Academies Bill [Lords]

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The number is zero, which is just about right. It has often been alleged that, for example, Gateshead Emmanuel CTC teaches creationism as part of the science curriculum. Having visited that school, I know that it does not. I can tell anyone who is a critic of CTCs or academies that the cure for such cynicism is to visit them. It used to be said that the cure for anyone who admired the House of Lords too much was to visit it. Having visited the House of Lords during its deliberations on the Bill, I am full of admiration for the way in which it was debated there and for the many Liberal Democrat colleagues who helped to improve it. To anyone who wants to see how our schools can be improved, I recommend visiting academies such as Mossbourne community academy in Hackney, with 84% of children getting five good GCSEs; Burlington Danes academy in Hammersmith, where a school that was in special measures now has more than half its children getting five good GCSEs; Manchester academy, where Kathy August, on behalf of the United Learning Trust, has taken a school in which only 6% of students got five good GCSEs to a point where 35% do so now—all great successes, which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will want to applaud.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I do indeed applaud all those successes. Surely the difference between the CTCs and academies that Labour introduced and the right hon. Gentleman’s proposal is that the CTCs and academies deliberately focused on areas of disadvantage, but his proposal is to give first priority to outstanding schools, which are disproportionately in areas of affluence and advantage.

[Michael Gove]

First, outstanding schools can be found in any area, including areas of disadvantage. Secondly, if most of our outstanding schools are in areas of advantage, is it not a telling indictment of 13 years of Labour rule that all the best schools are in the richest areas? The hon. Gentleman lost his seat just five years ago; if only he had stayed in the Department for Education, perhaps the situation would not have been so bad. We will ensure that every school that acquires academy freedom takes an underperforming school under its wing to ensure that all schools improve as a result.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), who made a constructive and reflective speech.

The starting point when thinking about the Second Reading of this Bill is to consider what are the keys to success for schools reform. We must consider the impact of reform on the following: the quality of leadership in our schools; the standards of teaching and learning in our schools; and the achievement gaps that we know still scar our system both within schools and between schools.

I want to set out six areas of concern. The first of them echoes a concern raised by the Select Committee Chair, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), who described himself as a “structural change sceptic”. I agree with him: it is wrong that structures are so often put first. We on the Labour Benches sometimes did that when we were in government, and I think this Bill repeats the error. I think the key to success in education is the quality of the people involved—the quality of the head teacher and of the rest of the leadership team in a school, the quality of parental engagement, and, of course, the quality of the learning of the young people themselves.

The example of Mossbourne community academy in Hackney is rightly often cited. It is a wonderful, brilliant school and a great advertisement for academies. One of the main reasons for its success is its principal, Michael Wilshaw, who was previously at St Bonaventure’s, a Roman Catholic school in Newham, where he achieved a similarly remarkable transformation. I make that point to emphasise that, first and foremost, it is about the individuals and the personal skills that they bring, rather than the structures.

In Labour’s academy programme—as others, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), have said—our starting point was schools that serve some of the most deprived communities in our country. I had the privilege to serve as Minister for Schools for three years in Tony Blair’s second term, and one of the things I was responsible for was the London challenge, which addressed disadvantage and the failure of schools in some parts of our capital city. Academies were absolutely central to strategy that we pursued in London. However, it was about not just academies but strengthening school leadership, Teach First—the hon. Member for Bristol North West referred to that—and effective networks between schools sharing professional best practice.

In most cases the academies have so far been very positive, and for a number of reasons: their freedom to innovate, the positive involvement of their sponsors, and their focus on good leadership in our schools. I do not accept the argument of the hon. Member for Southport (Dr Pugh) that it was just about the funding, although that was certainly a factor. There is a big difference between autonomy for schools, which I absolutely support, and isolation of individual schools. We need to achieve a combination of autonomy and partnership between different schools if we are to produce a high-quality system, and that is not just about structures.

My second concern, freedom, was eloquently discussed by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). If these freedoms do work—by and large, they do—why do we not apply them to all schools? I have not heard a convincing argument from the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats as to why this legislation applies first and foremost to schools that are already outstanding, rather than seeking to apply some of these freedoms to all schools.

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman will of course remember that the Secretary of State wrote to all schools inviting them to apply for academy status.

[Stephen Twigg]

Indeed he did, but my understanding is that there will be a fast track for schools that are already outstanding. In responding to me earlier, the Secretary of State rightly said—I will return to this point—that there are many outstanding schools in deprived communities, but we know that on average, most outstanding schools have lower levels of children with free school meals and of children with special educational needs. I therefore want the Government to consider whether it is right to give this fast-track prioritisation to outstanding schools.

