Multi-academy Trusts: Ofsted

Peter Kyle Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Westminster Hall

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the very first time, Mr Robertson, unlike the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who seems to be a regular in your sessions. I am also very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate, and for the persistence with which he is championing this cause. It is extraordinary; he had so much time in which to speak in this debate, and yet he did so at such a ferocious pace. For the benefit of our friends in Hansard, I will speak more slowly so that they can rest their weary quills for the next few minutes.

There are 7,680 schools in this country that are now part of multi-academy trusts. Even if each of those schools had just 500 pupils, that would mean several thousand young people whose futures are in the hands of multi-academy trusts. Regardless of ideology, that should give us pause for thought. Due to the reforms of recent years, multi-academy trusts now have a level of influence over the school system that few could have predicted, even when the first trusts emerged. In fact, most other authorities with responsibilities for young people are subject to extremely stringent inspection regimes—even if they are responsible for far fewer children than many multi-academy trusts. That is why we must do all we can to ensure that, whatever regulatory framework we develop for MATs, it reflects the level of influence that these trusts now exert.

For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussion of school structures. I noticed that in his speech, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North fell into the same trap, if he does not mind my saying so. As someone who has helped set up two academies, I know their strengths—that they can be a phenomenal tool for delivering improvement—but also their limitations. To suggest that they would have the same impact in every situation stretches the single tool that academisation presents as an opportunity for the education system. Other tools are available to Ministers, principals of schools, school leaders, MATs and local education authorities, and we need to use all the different tools that are at our disposal, not disproportionately favour one for reasons that are simply ideological.

For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussions about school structures—that was, after all, the key plank of the reforms implemented by the Conservative-led coalition after the 2010 general election. Obsessions over school structures have held our schools back, because they have hidden new and emerging challenges in our school system such as the complete failure to root out sexual harassment in our education system. Though it has been found by Ofsted to be routine in all schools, there have been particularly high-profile cases of poor practice in “outstanding” schools that are part of well-established trusts. That is not an argument against trusts or against collaboration, but it is a clear example of how focusing on structures can obscure the real issues that are existing, emerging and developing within our school system. Our focus should not be on radical changes in school structures: it should be on what delivers improvement in the 2020s and beyond, not in a bygone era.

To his credit, I believe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is focusing on this issue with a sincere desire to drive improvement, going forward. The Labour party and I are very grateful for that, which is why we have offered what I hope the hon. Gentleman will perceive as constructive support since he introduced his ten-minute rule Bill and beyond. He has drawn national attention to the proliferation of multi-academy trusts under this Government, and has pushed for a specific loophole around inspections to be closed.

As has been noted, Ofsted has carried out summary inspections on multi-academy trusts since 2019. Recent updates to the guidance on those inspections should help to broaden their remit and increase their volume. However, Ofsted itself has highlighted the need to go further: its chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has highlighted the “peculiarity” of not inspecting MATs on their governance, efficiency and use of resources. Appearing before the Select Committee on Education, she also referred to a suite of

“historic inspection legislation that constrains us to look at the level of the individual school”.

We in the Labour party completely agree that inspections of multi-academy trusts should take place. We also agree that those inspections should include a proper assessment of leadership, governance and safeguarding arrangements, so we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response today.

As a former chair of governors involved in setting up two turnaround academies, I know how important leadership is to the success of schools. What is more, we never feared being held to account. Inspections are important: in fact, we relished the chance to show what we could do and learn how to perform better. I was there at 7.30 in the morning as chair of governors, alongside the principal, to await the team of inspectors. We welcomed them to our school and we saw their inspection as a tool for improvement, even though we all felt the heat—the anticipation—and did so with great nerves, because we wanted to show off what was great about our school.

When I got the reports in from those inspections, I found them to contain incredibly helpful insights into the performance of schools, which often reinforced the direction of travel within a school and highlighted those things that we did not quite notice. Even on school inspections, classroom visits and walkarounds, it is very hard for people who are not trained educationists to see with their own eyes precisely what is happening in every corner of a school, rather than just going on the data that is presented to them by that school. Inspections are a really important part of improvement, whatever the organisation. So, I have no doubt that genuinely forward-looking MATs will take the same approach to a more rigorous form of inspection for their own organisations than the current regime offers—a form of inspection that champions innovation and gives the insight and analysis of performance to help MATs improve in practice, just as a good inspection should seek to improve individual schools as well.

