Education Bill

Stephen Phillips Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I rise to support new clause 19, which stands in my name. I can do so briefly and I am sure that colleagues will be grateful for that, but I must explain that the new clause comes not out of the ether of theory but out of practice. I will happily declare an interest, in case I have to, in that I chair one of the two new academy schools in Birkenhead. The governors have made no decisions on the new clause, if we were to be successful, or on some of the other options about which I shall speak. We are testing the ground to see the best forms of education we can offer some young people in Birkenhead. The new clause is very simple and states that as an academy we will be able to buy any places anywhere we want for our pupils, including in private schools, but that we should not be able to do so until pupils have spent three years with us—that is, until they are 14. The governors are seriously considering how we can start to reinforce once again the idea of life chances for our pupils by giving them a range of options that they might wish to choose at 14.

I know that this is the responsibility of the Minister's colleague in the Lords, but I am anxious that we should be successful in bidding for moneys from the new tranche of finance that the Chancellor announced in the Budget to establish what I might call a Baker academy. We would like some of our pupils to be able to consider that as one option. We have a first-class metropolitan college and we would like pupils to be able to choose—perhaps at 14—to transfer their talents and prosper even more in those circumstances. We will, of course, have some pupils of high academic attainment and it would be good to be able to fast-track them and their education in a local private school. This new clause is about giving not just our academy but academies in general that power.

I asked our brilliant experts in the Library whether the academies had such a power now and, more importantly, whether the law would prevent us from exercising it now. The answer was that, on the face of the record, we do not have that power now, but it is certainly cloudy whether any provision in statute would prevent us from using it. As the Bill moves to the other place, where we will try to move this clause in all seriousness, I am anxious that we should clarify the position beyond any doubt.

I do not know the views of Tory Back Benchers on such a new clause, but I imagine that the Liberal Democrats would insist that it should be part of the renegotiations of the coalition agreement, as it ticks every box in the Liberal vocabulary. If we felt that they were dragging their feet, in Birkenhead we would know who was stopping us increasing life chances for some of our poorest pupils. If the Liberals made this provision a key part of their renegotiations, they would get the credit.

The new clause moves the focus of the debate from buildings to pupils. I know we love the cant in this place and to pretend that we have moved in such a way, but everything we decide is really about buildings and institutions. The clause takes the debate beyond institutions and schools, and centres it on pupils. What can we buy that they most need at a certain point of time? I hasten to add—in case this disappoints any Tories—that this is not a subsidy to the private sector. We would buy provision at less cost than that spent in a state school on the very small group of pupils whom we might wish to give the opportunity of going to a local public school. If the Liberals opposed us, they would be saying that they were not in favour of our having this freedom and that we would have to spend the money in the state sector, even though that would mean spending more and not getting the sort of education that we want for the small minority of pupils who might benefit from such choice.

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

As someone who benefited from the assisted places scheme, I can perhaps understand more than most the right hon. Gentleman’s argument about what his provision might do for pupils’ life chances. I have no concluded view on the new clause, which I shall consider carefully—I am sure the rest of the House will do so, too—but why would an academy that purchased a place at a public school for one of its pupils spend less on that pupil than if it maintained them in the academy?

[Mr Field]

For the simple reason that the average payment that we get from taxpayers to educate would be less than the marginal cost that the school might wish to charge us for allowing pupils to attend it. Its costs would be covered, we would make a profit and we would be doing what we would wish for the small number of our scholars who might want to move into a public school.

Let me emphasise that such a reform is not just about changing institutions and breaking down the terrible, crippling divide in this country between public schools and state schools. The new clause is an attempt to begin a reform that would allow us to spend our budget in the best way possible to give the greatest advantages and life chances to pupils, whoever they are. It is not the only option we wish to develop; we will not be prevented from developing the others and we will develop them. In this area, however, there is some doubt about what the law says.

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That is what parents in such areas expect from a Conservative Government and a coalition Government. That is what they were hoping for when they got the pupil premium. That is what they are looking to the Bill to provide—an extension of power from the Secretary of State to local areas. I hope the Minister will listen and seek to embrace that vision as he moves forward. In a few years we will look back on this period, with the current Secretary of State, as a great opportunity to help many who are suffering severe economic and educational disadvantage. New clause 1 seeks to achieve that.

[Stephen Phillips]

I am grateful for the opportunity to address, albeit briefly, new clause 1 to which my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) has just spoken. I was not intending to do so and I therefore hesitated to rise. The charge that he levels at the Secretary of State is essentially that my right hon. Friend is not being sufficiently radical. May I respectfully say that, if that charge is right, the new clause that my hon. Friend moves is itself not sufficiently radical?

