal against decisions. We help people all the time. Why should a governing body that feels it has not been treated fairly in the issuing of a warning notice by the Secretary of State not have a similar basic right to have the decision properly reviewed? Why can it not have an appeal mechanism—one that is not necessarily overly bureaucratic or lengthy? I cannot see any justification for allowing no means of appeal whatever.
The Schools Minister said that regional schools commissioners would issue a warning notice only where they thought it was warranted. If a public official or body is going to issue a warning notice that effectively tells an organisation that it is not running a school properly, the very least we expect is that the notice is warranted. If we are all supposed to be massively grateful that regional schools commissioners will not issue notices where they feel that they are unwarranted, I do not regard that as a crumb from the Minister.
Kevin Brennan
That is why we need some form of appeal, to determine whether Ministers are acting reasonably and rationally, which is exactly what I am arguing. Rather than our having to go to judicial review and line the pockets of the hon. Gentleman’s lawyer friends, we could make an amendment so that Members of Parliament could consider the matter for themselves. We could have free use of his expertise. I remind him that praying against a statutory instrument is not a common occurrence—although it happens from time to time. It is an outlet or a safety valve where there is real concern that a Minister has exercised a power in this way. I am glad that he has taken the Schools Minister’s advice to get out more by joining in with our proceedings this afternoon. Some of his hon. Friends should follow that advice during the rest of our proceedings. I look forward to hearing from them. I am not convinced—[Interruption.] I make an exception for everyone who has done so, because I can hear some grumbling from the hon. Member for Portsmouth South. She has made a thorough and interesting contribution to our proceedings, which I welcome.
Clause 2 means that there is no safety valve. The Schools Minister said that an RSC would only issue a warning notice when it was warranted. They will be advised by their headteacher board, which will consist only of academy heads. I hope that the Minister will reconsider that. He said that there had been 40 such appeals to Ofsted and that two of those appeals were successful. We can read that in a number of ways. I have a feeling that, if all 40 appeals had been successful, the Minister would have told the Committee, “That’s another reason to get rid of the appeals, which are wasting everybody’s time by overturning these decisions.” If two out of 40 are wrong, is it not right that those two decisions should be overturned on appeal? If a wrong decision is taken, is it not right that it should be reconsidered? I think it is right. I do not propose that we should be overly bureaucratic. I would like to know more from the Minister about the alternatives. I feel that he has made his mind up on that.
Interestingly, he said that Ofsted’s reforms—bringing all its inspectors in-house—would improve quality. Perhaps the Government could learn that lesson in other areas from time to time. Contracting out is not always the answer to providing a quality public service. I will leave that thought hanging. On that basis, it is vital to lay down a marker about the importance of the principles of natural justice. I invite the Minister to give us a few more thoughts before we decide how we will dispose of the amendment.
Mr Gibb
I will be brief. I see your expression and sense that you want us to make some progress, Sir Alan. The powers that the Bill gives to the Secretary of State are identical to the power that exists for local authorities. The hon. Gentleman and other Opposition Members have not suggested in their remarks that the process of local authorities issuing a warning notice should be subject to a statutory instrument. Neither has he suggested that a byelaw is passed by the local authority before a warning notice is issued. He is asking for a process that does not apply to local authorities.
The hon. Gentleman quoted our exchanges from the Committee that considered the Education Bill that became the Education Act 2011. He cited my quotes about the insertion of a new section 69A into the 2006 Act. I refer him to clause 2(6) of this Bill, which says, “Omit section 69A”. We are repealing the very section that he cited as evidence of wanting to build in safeguards for new powers. We are now repealing the very powers that we sought safeguards over in 2011. Therefore, he should be an effusive supporter of clause 2, especially of clause 2(6). With those few remarks, I urge him to withdraw the amendment.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful for that further clarification, if that is what we should call it. I freely accept that, as is often true on such occasions, all Opposition amendments may not cover every eventuality. We are on a journey of passing legislation, and there is a long way to go before it comes into law. That does not mean that we cannot add to the Bill on Report or when it is considered in another place.
We may well need to revisit the correct form of an appeal in relation to local authorities issuing warning notices. I am pointing out that Ministers are taking the power to issue a warning notice and abolishing any means of appeal against that, which seems a rather illiberal step for the Government to take. I ask my hon. Friends to join me in testing the opinion of the Committee on the amendments.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mr Gibb
I sense from the hon. Member for Cardiff West that there is a desire for the debate to be short, and I will try to keep it so. This clause would be fine. The warning notice process is that through which an underperforming school or one with poor leadership or governance, or one where there is a threat to the safety of pupils or staff, is required to make improvements or else become eligible for intervention. The Government recognise that this process can be unwieldy and uncertain. It is dependent on the local authority and potentially on Ofsted, and it imposes on the school an unrealistically short time scale for action. How can a school demonstrate that it has taken meaningful, long-term improvement action in just 15 days? Under this clause the Secretary of State, through the regional schools commissioners, will be able to issue a performance standard and safety warning notice directly to the governing body of an underperforming school without waiting for the local authority to act and without having to direct it to issue a warning notice where it has failed to act. The warning notice process is weak, complex and flawed, and it detracts from the real issue of the school’s underperformance.
There are 28 local authorities which have never issued a warning notice to any of their schools or to an interim executive board. Where action is in fact needed—whether in these authorities or not—it will now be possible for regional schools commissioners to move quickly and directly if a local authority has failed to do so. At this point, the local authority’s power to issue a warning notice to that school will be suspended, to avoid the school being confused or distracted by conflicting notices. The regional schools commissioners would be able to set a realistic timescale for the governors to act. They may still set 15 days, as the law currently stipulates, but they will be free to set a different timescale where appropriate, for example, to allow time for improvements to manifest themselves in exam results. There will be no provisions for a school’s governing body to appeal to Ofsted.
The clause would also remove the redundant power for the Secretary of State to direct the local authority to consider and then to issue a warning notice where it has failed to do so. We would of course still retain the power for local authorities themselves to issue warning notices, which can be effective in encouraging schools to raise standards and deal with poor governance or safety. We would allow them to be flexible in setting timescales for action. We consider that giving an additional power to regional schools commissioners to issue warning notices themselves will be of benefit and remove some delays and complexity in securing vital improvements. These measures go a long way towards ensuring that the warning notice process for underperforming schools is efficient and fit for purpose, and achieves the aim of ensuring that schools make the necessary improvements for the benefit of their pupils or become eligible for intervention. The process would allow schools—for example—to become sponsored academies. I therefore move that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Steve McCabe
I will be very brief. It seems to me that one of the central parts of the argument about this clause is whether the Minister has succeeded in persuading the Committee that he really has evidence to justify the powers that he seeks to take. Let me preface my remarks by pointing out that I like the Minister. He and I came into the House at the same time. In fact, I can remember tipping him in a poll of new Tories to be watched. Let me be clear on what I meant by that—new Tories who might succeed in climbing up the ministerial ladder, not slippery characters we needed to keep an eye on.