The provision in the Bill dealing with schools in special measures leads me to worry about the schools in the middle. If we have academies that are aimed at the outstanding schools, and academies—the Labour academies and those that fit into the second category in the Bill—aimed at schools in the most challenging circumstances, what about the schools in neither of those categories? We need to consider that issue in more detail in Committee.

My third concern, which has already been set out by other Members, is the speed—the haste—with which this proposal is being taken forward. In the excellent debates on the Bill in the other place, Lord Turnbull, who chairs Dulwich college, an academy sponsor in Kent, made a strong case for that view, and I hope the House will bear with me if I quote him:

“The granting of academy status should be seen not just as a reward for past achievement but as an opportunity for future improvement. Candidates should not be invited to write a ‘Yes please, me too’ letter, of which we have had a thousand already; they should be required to reflect on how they can turn these freedoms to advantage. They should think about their governance structures rather than simply carrying on with existing boards that were created in a different regime. The opportunity to bring in new sponsors with new ideas must not be skipped…An aspiring academy…needs to think through afresh its ethos, the curriculum that it offers, its policies on a huge range of issues…A school cannot do a thorough job of preparing its prospectus in that time, let alone get it approved by the department and the as yet non-existent regulator. We should not be encouraging schools to skimp on this important work.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 537.]

I echo those words of Lord Turnbull, and I want to illustrate the point further with three examples from my own constituency. Schools feel that they are being rushed into a decision without all the information being available to them, and this links to the earlier decision to end the Building Schools for the Future programme. De La Salle is a Catholic boys’ school in Croxteth, in a very deprived part of my constituency. It is an outstanding school, according to Ofsted, and was due to become an academy under BSF, so its BSF money is currently under review. It wants to know whether it is going to get its investment.

Just next door to that school is St John Bosco, a Catholic girls’ school that was a sample school under BSF. It, too, is an outstanding school in a deprived community. Its head, whom I saw on Saturday, is wondering whether she should apply for academy status in order to get the money the school was going to get under BSF.

A third example, Holly Lodge school, in West Derby—a good, well-respected school with an outstanding curriculum —has lost its BSF funding. Its chair and head of governors do not want it to be an academy, but they are nervous that their school may end up at a disadvantage as these proposals go forward.

All this says to me that the Government should have taken a more considered approach to this legislation. There is a real danger of harm being done, and I am not at all clear—hopefully, the Minister can enlighten me in his closing remarks—how the Secretary of State intends to prioritise schools that are going to become academies. The role that sponsors and partners have played in supporting existing academy schools and trust schools has been absolutely crucial, but if many hundreds of schools become academies straight away, I cannot see how those effective partnerships can be put in place. Therefore, those academies will not be as effective as the existing ones have been.

My fourth concern is fairness—fairness in admissions, funding and exclusions. Autonomy, which I support, must not mean academies avoiding their responsibilities on key issues such as the local behaviour partnerships and how they treat children with special educational needs.

That brings me to my fifth, penultimate concern: the treatment of children with special educational needs and disabilities. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) made the case on this issue very strongly. We know that many SEN children are being failed now—not only by academies but by other schools. In Liverpool, many parents of children with autism have come to see me in the two and a half months since I have been their MP to talk about how they feel the system is failing them. Some special schools becoming academies could be a very positive thing for the education of SEN children, but we need to ensure that the mainstream schools are also meeting the needs of all those children.

My final concern is one that other Members have referred to: the role of local government and the balance between the local and the centre. When I was the Minister for Schools, I had to make decisions affecting academies on quite detailed issues. I often felt rather uncomfortable that I, a Minister in London, was making decisions about schools across the country on limited information—and that was when there were fewer than 200 academies. I am concerned that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood said, this Bill could massively centralise power over schools in the hands of the Secretary of State. We need to look at a renewed role for local government in education, but without turning the clock back to the days of local authorities running schools; I do not think anyone is arguing for that.

In the other place, Lord Baker made the case for local authorities taking a lead role on special educational needs. That is important. Local authorities can have a strategic role, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood said, in commissioning places. The local behaviour partnerships that are due to come in this year should go ahead, and local authorities have a key strategic role to play in that regard.

Over-hasty legislation is rarely good legislation. This Bill potentially takes the excellent academies programme in the wrong direction. More freedom is a positive thing, but it should be for all schools—unless there are good reasons not to give it—rather than just for the outstanding schools first. There is a real danger, as I said, for schools in the middle, and for those reasons I am certainly not persuaded that the Bill meets the tests I set out at the beginning of my speech.