Schools White Paper

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Let me start by declaring an interest as a lifelong member of the National Union of Teachers and a former teacher and college principal—I am not sure whether or not it is a benefit in this debate to have led a high-performing educational institution. This has been an excellent debate, begun from the Back Benches by the Father of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who pointed out in a very able contribution that the Government are making a big mistake and asked them to think again.

My hon. Friends spelled out the need to think again. We heard contributions from my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), for Brent Central (Dawn Butler), for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), for Bradford West (Naz Shah), for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins), for Burnley (Julie Cooper), for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey), for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell). We also heard extremely positive contributions from the hon. Members for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows), for Southport (John Pugh), for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), for Gloucester (Richard Graham), for Solihull (Julian Knight) and for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond).

I would like to draw particular attention to the concerns expressed carefully, and quite properly, by Government Members. Concerns about removing choice and forcing academisation were expressed by the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge). The hon. Member for South Suffolk also expressed concern about the independence of small primary schools, as did the hon. Members for Newbury (Richard Benyon), for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for Telford (Lucy Allan) and for Solihull. The hon. Members for Winchester (Steve Brine), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) and for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) asked why, if something is broken in Hampshire, can the schools not stick with the local authority? I think that the Secretary of State indicated that there might be a concession to allow local authorities to form a multi-academy trust. If that is the case, it should be welcomed.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Nic Dakin]

I am going to make some progress.

I thought that the hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince) made a really excellent speech. He made it clear that there is no evidence that academies are always better and expressed the fear, which many of us genuinely feel, that this may prove to be an unnecessary shake-up. He was complimented on that argument by his colleague the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman).

The big question that everybody is asking is: why? Why force every school to become an academy? Why remove the historical partnership between local communities and their schools by saying that schools can no longer choose to remain in local authority families? Why remove the right of parents to be elected by their peers to serve on their child’s school’s governing body, as is clearly proposed in paragraph 3.3 of the White Paper? I listened very carefully, but no credible answer has yet come forth, and there has been no evidence to support the huge upheaval that this forced academisation represents.

It is not as though those working in education do not have challenges to focus their energies on, such as teacher shortages, inadequate school place planning, managing the chaos of initiatives on exams and assessment being imposed on schools, or managing the first real-terms cuts in schools funding since the mid-1990s, with the need to make around £7.5 billion of savings. With limited resources, one might think that a Conservative Government would focus their energies on these very real issues.

I think that the Bow Group put it well:

“The proposed changes to schools follow a worrying trend in recent years to further centralise decisions away from local communities, which have more nuanced understanding of the issues they face daily. This adds to an ongoing ideological drift between the Party and conservative values.”

The leaders of the four largest groups on the Local Government Association are right to point out that 82% of local authority schools are good or outstanding, adding that there

“is no clear evidence that academies perform better than council maintained schools.”

That echoes the conclusion that the cross-party Education Committee came to after its in-depth inquiry into the matter. The National Association of Head Teachers is right to warn that

“the proposals present a particularly high risk to the future viability and identity of small, rural schools, nurseries and special schools.”

The professional associations are right to point out in their joint letter that a

“forcible transfer of 17,000 schools to academy status... will be a huge distraction from schools’ core functions of teaching and learning… This is not what parents want from their schools, nor was this a proposal part of the manifesto that the current government put before the electorate.”

That is from the leaders of the Local Government Association’s leading groups. Evidence that they are right can be seen in the angry reaction of parents on Mumsnet to the suggestion that schools should be forced to become academies, whether or not that is needed or the school community and parents want it.

Her Majesty’s chief inspector has recently written to the Secretary of State to raise serious concerns about the performance of seven large multi-academy trusts:

“Given these worrying findings about the performance of disadvantaged pupils and the lack of leadership capacity and strategic oversight by trustees, salary levels for the chief executives of some of these MATs do not appear to be commensurate with the level of performance of their trusts or constituent academies. This poor use of public money is compounded by some trusts holding very large cash reserves that are not being spent on raising standards.”

It is no wonder 146,000 people have already signed a petition calling on the Government to stop going down this road.

“Schools Week” asked a pertinent question: what will forced academisation mean for pupils? It came up with a perceptive answer: “Almost nothing.” However, there will be an impact on children and parents. School leaders will have to put scarce energy and money into researching and managing academisation. An additional £1.3 billion will be spent on the process, which is money that could be directly spent on children in our schools. Time and money that should be spent tackling the real problems facing schools—managing cuts in funding, recruiting and maintaining the education workforce, and providing sufficient school places—will be spent on managing a process of structural change. However, it is worse than that. There is not the capacity in the system to support wholesale academisation. There are already insufficient potential sponsors to give schools that need or want to become academies a choice.

The regional schools directors charged with ensuring school improvement will be distracted from focusing on that as they marshal capacity for wholescale academisation —a capacity that might well include expanding already-failing academy chains, which was something the Secretary of State failed to rule out when pressed to do so by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) in the Budget debate. We have a strategy that would deliver the ideological outcome of forced academisation but do nothing to improve outcomes for the UK’s children or UK plc.

I hope all right hon. and hon. Members who believe that such massive changes to our school system should go ahead only if the evidence is in place to support them will vote for the motion on the Order Paper if they are not convinced that the time, money and energy that will be spent on forced academisation will improve outcomes for children, families and communities.