I should take advantage of this opportunity to clarify something raised earlier. I asked the Minister if he could cite some examples of local authorities being obstructive and say why he needed new powers. The Minister cited the example of local authorities seeking judicial review and went on to comment specifically on Coventry City Council and Henley Green primary school. I am sure the Minister did not want to mislead the Committee on this matter, but it is worth pointing out that at that time, Henley Green primary school was not in special measures. It was not a failing school. In fact, it was a school that had just received a “satisfactory” Ofsted report and some excellent comments in particular categories. What had happened was that its SATs results were way below the Government minimum. As a consequence, the Government decided that it should be part of a forced academisation programme. Before that, there had been no examples of the Government forcing a school to become an academy unless it was in special measures or had failed Ofsted before.
Coventry council objected because it said that the Secretary of State did not have the power in law to force academisation in these circumstances. It pointed out that it had already met voluntarily with the head of the school and had agreed an action programme in which Frederick Bird school would buddy the school to improve the situation. It was extremely successful. Within a few months, the SATs results had moved beyond the minimum standards, and in English and Maths had risen by more than 20%. So successful was the programme that the Government decided not to challenge Coventry’s decision, acknowledged that they were wrong and backed down. So it would not be right for the Minister to pray in aid this example of a council being obstructive to defend his position. This was an example of a council taking a very sensible course of action that led to the right outcome. It was a council quite legitimately seeking to test whether the Secretary of State was exceeding his lawful duties. I do not think it was the Minister’s intention to mislead us, but as this is such a central part of the argument about this clause, it is only fair that the Committee should have a much fuller picture.
Mr Gibb
I am overwhelmed by the kind comments from Opposition Members. I must apologise to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that the tip proved so abysmally wrong. I just hope that he did not put any money on it and I apologise profusely for leading him down that garden path.
When it comes to the Bill, however, I am not leading anyone down the garden path. There is no hidden agenda regarding warning notices. They are an extremely powerful tool. Once we have a less rigid compliance period, local authorities and regional schools commissioners will be able to require action and set the ambitious levels of improvement that they expect to see. If the school improves, the warning notice has delivered its result and has helped the school to take action. If a warning notice fails, there are other powers to require the school to enter into arrangements—we will come to the relevant clauses shortly—such as partnering with a more successful school, entering into a federation or collaborating with national leaders of education to ensure improvements.
Therefore, my answer to the hon. Member for Sefton Central is, “What’s not to like?” The provisions actually came into being under the previous Labour Government in the 2006 Act, albeit only with Conservative support in the Lobbies. It is a good measure and we are simply extending the same power that the 2006 Act gave to local authorities to regional schools commissioners, who must act reasonably, which is important. The common law requirement to act reasonably has filtered through the debate. Public bodies, including the Secretary of State and those acting on her behalf, are required under principles established through case law to act reasonably, rationally, lawfully and fairly. They can be held to account by the courts if they fail to act in accordance with those public law principles. The Secretary of State is also directly accountable in this House for the actions of regional schools commissioners through Education Question Time and parliamentary written questions.
The five years of the coalition Government saw many successes, one of which was sorting out the economy and bringing us back from the brink of financial ruin. There are other examples across Whitehall, but I want to cite that 1.1 million more pupils are in “good” or “outstanding” schools today than in 2010, and that 100,000 six-year-olds are reading more effectively today than in 2011 as a consequence of our reforms to the teaching of reading through phonics. That figure of 1.1 million was achieved through a whole range of measures, in particular the academies programme, which, again, was started under Labour and was turbo-charged by the previous Government. There are 1,100 sponsored academies that started life as under-performing schools, which is a colossal achievement that has led directly to over 1 million children being taught in “good” or “outstanding” schools.
The hon. Member for Sefton Central also mentioned localism and questioned whether the Conservative party is truly committed to it. Yes, we are—as he almost acknowledged. The academies programme is taking such powers to the frontline and to teachers and professionals. The academies programme is all about autonomy for professionals. It is not about delegating to another statutory body; it is about giving powers directly to teachers, so that they can do their best for the children in their schools.
Regional schools commissioners do not intervene or interfere in schools that are performing well. They are only interested in intervening when schools are underperforming.
Bill Esterson
On the point about so-called increased autonomy, the Education Committee heard evidence that schools that are in chains now have less autonomy than they did when they were maintained. How does the Minister explain that as a localism success?
Mr Gibb
I don’t buy that argument. Groups or chains of academies are all about collaboration between the professionals within those chains. Those chains are often led by former or current headteachers. It is about collaboration, working together and finding a common vision. The most successful academy groups are those with a central, core vision that is developed by professionals within the chain. That best practice is then rolled out, which is how very successful chains such as Ark and Harris have managed to deliver remarkable achievements in some of the most deprived parts of the country.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak responded to my example of Henley Green, but I must tell him that the warning notices are not for “inadequate” schools; they are separate provisions in the Bill and the 2006 Act for schools requiring action because they need to improve and are underperforming for other reasons—for instance, poor SATs results, as the hon. Gentleman cited. That was the case with Henley Green. During the process, the results did rise above the floor, but we are talking about the floor standard. The Government agreed to withdraw the direction but maintained that it was justified at the time. We do not resile from the direction being the right thing to do. As a consequence of action, the school’s standards rose above the floor.
The hon. Member for Stockport raised concerns about brokers.
Mr Gibb
Southport; I apologise. The hon. Member for Southport raised concerns about brokers. We expect very high standards from brokers. While they are not civil servants, we certainly expect them to follow civil service standards of behaviour. Brokers are commissioned by officials from the Department to visit schools and report back to officials on the discussions they have had. If they are not meeting the high standards we expect of them, the hon. Gentleman should send us more details and we will investigate. In my experience of dealing with brokers, they are very professional people who are determined to raise standards.
I hope that I have dealt with all the concerns raised, and I urge the Committee to support clause 2.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 2 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 3
Other warning notices
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The clause would amend the process for issuing a teachers’ pay and conditions warning notice—a type of warning notice that only local authorities have the power to give. Such a notice is given to a school by a local authority when a school fails to comply with a schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document. Failure to comply with the notice means that the school becomes eligible for intervention. That does not necessarily mean that the school will become an academy, but it would allow the local authority or the Secretary of State to appoint additional governors or an interim executive board. It would also allow the local authority to suspend the school’s right to a delegated budget if the school did not comply with the written warning notice.
The clause would amend the timescale for compliance with the notice from the current statutory 15 days to a period specified by the local authority. That will give the local authority scope to choose an appropriate period, to recognise the action that the school is required to take and to allow the school time to demonstrate that it has taken the necessary action.
Finally, under the clause, the local authority would be required to give a copy of the notice to the Secretary of State when they give the notice to the school’s governing body, which will allow the regional schools commissioner to monitor more effectively local authorities’ use of such warning notices. The school’s governing body would no longer be able to make representations to the local authority. That will speed up the process and ensure consistency with a performance warning notice. We propose to remove the equivalent process for making representations to Ofsted.
