Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Tristram Hunt and Catherine West

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

My hon. Friend makes a very valuable point about accountability procedures, and that is certainly something we will look to take forward in Committee.

We are happy to debate those clauses and other issues in Committee, but glaring deficiencies elsewhere necessitate our reasoned amendment: the shoddy, slapdash incomplete proposed legislation placed before the House today is unworthy of a Second Reading. When the first word of the first clause on the first page of the Bill—“coasting”—is yet to be defined by the Government, they are showing an extraordinary discourtesy to this House. Such is the extension of the Secretary of State’s powers over schools deemed to be “coasting” that I would have thought they knew what they were talking about. Today, for all the lofty principles, we still have no workable legal definition.

As it stands, “coasting” could mean anything: Ofsted results, progress data, attainment scores. In fact, it could just as easily relate to any passing whim of the Secretary of State. Too many children swinging on chairs? Coasting. Too many kids studying the humanities, of which we know the Secretary of State disapproves? Coasting. Too many teenagers aspiring to apprenticeships? Coasting. We just do not know what the answer is, but what we do know is that this is no way in which to approach the serious job of reforming our schools system.

I fear that there will be a confrontation between what the Department for Education regards as coasting and what Ofsted regards as a good school. If Ofsted has classified a school as good and the Department says that it is coasting, where does that leave the schools inspector?

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

The definition of “coasting” is not the only thing that is missing from the Bill. A number of other things are missing from it, including references to addressing the teacher recruitment crisis or the school places crisis. Moreover, the Bill makes hardly any mention of parents, although those two issues are very much on their minds. Why do two out of five newly qualified teachers leave the profession within five years, and why are parents of three and four-year-olds so anxious about school places?