Adopting a new form of inspection to challenge and support MAT leaders is one thing, but driving up performance and leaders will take far more than a new inspection regime, especially given how badly both they and pupils have been let down during the pandemic. According to research conducted by Teacher Tapp, only 2.5% of school leaders felt supported by the Department for Education throughout the pandemic. Think about that for one second: 97.5% of teachers—over 400,000—trying to respond to a once in a lifetime disruption to education without anyone backing them up. The sense of isolation they felt was profound.

Changes to inspection regimes will go so far, but will not remedy the worst failures of this Conservative Government. What is worse, the Department’s muddled and inconsistent advice was often actively harming our school leaders’ ability to respond. One teacher said of the guidance that she received:

“I physically look at it and I can’t even bring myself to open it right now, because you just get saturated with it”.

Threatened with legal action if they closed—only to be forced to close the very next day—schools and trust leaders have lacked proper leadership throughout the pandemic. They are now lacking properly resourced catch-up support and tough action to clamp down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates.

[Jonathan Gullis]

I want to put it on the record that I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman regarding the disgraceful action of anti-vaxxers standing outside schools filming young people coming in and out of that school, as well as parents. It is absolutely abhorrent and there is absolutely no place for it. This Government have to come down hard on those people.

School, for some of the most vulnerable people in our communities, is the safest place for them. As a former head of year, I used to have a lot of children who hung around after school—despite the fact they told me it was the worst place to be—because it was where they felt safest. The fact that we have these disgusting individuals targeting young people is abhorrent. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will also call for action. I want to make sure this is on the record for the Minister: we have to go in hard; we have to make our young people and teachers feel safe.

[Peter Kyle]

This is something that I have been deeply concerned about since the start of the autumn term in September. On 19 July in the Chamber, when I raised concerns about the vaccine roll-out among children aged 12-plus and argued that it should be rolled out over the summer months, so as to use the mass vaccination existing infrastructure, so that schools could be protected come autumn and stabilised, but also so that they did not become targets for anti-vax protests, the then Vaccines Minister, the right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), told me that children were protected by a “wall of vaccinated adults” and therefore it was not a priority. He was wrong. Now he is Secretary of State for Education and we are picking up the pieces.

The principal of a school told me recently that he feels his job is no longer primarily that of leading an institution for schooling, but of running a logistics centre: twice-weekly testing in school, organising the logistics behind a vaccine roll-out in school, dealing with local outbreaks, and dealing with the need to control the flow of students. He said the first, second, third and often fourth items on the agenda of his daily senior management team meetings were about logistical challenges, not teaching and learning. That is the price of not seeing this coming down the road. It was predicted and predictable and was not dealt with.

The Labour party has tried to be constructive about this. Last month the Leader of the Opposition proposed a solution—to update the legislation around public spaces protection orders. They are unwieldy at the moment and could take several weeks to implement. However we believe that, with a very simple amendment to the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the process could be streamlined so that an order could be brought into force in just one hour, with one phone conference between a school principal, the local authority and the local police force. They could bring into the order the powers to keep anti-vax protesters away from school gates for the duration of the vaccine roll-out programme. We offered that suggestion, but sadly the Government have not responded. The Secretary of State for Education said in response to my oral question just two weeks ago that he was in conversation with the Home Secretary, and that all powers would be implemented. Again, nothing happened. I cannot see that that conversation actually took place in a meaningful way.

However, there is another opportunity, and it is great that I have been given the opportunity to put it on the record. Tomorrow, in the House of Lords, Lord Coaker will table an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would amend the 2003 Act to give schools the powers that I have just described to instigate exclusion zones for anti-vax protesters within one hour, and they could do so pre-emptively; if one school is facing disruptive anti-vax protests in which children are being bullied, harassed and intimidated, in all likelihood the same will emerge down the road when the protest moves to another school, so schools need those powers to prevent that protest from happening. The Government have an opportunity to give them those powers. We would get this through in a heartbeat. The Labour Opposition in the House of Lords stand ready to table that amendment tomorrow.

I will have my say on another issue, because I feel as strongly as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, and we have another 25 minutes of debate, so I am sure I can get this on the record before I sum up the debate. In my constituency, anti-vax protesters have gone on to a school bus to tell children that they will become infertile if they take the vaccine. Outside schools in my constituency, there have been so many harassing, bullying and intimidatory protesters that schoolchildren have had to detour out into the busy main road in order to go through the driveway into the school. A child was grabbed by the collar and told that he could endanger the lives of his teachers and his parents.