Kevin Brennan
As the Minister said, the clause affects warning notices that relate to teachers’ pay and conditions, amending section 60A of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. It raises some of the same issues that we debated at length on clause 2, and I do not propose that we do the same now.
In particular, the clause removes a school’s right to make representations in response to a warning notice. However, the process as a whole is more straightforward than the one in clause 2. Removing the Secretary of State’s power to issue an order clarifies responsibilities. It might be worth asking why, if it is appropriate here, it is not appropriate elsewhere.
The Opposition agree that it is important to maintain a national framework of pay and conditions or we could get into a process of a wasteful and continuous bidding war—even more than there is currently—between schools that are trying to attract staff from one another. A national framework also does something to ensure that all staff are treated fairly, reduces the ability to play favourites with staff, and has some bearing on something that is becoming more of a concern, which is the ability of heads and senior staff to pay themselves inflated salaries at the expense of other staff. That, potentially, is a growing feature, particularly in areas of the system where there is no requirement to adhere to the pay and conditions document. The Minister has taken the opportunity to explain the Government’s thinking and, having had an extensive debate on clause 2 and the amendments, I do not propose to detain the Committee any further on clause 3.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 3 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 4
Power to require governing body to enter into arrangements
Mr Gibb
We are now debating clause 4, a favourite clause of some Opposition Members, although that joke is probably a little bit old now. [Interruption.] I wrote it very late last night, so apologies to members of the Committee.
Amendments 28, 41, 43 and 44 raise the issue of how we intervene in failing schools—those which Ofsted has rated as “inadequate”. The Academies Act 2010 permits the Secretary of State to make an academy order in respect of a maintained school that is eligible for intervention within the meaning of part 4 of the Education and Inspections Act. Clause 7 of the Bill amends section 4 of the Academies Act 2010. It places a duty on the Secretary of State to make an academy order in respect of schools that are eligible for intervention by virtue of sections 61 or 62 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006—schools that have been judged by Ofsted to have either type of “inadequate” rating.
There are two types of “inadequate” rating. There is a “serious weaknesses” judgment, which is defined in section 61 of the 2006 Act as requiring significant improvement. There is also a “special measures” judgment, which is defined in section 62 of the Act. A school is judged to have serious weaknesses if one or more of the key judgments is “inadequate” or—this is an important point—there are important weaknesses in the provision for pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. I know this will interest the hon. Member for Cardiff West, who mentioned the importance of identifying and tackling extremism in some of our schools. A school is judged to be in special measures if it is failing to give its pupils an acceptable standard of education and its leaders and governors are not demonstrating the capacity to secure the necessary improvements.
Despite these distinctions, the fact is that both categories of school are “inadequate”. Any school judged to be “inadequate” by Ofsted is failing its pupils and there is a strong moral imperative to act quickly to secure for them the high quality of education that they need and deserve.
Amendments 41 and 42 seek to disapply clause 7—the requirement to make an academy order—to those schools with a serious weaknesses judgment from Ofsted, leaving the power applying to only those schools with a special measures judgment. So there would not be an automatic issuance of an academy order. If the school receives a category 4 Ofsted judgment, the automatic academisation order would not apply if the judgment related to serious weaknesses and not special measures. A school with serious weaknesses may be failing in terms of pupils’ behaviour and safety, the teaching it offers, or the progress and attainment of pupils. In some cases, it will be a combination of those things. I hope that hon. Members will agree that this is not acceptable and we have to take urgent measures to tackle those schools. We are talking about a group of schools that are the outliers. In England today, 20% of schools are, according to Ofsted, providing outstanding education to their pupils. A further 62% are graded “good” and 16% require improvement. Clause 7 does not affect those schools; instead it targets a small minority of schools at the very bottom, which have been judged “inadequate” and failing.
Our manifesto was clear that we would tackle failing schools from day one. I hope that hon. Members—certainly those on the Government Benches—will agree that it is absolutely right that both categories of “inadequate” schools are included in the duty as set out in clause 7. I urge hon. Members to reject the amendments tabled by Opposition Members that seek to apply that provision only to one category of “inadequate” schools.
Kevin Brennan
The Minister understands that, in tabling that amendment, we are seeking to understand exactly what his intentions are. Is he absolutely clear that it is the right thing to do to compel the academisation of a school in these circumstances, even where there is powerful evidence that another approach would work better?
Mr Gibb
Yes, the evidence of the sponsored academies is compelling: those underperforming schools that have been converted to a sponsored academy have, over a four-year period, seen their grades rise by, on average, 6.4 percentage points compared with 1% for local authority-maintained schools in the same period. Similarly, for primary schools that are sponsored academies, their results have improved by around 9%—significantly higher than the figure in the same period for maintained primary schools.
Kevin Brennan
I think that I have heard the Minister quote those figures before but will he be clear for the Committee? Is he quoting a figure of 6.4% for schools that have been academised—is he comparing that improvement with figures for schools in similar circumstances that have adopted other means of school improvement, or is he taking a figure for schools to which academisation is applied as a means of improvement and comparing them with the generality of other schools that have not had any kind of intervention of this sort?
Mr Gibb
I will come back to the hon. Gentleman to get the precise wording right; since he has asked a specific question, I want to give him the right answer. But my understanding is that those schools that have been sponsored academies for four years have improved their grades by about 6.4% compared with local authority schools over the same period. I will come back to him with precise chapter and verse on what I mean when I talk about local authority schools over the same period.
Amendments 28 and 44 both pose questions about why, given the new duty to make an academy order for any maintained school that Ofsted has rated “inadequate”, we might still require intervention powers in such schools. It is a perfectly valid question. Amendment 28 specifically questions why clause 4, giving the Secretary of State the power to require governing bodies to enter into arrangements, is applicable to schools that are eligible for intervention because they have been rated “inadequate” by Ofsted—because they are going to have an automatic academy order. Amendment 44 then questions why we are retaining in the law a wider range of existing intervention powers, for instance to replace the governing body with an IEB or appoint additional governors to be used when a school has been found by Ofsted to be “inadequate”.
An academy order is made in respect of a school to enable its conversion to academy status; while this Bill aims to speed up the process of achieving academy solutions in failing schools, the making of an academy order, on its own, does not mean that a school becomes an academy with an effective sponsor in place overnight. Where a school has been found to be failing, it is clear that transformation needs to take place in that school from day one in order to bring about improvement as swiftly as possible. We know from our experience that other intervention powers can therefore still prove valuable in failing schools that will, in time, become sponsored academies. Such powers may allow for the diagnosis of current problems and enable some early improvements to be made in the period before the academy solution is in place. For example, Norton Canes and Heath Hayes, two primary schools in Staffordshire, were both placed in special measures in 2012-13. In June 2013, the Secretary of State appointed interim executive boards to both schools and issued academy orders. The IEBs, which worked in a challenging environment against a backdrop of considerable resistance from those opposed to such improvements, conducted reviews of teaching and leadership in the schools and identified problems and improvements that might be made before the schools progressed to become sponsored academies in the REAch2 Academy Trust in January 2014.
