Birmingham Schools

Tristram Hunt Excerpts

Thursday 29th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement and for advance notice of it.

It is well to begin at the start of this unfortunate episode. In 2010 the then Schools Minister, Lord Hill, was told by the Birmingham head teacher Tim Boyes of serious concerns about attempted takeovers of Birmingham schools by activists and governors with a radical Islamist agenda. The Government did nothing with that information. In the words of the permanent secretary, the Department showed a sustained

“lack of inquisitiveness on issues relating to potential extremism or destabilisation of schools by external interests.”

Meetings were not followed up, warnings were ignored. Only when the so-called Trojan horse affair hit the newspapers did Ministers think it would be a good idea to act to safeguard the children of Birmingham. It is all very well for the Secretary of State to come here and say “We have acted quickly in the schools affected,” but for four years they did nothing at all.

The Clarke report found that messages circulated among some of the school staff concerned included

“explicit homophobia; highly offensive comments about British service personnel; a stated ambition to increase segregation in the school; disparagement of strands of Islam; scepticism about the truth of reports of the murder of Lee Rigby and the Boston bombings; and a constant undercurrent of anti-western, anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment.”

I agree with the Secretary of State that there can be no place for such intolerance in British society, and especially not in our schools. Recent events in Paris and Peshawar and heightened concerns over anti-Semitism make that all the more important. We welcome the teaching of British or enlightenment values as part of the syllabus and the Government’s new commitment to a broad and balanced curriculum as part of the school inspection system, not least because it has long been Labour party policy.

However, the Clarke report also revealed that the speed of the Government’s academisation policy and their aggressive fragmentation of the schools system had increased the risk of radical takeover. Peter Clarke heavily criticised the Government’s policy

“by which single schools are able to convert to academy status.”

He found that there was no

“suitable system for holding the new academies accountable for financial and management issues”,

and concluded that the Government’s accountability policy amounted to “benign neglect”. It was the pupils at Golden Hillock, at Nansen primary school, at Park View, at Oldknow and at Saltley school who suffered because of that neglect.

Although the Opposition fully accept that the challenge of dealing with minority achievement in high-poverty inner-urban areas, the growth of conservative Islam and faith and identity in a state education system are issues beyond party politics, we do hold the Government to account for a chaotic and disjointed schools policy that has increased the threat to child safety and attainment.

Sadly, the Government’s response has fallen short. The Secretary of State still thinks it is possible to run thousands of schools from behind a desk in Whitehall. She is confident that if the events that we witnessed in Birmingham were repeated today, they would be “identified and dealt with”. I hate to say it, but the Government’s chaotic reforms offer no such certainty. The structures and systems for that are not in place, and we have a fragmented and chaotic schools landscape with no system of oversight and accountability, not least in Birmingham.

Can the Secretary of State explain the difference between the functions of Ian Kershaw, Bob Kerslake, Mike Tomlinson, Colin Diamond, Lord Warner, the regional schools commissioner and the regional Ofsted inspector? Who is in charge of schools in Birmingham? Where do parents go if they have a concern? If the Secretary of State thinks we need a middle tier in Birmingham, why not in Bradford? Why not in Plymouth? Why not in Newcastle? Why not introduce some system back into our schools?

We welcome the arrival of the Ark academy chain, but in the light of the problems with Park View academy trust, will the Secretary of State explain why she still refuses to allow Ofsted to inspect academy chains? What oversight will we have of future academy chain problems?

Like me, the Secretary of State has received reports about private faith schools and allegations of discrimination. Is she satisfied that she is doing everything she can to prevent radicalisation and discrimination in private faith schools? What resources in her Department are dedicated to that? Is she satisfied with the inspection regime for these schools?

What reform mechanism has the Secretary of State proposed for Ofsted? What lessons has it learned from taking a school from outstanding to special measures almost overnight? Does she think that Ofsted inspectors currently have the capacity and the skills to judge schools in the difficult terrain of British values?

The events in Birmingham that were discovered last year are deeply worrying. They showed a school system atomised, fragmented and unable to deliver for the parents and pupils it serves. The Government’s chaotic schools policy exacerbated the risk, and nothing the Secretary of State has said today will convince the people of Birmingham that she has a proper plan for Britain’s second city or for safeguarding and attainment across England’s schools.