I bring those experiences and my anger about that kind of behaviour because, let us be clear, these people are not just anti-vax. Six months ago, they were anti-face masks. A year or two ago, they were anti-covid altogether, believing it was all fake news. If they were alive 350 years ago, they would have been calling for Galileo to be burned at the stake for saying the earth revolves around the sun. We went through the scientific revolution, we went through the Enlightenment, in this country so that we could not base policy on superstition. We did so by bringing the best of scientific understanding to the heart of Government. Let us not allow these people to determine how public health unfolds in this country. I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and for giving me the opportunity to put that on the record. I feel very strongly about it.

People leading schools and teaching in classrooms through the pandemic lack resources for catch-up support and tough action to clamp down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates. In contrast to the Government, the Labour party is on the side of pupils, teachers and leaders. Our goal is a well-functioning school system, backed with resources, direction and inspection, that prepares students for the world of work and the world of tomorrow that they will encounter. Under the new leadership of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), we have updated our positions on key issues in schools policy to meet the new challenges that schools and trusts face. The Government have not. We innovate; I am afraid that the Government stagnate.

What is the Minister’s assessment of the strength of the current inspection regime for MATs? What plans does he have to expand Ofsted’s inspection powers with regard to MATs, and does he intend to support any greater powers with the required resources? What other steps is he taking to support schools that wish to exit their trust if that is in the best interests of pupils? Will he commit to a new era of strong leadership from the Department for Education? This is a fantastic opportunity, as we hopefully see the finish line of the pandemic in sight, and with a new ministerial team, to commit to new, strong leadership—one that trust leaders, school leaders, teachers and students can at last trust, replacing the years of drift and decline.

As I made clear at the start, ensuring robust standards for all MATs is crucial. It would matter if they educated just one child; it certainly matters when they educate so many thousands. A young child has only one shot at their education; the state must do all it can to make that shot a success.

[Mr Laurence Robertson (in the Chair)]

I would like to leave two or three minutes at the end for the mover of the motion to respond.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Gullis]

I am delighted to hear about the schools White Paper—the Zahawi-Walker legacy document —that will be launched next year. I will absolutely be pushing for my ten-minute rule Bill to play a key part in that. I am obviously happy to always try to be flexible and fair, but I think—we heard it from the hon. Member for Hove (Peter Kyle)—that this is something that brings everyone, across the House, together. We want the very best for our young people and therefore want the very best education to be accessed.

I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Hove; none of the multi-academy trusts I have spoken to fear this idea, because they believe firmly in what they do. I think the overwhelming majority of multi-academy trusts do their best, work hard, spend their money correctly and invest in the schools within their trusts, and I think they have no problem with it. The only ones that will be worried about are those that do not want to face the scrutiny. That gives the DFE the power to get rid of them—disband these ones—and broker new deals with good existing multi-academy trusts to then come in and take over.

I like to be a bit punchy every now and again, and the hon. Member for Hove is fantastic when he gets going about the Government’s record, so I could not help but remind myself of a few facts. At the end of the day, when the Conservative party came to power in 2010, about a year before I entered the teaching profession, the legacy left by the Labour party was that the Confederation of British Industry stated that employers had lost confidence in Britain’s exams, the Wolf Review found some courses

“fail to promote progression into either stable, paid employment or higher level education”,

and some 350,000 young people had been let down by courses that had little or no labour market value. In 2008, the Sutton Trust found that only 40 pupils out of the 80,000 eligible for free school meals went on to Oxbridge, and in May 2010, the Office for Fair Access said that by the mid-2000s the most advantaged 20% were

“seven times more likely than the most disadvantaged 40% to attend the most selective institutions.”

We only have to look at Labour-run Wales where education standards are falling down the league tables. It is an abomination and Mr Drakeford should be ashamed of himself. He should be held to account for his dismal record in failing to deliver for the people of Wales.

[Peter Kyle]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s words, and his challenge and scrutiny of Labour’s record. I make the simple point to him that when Labour came to power in 1997, just over 40% of students were getting five GCSEs including maths and English. By the time we finished in power, it was almost 80%. On a range of different measures, outcomes were more than doubled. If he criticises the legacy that Labour left, can he picture what we inherited last time his party left office?