Al-Madinah Free School

Debate between Tristram Hunt and David Laws

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

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

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education to make a statement on the failings of the Al-Madinah free school revealed in the Ofsted inspection report.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

I welcome this opportunity to make a statement on the Al-Madinah free school, and I apologise to the House for the absence of the Secretary of State, who is abroad. We have received the letter that the hon. Gentleman sent to the Secretary of State on 15 October, raising issues relating to that school, and Lord Nash and I will respond to it shortly.

The Al-Madinah free school serves children and young people between the ages of 4 and 16 in the Derby city community, and it has been open for just a year. After a steady start by the school we became aware of potential breaches of the conditions in its funding agreement late this summer, and at the end of July we began a wide-ranging investigation into the financial management and governance of the school. We investigated whether it was delivering on its commitment to be inclusive, and we investigated allegations about the imposition of a dress requirement on female members of staff. Our investigations did indeed find significant and numerous breaches of the conditions in the school’s funding agreement, and our concerns were such that we requested Ofsted to bring forward its planned inspection.

The Ofsted report is published this morning. It found that the school is dysfunctional, and inadequate across every category of inspection: achievement of pupils; quality of teaching; behaviour and safety of pupils; and leadership and management. We were already taking decisive action before we received the Ofsted report. Lord Nash wrote to the chair of the trust on 8 October, following the previous investigations, and set out all the requirements for the trust to take swift and decisive actions to deal with the serious concerns. We have been clear with the trust that failure to do so promptly will result in the school’s funding being terminated. We have also been clear that the trust must address all the breaches identified. We will not let any school, whether a free school, an academy, or a local authority school, languish in failure. The Ofsted report confirms that we are taking the right actions. We are not prepared to allow a school to fail its parents, its children and its community. We said we would take swift action in these cases, and that is exactly what we are doing.

[Tristram Hunt]

Today’s Ofsted report exposes the fact that the Government’s free school programme has become a dangerous free for all, an out-of-control, ideological experiment that has closed a school, leaving 400 children losing an entire week of learning. It is a devastating blow to the Education Secretary’s flagship policy, and reveals that pupils have been failed on every possible measure. Parents will want to know why the Education Secretary has allowed that to happen.

Contrary to what the Minister said, in a pre-registration report in July 2012, Ofsted deemed the school to be failing to meet basic child protection standards, even before it was opened. Why did Ministers not act on those concerns before signing a funding agreement for the school? Why have Ministers allowed a school to be run by large numbers of unqualified staff? Why have Ministers sanctioned “dangerous levels” of safety and behaviour, and why have they allowed children with special educational needs to be left to struggle? In a city where every child needs to be supported and educated to the highest possible level, the Education Secretary has sacrificed learning for ideology. It is not just Al-Madinah school that is dysfunctional; it is the Education Secretary’s free schools policy.

[Mr Laws]

The support of the Labour party for free schools did not last long, did it? I do not know how the hon. Gentleman has the nerve to come to the House. On Sunday he was going around television studios and saying that Labour was shifting its position on free schools. He said:

“We will keep those free schools going”.

Within the same set of Department for Education press cuttings in which he announced he was shifting his position in favour of free schools, we find a headline stating that Labour now plans to rein in free schools. It is complete and utter incoherence from the hon. Gentleman, and he should be ashamed.

Let me respond in detail to every single serious point the hon. Gentleman made—it will not take very long—and go back over what has happened in Al-Madinah school and the scrutiny to which it has been subjected. The school opened in September 2012. It had a pre-registration Ofsted report, as all such schools do—such a report is not sensational. In the report, Ofsted set down a number of requirements that it wanted met before the school opened. In advance of the school opening, the trust went through the requirements with the lead contact in the Department for Education. It produced certificates to show that it had done the safeguarding and first aid training, and a certificate—[Interruption.] The shadow Secretary of State ought to listen to this. The school produced a certificate authorised by the director of planning and transportation at Derby city council saying that the building was fit for occupation. After that, the Department sent an adviser to the school two months after it opened, who saw the good progress that the school was making at that stage.

In July 2013, we became aware of concerns about equalities and management issues at the school and acted immediately on that. We established an Education Funding Agency financial investigation into the school and sent our advisers to it. We asked Ofsted to bring forward its inspection, which has now taken place. Prior to receiving that inspection, the Under-Secretary of State, Lord Nash, wrote to the school setting out precisely the actions that it will take, and making it clear that its funding will not continue unless it addresses those things.

If the shadow Secretary of State is so supportive of free schools, why does he not have the responsibility to put the failure of the school into context? Seventy-five per cent. of the free schools that have opened have been rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. That is a higher proportion than the proportion of local authority schools. We did not hear that from the hon. Gentleman.

On complacency, which I believe is the allegation the hon. Gentleman makes, may I remind him of the record of the Labour Government whom he defends? At the end of their period in office, 8% of schools in this country —more than 1,500—were rated as inadequate, many had been so for years, with no action. By focusing on one school in which the Government are taking action, the hon. Gentleman is failing schools in this country, including ones that failed under the Labour Government, when little action was taken.

People listening to these exchanges and to the hon. Gentleman, and reflecting on what he said on Sunday and how he has stood on his head today, will see nothing other than total and utter opportunism and shambles from Labour’s education policy.