The Secretary of State’s additional powers to intervene in “inadequate” schools may be necessary when the local authority has taken action in the school and that has not proved effective or helpful, or to ensure effective governance before a long-term solution is put in place. That was the case in the Dorothy Barley junior school, which was judged to require special measures in December 2012—the third time that it had been judged “inadequate” by Ofsted in eight years—and an Ofsted monitoring visit concluded that it was not making enough progress towards removal of those special measures. The Secretary of State appointed an IEB and issued an academy order in October 2013 with an explicit duty on the IEB to conduct the school so as to secure the provision of a sound basis for future improvement.
Dorothy Barley had been in a serious situation for some time and urgent action was required to ensure that it received the support and expertise it needed to improve rapidly and sustainably. An IEB was the best way to do that and its effective governance was important to support the school’s transition to academy status in June 2014.
Clause 10 requires that local authorities and governing bodies take all reasonable steps to facilitate the conversion of a school into an academy when an academy order has been made. Clause 11 gives the Secretary of State the power to direct that school’s governing body or local authority to take specified steps for the purpose of facilitating conversion into an academy.
We were asked on Second Reading what that would mean for that school’s governors or the local authority. In the event that governing bodies were to fail to facilitate conversion, or to comply with such a direction, it may be necessary for the Secretary of State to put in an IEB to facilitate the conversion. I hope that helps to answer some of the issues raised by the hon. Member for Cardiff West as far as his amendments are concerned.
I have had some in-flight refuelling, so I hope that I can also provide the hon. Gentleman with the answer he required. In secondary sponsored academies open for four years, the proportion of pupils who achieved five good GCSEs, including English and Maths, in the 2014 results was 6.4 percentage points higher than they had been in their predecessor schools. In that same period, results in local authority-maintained schools were 1.3 percentage points higher than they had been in 2010—I infer that that is for all local authority-maintained schools, but if that is wrong, I will come back and correct what I just said.
The first sponsored primary academies that have been open for two years have seen the proportion of pupils achieving the expected level improve by 9 percentage points since opening: from 58% in their predecessor schools to 67%. That is double the rate of improvement seen in maintained schools in the same period, which showed a rise of 4 percentage points: from 75% to 79%. That is the national figure so it is the figure for all maintained schools and I can confirm that the 1.3 percentage points figure was also for all maintained schools. With those remarks, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.
Kevin Brennan
I am aware that a Division in the Chamber might interrupt us, but I am grateful to the Minister for clearing up that point. He has used that statistic often in his remarks and I pointed out—perhaps not very well—during the oral evidence sessions that that is not a like-for-like comparison. That is a good reason why all such claims by Ministers should be subject to testing by the UK Statistics Authority.
I invite Ministers to do that, because there are lies, damned lies and statistics, as has been said all too often, but the UK Statistics Authority was created by the last Labour Government in order to give people some certainty and comfort about the statistics that Ministers were using. Of course, for these comparisons to be meaningful we would have to compare schools that had become sponsored academies as a pathway to school improvement with schools that took another pathway to school improvement but had been in a similar position in requiring to be improved. We will return to that and some of the evidence around that when we get to clause 7.
The Minister said that there had been a 6.4% improvement in the performance of secondary schools at GCSE.
Mr Gibb
The point of comparing the 6.4 percentage point increase in the proportion of pupils who achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, over four years with all schools is to put it in perspective, and to highlight the way that grades have improved generally. It is the same with the primary sector. We want to put the nine percentage point increase in perspective, and compare it with how the proportion of those achieving level 4s has increased nationally so people can see the figure in context.
There is plenty of other evidence I could cite for the success of academies. There is the 2014 Hutchings et al survey, published by the Sutton Trust, which finds that the best academy chains outperform other state-funded schools, and that across the board disadvantaged students in 18 of the 31 chains in the study are improving faster than the national average. The research found that disadvantaged pupils in sponsored academies made greater improvements in the proportion of pupils with sub-level 4 key stage 2 attainment going on to achieve five A to C GCSEs with English and maths than schools in the other comparison groups. The research identifies that chains of three or more academies had a greater impact than solo academies.
The benefits of collaboration within academy chains in helping to raise standards and develop future leaders of the teaching profession were identified as far back as 2011, when a Public Accounts Committee report said that,
“sponsored academies see collaboration across chains or clusters of academies as the way forward which will help to further raise standards and develop future leaders.”
Finally, in 2012 Ofsted highlighted that sponsor-led academies can make a positive difference, particularly those that are part of a well managed group or chain of schools. That is really the essence of the academies programme: professional autonomy and the excitement that the hon. Gentleman talked about, combined with the fact that there is a formal collaborative arrangement. The most successful academy chains use that collaborative arrangement to provide a central vision, which is then spread throughout the schools in the academy group.
Kevin Brennan
I want to respond briefly because the Minister has introduced a whole new raft of information at this very late stage in the debate. Again, one could probe and test some of the statements that he has just made, although I will not at this point. Yes, of course, the best academy chains do very well. They are the best academy chains, and that is why they are doing very well. When is the Minister going to cite how the worst academy chains are doing? That is the point. He is making an argument here for the whole programme, rather than for just a limited part of it. The best maintained schools actually do very well indeed, too. This is my point about having to look at all these different things. Of course, the Minister did not quote the Select Committee report, about which my hon. Friend might be about to intervene. I am reluctant to go on too long.
Mr Gibb
I was intrigued when the hon. Gentleman said that change might not work. He sounds very conservative in his outlook. He reminds me of Lord Salisbury, who said:
“Change? Change? Aren’t things bad enough already?”
So I think the hon. Gentleman is bidding for the Lord Salisbury award of the anti-change brigade.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman is also wrong to say that we see schools as a hierarchy with academies at the top and maintained schools at the bottom. We do not. I acknowledge that there are some very good primary and secondary schools in the maintained sector in this country, and we need to do everything we can to encourage excellence throughout the system.
Kevin Brennan
Although the Minister has made a welcome statement—I wish he would say it more often—will he now accept the compelling evidence that headteacher panels should not only consist of academy heads, if that is his position, but include heads of maintained schools?
Mr Gibb
The role of the headteacher panels in each regional schools commissioner area is to advise on the brokering of academies from the maintained sector into the academy sector. Lord Nash indicated in the evidence session last Tuesday that he would consider the matter again when the Bill comes on to the statute book and panels have a greater role in intervening in underperforming schools in the maintained sector. He is right to raise that and I put on the record the same issue in the same manner as Lord Nash.
The amendments probe the intentions behind the power set out in clause 4 to require a governing body to “enter into arrangements” and how it will be used. Local authorities already have that power, but we also want regional schools commissioners, on behalf of the Secretary of State, to have the power available to them to use quickly and effectively where necessary.
Clause 4 enables regional schools commissioners to require governing bodies of schools that are eligible for intervention to enter into several different arrangements to ensure that schools take steps to improve. In some instances, a regional schools commissioner might use the power to require a school to enter into a contract with an organisation for
“services of an advisory nature”,
which could include directing a school to take on support from a national leader of education or an organisation that specialises in school improvement. There are over 1,000 national leaders of education—the excellent headteachers in our school system that the hon. Member for Cardiff West mentioned—and we intend to increase this number by 400 within the next year and further beyond that.
