Teachers Strike

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

No, I think that is an anachronistic approach to discussing important political issues. We have regular discussions with the teacher unions. We have all kinds of reference groups of representative teachers whom we meet regularly in the Department for Education. We are very aware of teachers’ concerns about the changing curriculum and worries about workload. We had a workload challenge to which 44,000 teachers responded. We take all these issues very seriously, and we respond to concerns. We do not want to go back to the 1980s and have strikes as a way of engaging in issues of concern. They are not necessary, and most teachers agree with that.

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

The Minister can say all he likes about school budgets going up, but the facts on the ground paint a very different picture. One of the schools in my constituency has had to close down its summer school, which was deliberately targeted at helping deprived students to catch up before the beginning of the school year. Will he look at that example, and other examples that other hon. Members are sure to raise, to make sure that the funding cuts do not impact on deprived students, in particular?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, of course I will look at any individual examples that the hon. Lady or any other hon. Member wants to bring my attention, and I will make sure that the school is receiving the best possible advice on how to manage its budget.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

Last week, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned of a brain drain due to the recruitment and retention crisis in teaching that the Minister is well aware of. I appreciate the Minister’s earlier answer about the use of qualified teachers in classes being up to schools, but does he share my concern that teaching assistants are increasingly being used to teach SEN and low-attaining pupils?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not accept the comments of Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools. We are doing everything we can to recruit. Despite increasing pupil numbers, and the challenge of a strong economy and the strengthening graduate jobs market, we are ensuring that there are now record numbers of teachers in our classrooms. There are 13,000 more teachers in our classrooms today than in 2010. Recruitment in teaching is a challenge. I use every platform I have to extol the virtues and rewards of teaching to help raise the status of the teaching profession. What does the hon. Lady do?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Monday 20th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[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.

Education and Adoption Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[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.

Education and Adoption Bill (Ninth sitting)

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[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.

Education and Adoption Bill (Eighth sitting)

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Thursday 9th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Education and Adoption Bill (Sixth sitting)

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[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.

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[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.

Recruitment and Retention of Teachers

Debate between Nick Gibb and Louise Haigh

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

It is interesting to hear the Minister refute those assertions, given that his own written answer confirmed that 400 Teach First graduates started teaching maths and science in the last school year, but nearly 600 left the profession. Does he agree that the Government’s administration of the Teach First programme is failing on recruitment and retention?

[Mr Gibb]

On the contrary, Teach First has been a huge success. The purpose of Teach First is to attract people who might not otherwise consider entering teaching and ask them to commit to two years, so there has always been the expectation that a considerable number of the graduates who come into Teach First will leave and go into other careers in the City or elsewhere. The overall retention rate of more than 50% is actually staggeringly successful and reflects just how successful Teach First has been in recruiting high-calibre graduates into teaching.

The strong recruitment and retention figures have not been achieved by lowering our expectations for the quality of those joining the teaching profession. Almost three quarters of teachers now have an upper second or first-class degree, 10% higher than in 2010. A record proportion of teacher trainees—17%—have first-class degrees, and for several years running teaching has remained the most popular career destination for graduates of Oxford University. Teach First has played a huge part in that.

In spite of those successes, we recognise that there are still challenges. As the economy improves and the labour market strengthens, high-performing graduates are being tempted by opportunities in other sectors. Our task is to continue to champion teaching as a career choice for the brightest and the best, and not only to attract those people into our classrooms but to keep them there once they have joined the profession.