The new clause identifies only one set of circumstances—the circumstances of underachievement—in which the Secretary of State should have the ability to disapply the provisions of the Bill in order to ensure that an academy comes into being. I have little doubt that there are many other circumstances in which it might equally be advocated that the Secretary of State should intervene to disapply provisions of the Bill in order to ensure that an academy comes into being. I have in mind an issue that has recently arisen in my constituency which affects many other rural constituencies where there are village primary schools with insufficient places to meet the demand of local parents in the village, with the effect that children from villages sometimes have to travel a great distance for their primary education, often at the cost of being separated from their peers with whom they spend the remainder of their time. One might seek to argue that the Secretary of State should equally have the right to disapply the provisions of the Bill should it be passed and receive Royal Assent. The problem to which I refer is particularly acute in a village called Witham St Hughs in my constituency.

I wonder, therefore, whether the charge which my hon. Friend perhaps rightly levels at the Front Bench could be levelled at his own new clause. He might like to consider whether it should go much wider, in giving the Secretary of State the power not just to disapply the provisions where there is underachievement, but to disapply the provisions that stand in the way of the creation of an academy in other circumstances as well. He may wish to consider amending his new clause in due course. That rather depends, I suspect, on whether he presses it to a Division today.

I should like to hear from the Minister that there is to be some action from the Government on the problem that I have outlined, which affects rural communities and villages in rural constituencies such as mine, as it does in Witham St Hughs. The lack of sufficient primary places is a problem that the Government will need to address, not necessarily because their immediate predecessor did not address it, but because successive Governments across a number of decades have failed to recognise the needs of village communities in constituencies such as mine.

[Stephen McPartland (Stevenage) (Con)]

I, too, had not intended to speak, but I would like to do so in defence of new clause 1, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller). He is very radical when it comes to education and desperately keen to ensure, as am I and many Members across the House, that children from deprived backgrounds get the education that they deserve and that would allow them to be educated out of poverty. He is concerned that that is not happening because we are not being radical enough in providing the Secretary of State with powers to help those schools that are trying to move forward and improve the benefits they offer.

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[Mr Gibb]

I have no idea what the view of the House would be. I am not sure that the right hon. Gentleman would have huge support from Opposition Members, or that all elements of the coalition would necessarily support his proposal. I am not sure what the outcome of such a vote would be, but I am not convinced that his proposal is the right thing on which to use scarce taxpayers’ money.

[Stephen Phillips]

The Minister has quite rightly stressed the importance of using the funding for academies to raise academic standards and to deliver the best education for all pupils in them, but the new clause that the right hon. Gentleman seeks to introduce, at least in a probing way, does not detract from that. It says that the most able pupils should be able, at a marginal cost, to go to what the Minister himself has said the OECD describes as some of the best schools in the country. I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will not press his new clause, which is a probing measure, but will the Minister keep an open mind? At the moment, he has given no principled reason why the proposed change should be rejected.

[Mr Gibb]

I have listened to my hon. and learned Friend with great care, and he makes his case persuasively, but our principled view is that we want to see standards raised across the state sector. With 93% of pupils in our education system attending schools in the state sector, we want to ensure that every school in that sector caters for pupils of the kind that he and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead are talking about. Mossbourne community academy in Hackney serves one of the most deprived parts of this country; 50% of its pupils qualify for free school meals. More than 80%—I think nearer to 85%—of students at that school achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C, including English and maths, and this year they have had 10 offers of Oxbridge places. How many comprehensive schools of which hon. Members are aware have had 10 Oxbridge places offered in one year?

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[Stephen Phillips]

I shall keep my contribution extremely brief. I speak as a former chair of governors at a special school for the deaf—one of the only remaining sign bilingual schools in the country. The issue that I particularly want to address is school discipline. That is so central to the learning environment and to outcomes that it is a great shame that it has not been dealt with by previous Administrations. It is for that reason, if for no other, that the Bill will receive my full support.

As anyone who chaired a governing body under the previous law knows, the difficulty with the regime that existed was that when a head teacher excluded a pupil the exclusion was often overturned by the governing body, because it knew that if it did not overturn it, the exclusion would subsequently be overturned by the extensive appeal mechanisms that are amended by the Bill. It is for that reason that I welcome the amendments that the Government are introducing in that respect.