Support from strong leaders has been shown to improve standards. Research by Sheffield Hallam University for the National College for Teaching and Leadership showed that 89% of schools had seen an improvement in their leadership and management skills, knowledge and practice and the quality of their teaching and learning since being supported by a national leader of education. A wide range of NLE support is available. Academy heads can support weaker maintained school heads and vice versa, and the focus can be tailored to the needs of the school.
Clause 4 also specifically gives regional schools commissioners the power to require a school to create or join a federation. Federations can be created under provisions in the Education Act 2002 to provide a structured collaboration for a group of maintained schools, either as a hard federation under section 24 or as collaborating schools, commonly known as soft federation, under section 26. The following words are a bit dull: the School Governance (Federations) (England) Regulations 2012 set out exactly how federations operate under section 24 of the 2002 Act. The School Governance (Collaboration) (England) Regulations 2003 set out how schools collaborate under section 26 of the Act. In short—back to the interesting stuff—the primary difference is that a hard federation operates under a single governing body, whereas soft federations keep independent governing bodies, but share a joint committee to which powers can be delegated.
Federations provide a form of structural collaboration similar to what multi-academy trusts do for academies, allowing maintained schools to support one another and share resources. In Hackney, for example, the Primary Advantage federation has considerable experience of working in partnership with schools in challenging circumstances and has been able to develop a strong teaching cadre across the federation. There are, however, important differences. Multi-academy trusts have more flexibility and freedom over their budgets, curriculum and staff than maintained schools have in a federation that remains within local authority control. The multi-academy trust structure also accompanies these freedoms with stronger accountability. Multi-academy trusts are one legal entity and are held to account rigorously for their collective educational and financial performance.
Leaders of outstanding multi-academy trusts are keen to share their views of the benefits. Stephen Moon is the executive principal of Tollbar Academy, which has been graded by Ofsted as outstanding for the past five years. He has said:
“Academy status has given me far greater flexibility and the independence to utilise staff in a way that best meets the needs of the students…Being a member of the MAT has financial benefits too, because as a large institution we can demand better value for money from contractors allowing our resources to go that bit further.”
Sir Dan Moynihan, who is chief executive of the Harris Federation and gave evidence to our Committee on Tuesday, has said that multi-academy trusts ensure there is a
“strong strategic steer from the centre, but our local governing bodies are still responsible for making decisions about their schools and they are very effective.”
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful for the Minister’s quotes, but why does he not have any quotes from headteachers about what they feel are the benefits of being involved in a federation?
Mrs Flick Drummond (Portsmouth South) (Con)
I declare an interest: I am a governor at Milton Park primary school. We had a federation between the infant and junior school, and we have now become a primary school. We also have what some would consider a weak federation with Portswood, one of the leading schools in Southampton, which has been helping us over the past two years to reach “requires improvement”. Another form of soft federation is clustering of schools within a local authority, which has also worked very effectively.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that helpful intervention. She is a champion of education in Portsmouth. I have visited schools with her and seen her dedication and determination to help schools raise their standards. I pay tribute to her work in Portsmouth, not only on education but more generally too.
Amendment 29 seeks to expand clause 4(1)(d), which gives regional schools commissioners the power to require a school’s governing body to create or join a federation of schools as a way of improving standards. The amendment seeks to introduce an additional power to require a governing body to leave a federation, perhaps so that a regional schools commissioner or local authority can direct a governing body to leave an ineffective federation and join another if that is seen as appropriate. If an underperforming school were part of an ineffective soft federation, there are sufficient powers elsewhere in the Bill to enable the regional schools commissioner to require the school to leave the federation. If a school’s continued membership of a hard federation were likely to prevent improvements, the commissioner could issue an academy order on behalf of the Secretary of State.
Amendment 30 seeks to introduce a new specific section to the power. That new section appears to introduce a new solution for an underperforming school, allowing the school to remain a maintained school but collaborate with an academy by becoming a member of an academy trust but not an academy itself. We do not think that is the right approach because it would lead to an unsatisfactory compromise. Simply being a member of an academy trust would not allow the maintained school to benefit from the strong governance structure of a multi-academy trust, from shared staffing or funding, or from being part of a robust line of accountability, which is a critical element of the academy programme. Maintained schools would be denied those benefits if we accepted the proposition in amendment 30 that maintained schools could simply become a member of an academy trust rather than securing enduring structural change. Given those explanations, I hope that the hon. Member for Cardiff West will not press his amendments.
Kevin Brennan
I am grateful to the Minister for his response. As I indicated in my remarks, the purpose of the amendments is to probe the Government’s thinking a little further. I note the helpful and knowledgeable remarks of the hon. Member for Portsmouth South about clusters. She made an important and pertinent point.
Once again, I urge the Minister not to give the impression that only academy schools and academy chains can deliver excellent education, because it sometimes results in a view among headteachers, schoolteachers and parents that the Government do not believe that maintained schools and academies have an equal status. I am grateful to him for putting on the record that he does not hold that view, but it would be useful if he included schools other than academies and academy chains when giving examples of excellent performance.
Mr Gibb
I can cite Elmhurst primary school in Newham, an excellent school which has had superb maths and reading results, and St Paul’s Catholic College in Burgess Hill, West Sussex—my area—which I visited a couple of years ago and which is absolutely brilliant. I could cite other examples too.
Kevin Brennan
Amendment 31 requires the Secretary of State to consult the local authority prior to giving a governing body a notice under new section 66A. Amendment 32 requires the Secretary of State to consult the parent council prior to giving the governing body a notice under new section 66A. The amendments illustrate, in a way, the problems that arise when Bills are drafted using the cut-and-paste approach to education legislation that I described earlier. That is the tendency these days. It must have something to do with the availability of modern technology and the ability to do control-C on your computer, lift something and put it into another piece of legislation. It has made things far too easy for Governments—probably all Governments—to take this cut-and-paste approach to education.
It is barely credible that even this Government would require a maintained school to enter into collaborative arrangements without even consulting the local authority or a formally constituted parent council of that school. I would like to be charitable, as we are reaching the latter stages of the afternoon and a cup of tea beckons, and suggest that this is perhaps just sloppy drafting and Ministers will not have any problem in accepting the amendments.
Just to reinforce the proposal, it is very probable in this kind of situation that the local authority will have undertaken, at the least, a range of formal interventions and will have supported the school’s efforts to improve. It may also be responsible for schools that are involved in providing support and will have a view of that school’s capacity, what risks there might be to its own performance, what support is available and how effective it is likely to be. Surely, therefore, it would be wise for the Department to acknowledge that it needs to listen to the expertise that is available locally, on the ground, about schools, that it needs to take account of those things that have happened before—it is unlikely that nothing will have happened at this stage—and that it needs to ensure that what it does is consistent with the overall strategy in the area, rather than undermining a strategy for improvement if there is a good one in place.
