Education Bill

Richard Fuller Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not.

Communities need other, more practical avenues of redress. Free schools are approved by the Secretary of State with no requirement for groups setting them up to consult widely with the local population. There is a complete lack of transparency and accountability over funding. We know that the Government have set aside £50 million to pay for new free schools, and we know from reports yesterday that about £25 million has been pledged to just two schools. Earlier, the Secretary of State failed to answer a question from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) about this. We know that a further 13 have been given promises of funding, but we do not know how much. Named day questions to Ministers simply go unanswered. It is not surprising that many communities believe that existing local schools are being left to fall into disrepair to allow free schools the money to be set up.

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

I have given way to the Secretary of State about three times, so I will give somebody else a chance.

[Richard Fuller]

It is important that the right hon. Gentleman gets a broader perspective on his two points about free schools. In the instance of the free school that is being set up in Kempston in my constituency, there has been widespread consultation involving parents and local schools, and a debate attended by the Anti Academies Alliance. The chair of the board of the free school has said that there will be full and clear transparency, and he is head of a college of further education in my constituency that is rated outstanding by Ofsted.

[Andy Burnham]

My point was that that level of consultation should be required. If a free school is set up, it may be good for those immediately planning to go there, but there may be an impact on the stability of provision around it and the viability of other local schools. There is a wider debate to be had in any community.

[Richard Fuller]

rose—

[Andy Burnham]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman again.

It is simply not acceptable that we have not had any figures. Pledges are being made; Ministers are going round the country waving cheque books at people wanting to set up their pet projects. When the Government have cancelled Building Schools for the Future, it is unacceptable that they are not prepared to answer parliamentary questions to tell us how much money has been committed to these new schools. It gives the impression that, shamefully, ideology and not need is driving the allocation of capital to schools.

We support autonomy for head teachers, but the Bill strips back the role of the local authority to an extent that even head teachers are uncomfortable with it. The ASCL has said that it is

“concerned that there may now be too few points of contact between local authorities and schools”.

The removal of the duty to co-operate in the production of a children’s plan and to work with children’s trusts raises concerns over the safeguarding of children and young people. The Laming review highlighted the need for all agencies involved with children, including schools, to have a joined-up approach to ensure that no child slipped through the net. Every Child Matters was an effort to remedy the failure of services to work together. Unison says that the Bill

“drives a wedge between schools and other local services and negates Every Child Matters”.

As I have said, the Bill takes power from the public and local communities.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

I look forward to supporting this Bill with gusto on behalf of all my constituents. It is, indeed, a landmark Bill. Historic? Well, not quite historic. Landmark, I think, is better, but the canon of my right hon. Friend’s work as Secretary of State for Education will truly be seen as historic as time passes.

It has been interesting to sit on the Government Benches and hear not only the speeches recognising that the Bill honours, empowers and respects our head teachers, but the observations of right hon. and hon. Opposition Members and the real divisions within the Labour party over the Bill, which is really the continuation of a journey that their Government started. There are divisions between those who believed then and believe now; those who believed then and are now just a little bit iffy; and those who never believed in the first place and certainly do not now. It has been very interesting to hear the observations about those divisions in the Labour party. It is welcome, however, to hear that Labour Members will be supporting the Bill.

One part of the Bill that is extraordinarily useful and valuable is the requirement for local authorities to fund early-years teaching for the most disadvantaged. That will come as welcome news to the governing boards and teachers at Cherry Trees, Peter Pan and Southway nurseries in Cauldwell ward, one of the most deprived parts of my town, which are suffering cuts from the Liberal Democrat-controlled council. I hope that we can move this measure forward quickly so that they can see that there is some hope for their funding in future.

If we are moving forward with the reading test at the age of six, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland) welcomed, I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleagues will ensure that they maintain the grants that are extraordinarily important for children who do not have English as a primary language at home. At two primary schools in my constituency, Priory lower school and Queens Park lower school, well over 80% of pupils do not have English as a primary language. We must maintain the ethnic minority achievement grants for families where English is not the primary language spoken at home. I also draw the Minister’s attention to issues of exclusion, which were mentioned by the shadow Secretary of State. The National Autistic Society says that for children with autism the exclusion rate is 27%, but for the rest of the population it is 4%. That is a major difference that requires further consideration.

My main concerns are about the proposals on academies and free schools. I like the fact that the Bill enables schools, each in their own time, to move towards becoming an academy. The Bill gives them that freedom, which they did not have before it was proposed and will not have until it is passed. I urge us all to think about talking to our own local authorities. As this strong movement towards academies moves forward, there will come a tipping point when local authorities no longer have the critical mass to offer the services they provide to the remaining schools. That is not a reason to hold back on this new-found freedom for head teachers, but a push for us to ensure that our local authorities are thinking ahead about what they will do next.

The Bill overcomes inertia and intransigence and promotes inspiration. I know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you will want me to give local examples of those three things, so I will accede to that. Let me start with inertia, which comes from the local authorities. As the shadow Secretary of State desperately tried not to be on the wrong side of history, he may have put a bit too much reliance on the record of local authorities. A total of 216 schools across the country are below the national minimum standard. That gives hon. Members a one in three chance of having one in their constituency. I inherited two: that was the record that my local authority bequeathed to me when I became the Member of Parliament.

I am not going to stand for that in my constituency. One of them, John Bunyan school, had been trailing at 19% and the low 20%s—at the lowest point, 9%—in terms of students who were achieving the minimum level of five GCSEs, including English and maths. Parents were voting with their feet, and its pupil numbers rolled down from 900 to 600. The school then became an academy. It has taken the action, and parents are responding. Now, its application rate makes it a 1,200-pupil school. Parents want this. They see that academies are a way of breaking down the inertia of local authorities, and I can see that in my town.

We have seen intransigence from the more extreme, unreconstructed class warriors or defenders of their own self-interest—by that I mean those at the Anti Academies Alliance and their fellow travellers at the Local Schools Network, who are, around the country, doing a great disservice to parents by distorting information, in some circumstances possibly to the extent of giving misinformation, about what academies and free schools are trying to do. They are also indulging in highly personalised attacks against people who want to establish academies and free schools—attacks they would never allow on members of their own union. We have seen that in Battersea, in Stourbridge, in Hammersmith and in my own constituency.

It is time that those people stopped acting as bovver boys for a Labour leadership who do not want their fingerprints on the crime of attacking people who have educational inspiration for their communities. I challenge the Labour leadership, in this debate, to draw the campaign by those groups to a close. There should be no more misinformation and no more attacks on people who are in the proudest tradition of trying to establish educational excellence in some of the most deprived areas of the country. In a blog for the Local Schools Network, the author refers to a debate in my town in which someone said of Mark Lehain, who has established a free school,

“Does he truly believe that local LA heads and teachers…are going to willingly and regularly exchange pleasantries?”

Well, I have got news for that person: we do things differently in Bedford and Kempston. I am very proud of our head teachers, 34 of whom came down here to make their case to the Secretary of State. We do things as a team in Bedford. Head teachers share what they learn from each other and grow together. I am very proud to say that that exchange partnership is going to welcome the head teacher of the free school, when it is established, as part of the family of schools. That is part of showing the way forward. That is the inspiration that we need, and that is what this Bill provides.