Education and Adoption Bill

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) on her speech. She spoke with singular clarity about her educational viewpoints and her constituency.

I declare an interest as the chair of governors of an academy school based in the city of Brighton and Hove. I have spoken before in this House about my journey through education, leaving school lacking the qualifications needed to succeed in life and therefore having to return to secondary school at the age of 25 to start over again. I approached the Bill with an open mind about its publicised aim of challenging underperformance throughout the education system. For me, excusing underperformance in schools rather than challenging it has always been a source of intense frustration, even anger, due to my own experiences.

There are many reasons to excuse failure, such as poor school performance, students living in areas of deprivation or the difficult family circumstances of some students, but for me those are barriers to overcome rather than reasons to excuse poor attainment. A student who graduates before overcoming those challenges will carry them into adulthood and for the rest of their lives, so I wholeheartedly support having a radically higher sense of ambition for young people. However, the Bill stands out more for what it does not cover than for what it does. It focuses on the performance of local authority controlled schools, which are, in educational terms, one part of the challenge we face, but in reading it one might be forgiven for thinking that they are the only challenge.

I have some sympathy with the need to tackle the lack of ambition in some local authority departments, because I come from Brighton and Hove. Today, Ofsted released its findings on the education authority where I live, and judged that it “requires improvement”. A year ago, a Local Government Association peer review stated that the authority

“lacked ambition for young people”

and was not supporting school improvement with the vigour that was needed. After two such warnings in one year, I firmly believe that enough is enough. Every young person has the potential to succeed, but some need help to get there. People who do not share that belief have no place in running education systems and that is my warning to Brighton and Hove education authority as it responds to those challenges.

Underperformance is not the sole preserve of local authority education systems. If this Government truly cared about rooting out and challenging coasting schools, they would extend the reach of the Bill to include other organisations. The first would be underperforming academies, particularly good schools that are being held back by being locked into low-performing academy chains. Why the Government are not introducing measures to release them from the contracts with the same rapidity as the maintained schools covered by the Bill is a mystery to me. The second group would be coasting private schools that are registered with the Charity Commission and receiving tax breaks. They should also be expected to deliver the same improvements as those demanded of maintained schools.

I also have concerns about clause 8, which covers consultation. As chair of the governors of an academy, I feel strongly that links to the surrounding community beyond the students and parents are incredibly important for the success of the school. The predecessor of the school I now chair was in special measures at the time of the conversion and the consultation time was therefore limited, but the powers granted to the Secretary of State by the Bill will enable similarly rapid conversion for coasting schools. Unless a rapid consultation is carried out with extreme skill, that will disempower the school community and could well hinder the improvement that is needed and desired.

Academisation is one tool among many in improving local education. Others include improving teaching standards, better leadership and improving whole family approaches to education. Each of those is a means to an end, not an end in itself, but because the Government have prioritised the academy programme above other methods of tackling coasting schools, the future of individual schools has become an ideological battleground rather than a place where communities come together to express their ambitions for their school and for the next generation of young people. That is why the Bill is too limited and ideological to warrant our support.