This kind of intervention, in other words, does not happen in isolation from everything else that is going on. Proper consultation is essential. That means listening and occasionally being prepared to think again, if necessary, on the basis of what has been heard. Will the Minister clarify whether it is his intention not to require any consultation of the kind mentioned in our amendments? If not, is he prepared to accept our amendments or table his own later if there is something defective or unacceptable in the wording but he understands the gist of what we are saying and what we are trying to achieve here? If he intends not to require any consultation, will he give a full explanation as to why?
Mr Gibb
Amendments 31 and 32 both relate to clause 4. As the hon. Gentleman explained, they raise the issue of consultation in decisions about the future of the school, specifically relating to the new power that clause 4 gives to the Secretary of State. This is an identical power to that which local authorities already have. He might call that cut and paste, but it is about replicating those powers to require a governing body to enter into arrangements with a view to securing improvement in the school’s performance, and giving them to the regional schools commissioners.
Clause 4 would give the Secretary of State the same power that local authorities already have to require a school’s governing body to take action to improve their performance. It would give regional schools commissioners the power to require a school to take certain measures rather than having to rely on the local authority to use its power. This would only apply to schools that were already eligible for intervention. Regional schools commissioners could require a school to contract with another party—for example, the governing body of another school—to provide advisory services, to collaborate with a maintained school or further education college, or to federate with another maintained school or schools.
Clause 4 includes requirements for regional schools commissioners to consult prior to using this power. This is a different position from that in clause 7, which makes it clear that for all failing schools an academy order must be made in respect of that school. In those circumstances, there would be no further debate about what must happen to failing schools, to ensure that action can be taken from day one. For schools that have become eligible for intervention other than by being found to be inadequate, it is appropriate to give the governing body the opportunity to respond and take action before intervening. That is why there are provisions in the Bill for consultation, such as in proposed new section 66A inserted by clause 4, which states:
“(2) Before exercising the power conferred by subsection (1), the Secretary of State must consult—
(a) the governing body of the school,
(b) in the case of a foundation or voluntary school which is a Church of England school or a Roman Catholic Church school, the appropriate diocesan authority, and
(c) in the case of any other foundation or voluntary school, the person or persons by whom the foundation governors are appointed.”
So there will be consultation with those bodies.
Steve McCabe
Does the Minister think that he is missing the point here? He is listing who will be consulted but those who will not be consulted are the headteacher, the staff, the parents and the local community. Is he not destroying any concept of a partnership in education?
Mr Gibb
I was not aware that the amendments suggested that, but amendment 31 proposes that the local authority should be consulted before regional schools commissioners use this power. Clause 6 introduces section 70A into the Education and Inspections Act 2006. One effect of that is that the Secretary of State must notify the relevant local authority before exercising certain intervention powers, including this power in clause 4 to require the governing body to enter into arrangements. We inserted this new requirement to notify local authorities because it is important that local authorities are aware of any proposed interventions in schools in their areas. I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We want collaboration. In the majority of cases, we hope that the regional schools commissioners and local authorities will be working well together to agree on suitable interventions, but given that RSCs may often be intervening because local authorities have failed to do so, we do not think it is necessary for the local authority to be formally consulted by the Secretary of State.
Amendment 32 proposes that where a foundation school has been required to establish a parent council then that council must be consulted before regional schools commissioners use this interventionist power. Parent councils are advisory bodies which must be established by the governors of foundation schools in which the majority of governors are appointed by the foundation trust. Other maintained schools may choose to establish a parent council, but this amendment would not require those to be consulted. Clause 4 as it stands already requires that the regional schools commissioners must consult the governing body of the school, which will include parent representatives, before the power can be exercised. In the case of a foundation or voluntary school, the appropriate diocese of a Church of England school or a Roman Catholic school must be consulted, as must the trust or foundation that appoints foundation governors in any voluntary or foundation school. The clause already ensures proper consultation with representatives of the school before the power can be used. On that basis, I urge the hon. Members to withdraw their amendments.
Kevin Brennan
It is not my intention to divide the Committee but it is important to outline the distinction between notifying someone and consulting someone. The Minister said that there is a requirement in the Bill to notify people of the Government’s decision to use the powers. I might notify him that I have brought him a cup of tea with milk and sugar, but if I had consulted him I might have found out that he wanted a cup of black coffee. There is a big difference between consulting and notifying, and we should not confuse the two.
The Opposition are of the opinion that, in general, it is better to have consultation with local bodies rather than simply notification or diktat from Ministers of their intentions. A consultation need not be burdensome, bureaucratic or a nature that would hold up school improvement—unnecessary measures—but it might well, as I said in my initial remarks, bring forward information that would assist the Government or regional schools commissioners in the type of intervention under consideration. I will not press the amendment to a vote. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Kevin Brennan
I congratulate my hon. Friend, particularly as someone so new to this House, for showing initiative in tabling her own amendment to the Bill and for giving my throat a rest while she did so. I am sure that during the course of the Bill we will see similar initiative taken by Government Back Benchers and I look forward to debating their amendments, as I am sure they are equally keen to scrutinise and probe the Government’s intentions on the Bill properly. We obviously have a treat in store for us in our remaining debates.
Of course, national pay and conditions are effectively disapplied in academies and free schools and all this is having an impact. My hon. Friend is right to suggest that the Government should consider having a proper look at the longer-term impact of this on the pay and conditions of teachers and support staff, and on staff morale, and at the long-term impact on recruitment and retention. We know and have given warning that we feel that recruitment and retention of teachers is going to be a real issue during the course of this Parliament. I emphasise that we would like to lay down a marker that we think we see a bad moon rising, to coin a phrase, in this area. The Minister should listen very carefully to what my hon. Friend has to say. She put her amendment very coherently and cogently and therefore deserves a proper response. I am sure that she will get one.
Mr Gibb
I am grateful to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley for tabling her amendment and enabling us to have this short debate. The issue about legislation is that one only legislates when one needs to. The issues that she raises are of course important but we are taking measure to deal with them. The workload challenge is an issue very dear to the Secretary of State’s heart; we are determined to reduce teachers’ workloads and that is why we conducted that survey, to which 44,000 teachers responded. It made it very clear where the problems lie, particularly in areas such as data collection or how people perceive that Ofsted requires teachers to conduct their marking—we are addressing those issues with the working parties that I said we had established.
The Bill enables us to deal with poorly performing schools; that is why it is a limited Bill with only 15 or 16 clauses. The hon. Member, however, is also wrong to talk about there being a crisis in the retention or recruitment of teachers. There are of course challenges with recruitment—graduates leaving university are at a premium in terms of firms wanting to recruit them. When there is a strong economy, which is often the case under a Conservative Government, there will be competition for graduates—
Mr Gibb
We are bringing down the deficit. It has been reduced from 11% of GDP to under 5% and we will bring it down further. I say to the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley that over 90% of teachers continue in the profession following their first year of teaching, which has been the case for more than 20 years. Figures that say otherwise are simply inaccurate. I think that it was the Association of Teachers and Lecturers that cited some figures in the lead-up to its conference last year that were proven to be inaccurate.
The proportion of teachers joining the profession has risen—it is now 53,000 a year—and over three quarters, 76%, of new teachers are still in the profession after five years of service. More than half, 55%, of teachers who qualified in 1996 were still teaching 17 years later. I reiterate the point that I made in the evidence session that there has never been a better time than now to be a teacher, particularly an ambitious teacher. There are so many more opportunities now to lead—to lead at a younger age or to lead an academy chain—and to have the support for able and ambitious young teachers to become leaders in their profession early on. Organisations such as Teaching Leaders and Future Leaders are doing a wonderful job in helping young people to become leaders in their profession.
Amendment 27 focuses on teachers’ pay and conditions and proposes adding a new subsection to clause 4. Before exercising the power to require a governing body to enter into arrangements to help deliver school improvement, the Secretary of State would be required, under the amendment, to consider the long-term impact on the pay and terms and conditions of employees. In particular, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley appears to be concerned that an assessment should take place on whether any change might reduce the ability of a governing body to recruit. I understand that she is concerned about the impact of academisation.
I refer back to the core purpose of the Bill: tackling failing and coasting schools as a way of ensuring that every child in this country receives a good or outstanding education. I say this because any action that the regional schools commissioner would take on behalf of the Secretary of State would always be predicated on improving the standards of the school. Some of the actions taken might, for instance, require a school to enter into a stronger collaboration, such as a federation. That is what it is all about—this clause is not about academisation; it is about intervention in maintained schools to secure improved standards. The hon. Lady is making her argument about academies; indeed, other clauses would give regional schools commissioners greater powers to require underperforming schools to become academies. In some circumstances, academisation may in fact make it easier for a school to manage and recruit staff as well as to offer more exciting CPD opportunities. An example of this is the Templar Academy Schools Trust, which was formed in 2011 in south Devon and now contains four schools, two primary and two secondary. The staff benefit from collaboration because all four schools in the trust allow teachers to move between schools, to develop their skills and to further their careers.
Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)
While a Trappist monk’s or nun’s main focus is to get a particular project carried out efficiently when choosing to engage in a community discussion, total silence is not an explicit vow. I want to share with the Minister that at Berwick academy—where I am a governor and led it to be an academy a few years ago—we have radically changed how we use teaching assistants, mentioned by the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley. We are taking on more qualified people on better pay scales to boost the impact they can make in the teaching and learning programme, both in and out of the classroom, for the children who most need that extra support.
Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend cites another good example. Again, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for her interest in education. I distinctly remember before the previous election, rather than this one, visiting schools with my hon. Friend. She is a great asset to Berwick-upon-Tweed, and long may she remain its Member of Parliament.
Some interventions, such as the forming of a multi-academy trust, may make it easier for head teachers to be more flexible with their staffing, and offer better long-term opportunities across the academy chain. Any intervention, whether structural or the provision of additional support from a national leader of education, is taken in order to support a school to become “good”. It has been noted by Ofsted and others, as I said earlier, that schools in challenging circumstances—in particular those going into special measures—often experience difficulties in recruiting and retaining good teachers. Therefore, the improvement that the Bill will bring about will ultimately make it easier to recruit.
Suella Fernandes (Fareham) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend agree with the comments made in the evidence session that endorse the point he is making now, that academies, trusts and chains have greater freedoms in their budgets, on retaining excellent teachers and freedom from local authority control? That is at the heart of their success, and the Bill endorses that approach.
Mr Gibb
Yes, my hon. Friend is right. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work she has done in the past few years as chair of the Michaela free school, which is a school to watch. I am hesitant to praise an academy because I will be required, on the one in, one out rule, to praise a state school, so let me praise Wroxham primary school in Hertfordshire, which is an absolutely superb maintained school, but I also pay tribute to the work that Michaela does. That is a free school that is still in its first year of year 7. When I visited a few months ago I was astonished by the standard of behaviour, the academic achievement and the knowledge-based curriculum. That is certainly a school that we shall watch closely in years to come because I think it will become an example for many other schools to follow.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
On the basis of one in, one out, will my hon. Friend also mention Lytchett Matravers primary school, which has recently been through Ofsted and achieved a result of “good”? I am a governor of that school.
Mr Gibb
I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he does. Being involved as a governor is very important. I thank him for putting on record the excellent standards of the school he cited. If we have the opportunity to leave the building and get out, I would love to come and visit that school. On that basis, I urge the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley to withdraw her amendment.
Louise Haigh
I am grateful for the Minister’s response and I am pleased that my amendment awakened hon. Members on the Government Benches. I am genuinely grateful that the Minister recognised the incredible workload that teachers are under, although I would correct his earlier statement. The OECD workload survey showed that teachers in this country were working on average 12 hours longer than teachers in countries surveyed elsewhere.
The Minister mentioned that the issue is not just about Ofsted, but about the perception of Ofsted. I am grateful that the Secretary of State is taking action on those working groups to look into that. I will follow that work closely. I am disappointed to hear that the Minister does not feel that there is a crisis in recruitment and retention, because I believe that his own data and surveys demonstrate exactly that. I take exception to the idea that we are experiencing strong economic growth. I was unemployed in Sheffield last year, and my brother is currently unemployed and is struggling to find work in the north of England, so I would take exception to the idea that we are experiencing strong economic growth—in the northern powerhouse, at least.
Kevin Brennan
I think there has been some discussion through the usual channels that we might knock off these amendment and clause 4 stand part. That would be deemed to be acceptable progress on all sides.
The purpose of amendments 33 and 35 is to ensure that any financial expenditure incurred by a local authority is rightly covered by the Department for Education. There must be control over decisions of the Secretary of State that require additional expenditure by the local authority or the school governing body. The amendment would require that the Secretary of State pays if the cost is more than what the local authority would have paid.
The very simple principle is that if the Secretary of State wants something done, resources should be provided. It cannot be right that the Department for Education can impose unlimited costs on local authorities when local authorities have no way of controlling that expenditure. Councils, like all organisations, plan their expenditure, and cannot be expected to pick up the tab just because the DFE wants something done. I would welcome the Minister’s response to these probing amendments.
Mr Gibb
Amendment 33 seeks to require the Secretary of State to reimburse local authorities where they incur any costs resulting from an RSC using the powers in the clause. Where a school is in need of support to improve, it should generally be funded from within the school’s existing budget. For instance, they could bring in a national leader of education, collaborate or set up school-to-school support.
Research by Sheffield Hallam University for the National College for Teaching and Leadership showed that 89% of schools supported through the NLE programme had seen an improvement in their leadership and management skills, their knowledge of practice and the quality of their teaching. Where there is a cost involved when a school has become eligible for intervention while under the control of the local authority, it will be right in some circumstances to expect the local authority or the school to meet the costs associated with any necessary intervention. It is unlikely that any costs associated with the regional schools commissioner requiring schools to enter arrangements to improve would be any higher than if a local authority required the same action of its schools. Local authorities already receive funding from the Department to support their central responsibilities, including school improvement.
The Government recognise that ensuring schools have access to the best possible support and advice, along with capable leadership in a strong accountability framework, will help standards to improve across the board. For example, in the spring term of 2013, Gawthorpe academy in Wakefield worked with Ash Grove junior and infant community school, which was judged by Ofsted to require improvement. A specialist leader of education was provided by the academy to support the development of teaching across the school, with the aim of teachers sustaining momentum and continuing to improve their teaching after the specialist leader left. In June 2014, Ash Grove received a further inspection and was rated as “good”. The Ofsted report commented on the significant improvement in teaching quality since the previous inspection. That example of one school supporting another through the SLE programme is relatively low-cost, but the results can be significant.
Clause 5 is about the appointment of interim executive board members. An IEB is a governing body appointed for a temporary period with the specific task of ensuring school improvement when there has been a decline in standards or a serious breakdown of working relationships in the governing body. If used effectively, IEBs can provide a challenge to the school’s leadership and secure rapid improvement.
Amendment 35 would require the Secretary of State to pay the local authority any costs—over and above any costs it had budgeted for—incurred as a result of the Secretary of State directing a local authority as to the terms of appointment of members of a local authority-appointed interim executive board. Such terms of appointment could include setting out the roles and responsibilities of members or details for any remuneration and expenses. I reassure Members that we do not expect local authorities to face increased costs due to regional schools commissioners exercising that power on behalf of the Secretary of State. Currently, the Secretary of State and the local authority can choose to make a payment to IEB members to cover allowances as they consider appropriate. Any costs associated with the terms of employment for an IEB established by the Secretary of State should not be higher than those usually incurred by a local authority, and should certainly be reasonable given that we only expect IEBs to be in operation on a short-term basis.
The Bill is about ensuring that intervention in underperforming schools is fast, effective and deliverable. The clause as it stands will help to achieve that. In view of that, I hope the hon. Member for Cardiff West will withdraw his amendment.
Kevin Brennan
I suspect that we will not agree on what the Minister just said, but I am grateful to him for putting the Government’s position on the record. These probing amendments were intended to find out more about the Government’s thinking. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mr Gibb
The clause would give the Secretary of State, via the regional schools commissioners, a power similar to the one that local authorities already have to require a school’s governing body to take action to improve its performance. The Government recognise that ensuring schools have access to the best possible support and advice, along with capable leadership in a strong accountability framework, will help to ensure that standards improve across the board.
The clause would give regional schools commissioners the power to require a school to take certain action, rather than having to rely on the local authority to do so. It would only apply to schools that are already eligible for intervention. Regional schools commissioners would be required to consult first. They could then require a school to contract with another party—for example, another school—to provide advisory services, to collaborate with a maintained school or further education college, or to federate with another maintained school.
The value of schools coming together to pool expertise and resources is that they can achieve collectively what could not necessarily be achieved by an individual school. The power to direct schools to take advice and collaborate would sit alongside other measures in the Bill and would form part of our new array of intervention measures to help ensure that schools improve and that children get the education they deserve.
Kevin Brennan
I shall make only a few observations in the few moments left today. The clause would be of limited significance were it not for clause 1 of the Bill, which we will come to later in our discussions. However, there is an initial confusion between this clause and clause 7, because this clause empowers the Secretary of State to take a range of action in relation to schools eligible for intervention. This category includes schools in special measures, but clause 7 states that the only action to be taken in relation to a school in special measures is academisation. We discussed that earlier on, and it was a welcome admission that methods other than academisation can actually lead to school improvements. I will not pursue that point much further in the clause stand part debate.
Clause 1 will change everything, because it reinforces our argument that it was quite wrong to take the clauses out of order. Making a judgment on clause 4, on which we are now having a stand part debate, depends on whether or not clause 1 is accepted and certainly on what the regulations on coasting schools actually say. We have draft regulations from the Government, but that is going to be a very significant factor. However, we are where we are.
Education Datalab stated in evidence to us that 1,179 schools will be classed as coasting under the definition put forward by Ministers. This is not the place to debate the rights and wrongs of this definition, but it has certainly been rubbished by quite a number of commentators. This is the place to recognise that this is the clause that will enable the Secretary of State to intervene in all of those schools. We know from the press release what the Government think will happen next. It states:
“The government’s regional schools commissioners—8 education experts with in-depth local insight supported by elected head teacher boards from the local community—will then assess whether or not the school has a credible plan to improve and ensure all children make the required progress. Those that can improve will be supported to do so by our team of expert heads, and those that cannot will be turned into academies under the leadership of our expert school sponsors—one of the best ways of improving underperforming schools”.
Of course, as we found out in the oral evidence session, regional schools commissioners themselves have a conflict of interest here, in that they have key performance indicators which include the percentage of schools to be academised. Again, I will not labour this point here, but we should also pause to consider the workload on regional schools commissioners. We once again raise the point as to whether or not they have adequate resources to do the job that they are being asked to do as a result of the Bill. I will not go into great detail about what that involves, but there is a huge amount of work to be done. Schools are not random pieces to be moved around the chessboard, and I do not think that even Garry Kasparov could move 1,000 pieces around a chessboard. We are asking eight regional schools commissioners to take on an awful lot here, and we know that even the Department for Education is not coping with its current responsibilities. As the National Audit Office pointed out:
“The Department does not yet know why some academy sponsors are more successful than others”.
In conclusion, of course we can pass this particular clause. We are probably about to do so—I am glancing around the Committee Room to check the strength of the Opposition against the Government. We can pass this clause, but if we do, we should not imagine that it will have anything like the impact that Ministers are claiming. Nevertheless, the press release has been issued and headlines have been gained as a result. By the time everyone notices that not a lot has changed, it will all be forgotten and I suspect that it might be time for another ministerial initiative.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 4 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Design and Technology GCSE
Nick Gibb Excerpts(8 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)
We are reforming GCSEs to make sure that they give students the best possible preparation for further and higher education, and for employment. We want new GCSEs to set expectations which match those of the best education systems in the world, with rigorous assessment that provides a reliable measure of students’ achievement. The reforms are extensive and represent a new qualification gold standard.
Today we are publishing design and technology GCSE content that will assess both breadth and depth of knowledge, without limiting students on the materials they can work with. Current design and technology GCSEs have a wide range of titles each of which is focused on separate material areas—such as resistant materials, textiles or graphics. The new content will support a single qualification title, a change which subject experts felt is critical to the development of a qualification that requires students to have a broad knowledge of the design processes, materials, techniques and equipment that are core to the subject.
The content emphasises iterative processes of designing which all students should understand and be able to demonstrate. Subject experts have advised that such processes are at the core of contemporary practice. By teaching students this approach, the new qualification will prepare them for further study and careers in design, engineering, manufacturing and related areas.
The content also sets out, in detail, the mathematical and scientific content that students must know and use that relate closely to design and technology.
Together these changes aim to ensure that all students have the knowledge and skills to design and make products or prototypes, using the best material, equipment and techniques, to solve real world and relevant problems across a range of contexts.
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