Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(3 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
My hon. Friend raises an important point. We remain clear that exams are the fairest method of assessment. We know that students at South Charnwood High School and elsewhere will be working hard to prepare for exams in 2022. We continue to monitor the impact of the pandemic, and we will announce our plans to ensure that pupils in years 10 and 12 can be awarded grades safely and fairly in 2022.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Like so many other aspects of the Government’s coronavirus response, the Department for Education’s handling of exams has been a total disaster. Schools are currently grappling with a whole series of challenges that could have been easily avoided if only the Department had planned ahead. Can we finally have the triumph of hope over experience, and the Government learn their lessons from last year’s disaster and the unfolding disaster this year and publish plans for next year so that those exams are not a disaster, too?
Nick Gibb
Given the disruption to children’s education over the past year, it would not be fair for exams to go ahead as normal. On 15 January, 11 days after the decision was taken to cancel exams, we consulted Ofqual on the details of alternative arrangements to ensure that students can be awarded a grade and can move on to the next stage of their lives, despite the fact that we have had to cancel exams. That consultation received more than 100,000 responses. This year’s students taking their GCSEs and A-levels and some vocational and technical qualifications will receive grades determined by their teachers based on a range of evidence, including in-class tests, course work and optional exam board-provided sets of questions. Robust internal and external quality assurance processes are in place to ensure fairness and consistency. We will monitor the position regarding 2022 and we will make a statement then.
Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick GibbFriday 12th March 2021
(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
We have had a very thorough debate on the amendments, which fall into two categories. The majority cover areas that really ought to be covered as part of the statutory guidance proposed in the Bill. I am sure that the Minister will have heard the contributions in that spirit and will take them into consideration when drawing up the Department’s statutory guidance.
Reasonable points have been made about the importance of consultation and the range of stakeholders who ought to be consulted, and the statutory guidance will be subject to consultation when such issues can be raised. As my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) highlighted, at least one amendment would go against the entire thrust of the Bill and undermine the importance of having any statutory guidance at all.
The hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) mentioned the response of my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale to the amendments, and the degree of sympathy that he has for them. We all know that the passage of a private Member’s Bill into statute is a rare occasion, and particularly when a Bill is brought forward from the Opposition Benches, an inevitable degree of compromise is necessary. In that spirit Her Majesty’s official Opposition have no desire to undermine the huge amount of work that has taken place to get the Bill to this stage. I congratulate all members of the Committee on their work in scrutinising the Bill, and I pay tribute to the Minister and his officials for their work. They put a great deal of time and consideration into these matters, not just on Second Reading and in Committee, but also in discussions with my hon. Friend.
Sitting Fridays can do one of two things. They can be an advertisement for the House of Commons at its best, where Members work on a cross-party basis to solve common problems of interest to our constituents, or they can be an advertisement for the worst of our politics—the game playing, the filibustering, and the attempts to prevent things that have an obvious common-sense value and widespread support from getting into statute. I hope that today will be an advertisement for the good, and for the House of Commons at its best. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale on his work. I am delighted to see him in his place, and I look forward to hearing from the Minister.
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury) on successfully stewarding the Bill to Report and, I hope, shortly on to Third Reading. School uniforms are an important part of establishing an ethos and common identity in a school. They are a shared endeavour and a sense of belonging. School uniforms help to remove the inequalities caused by differences in the prosperity or disadvantage of a pupil’s family, and they help to ensure that schools are disciplined and safe places for students, where it is good to be ambitious, and admirable to be conscientious and hardworking.
For some families, the cost of purchasing school uniforms for growing children can be a financial worry. In 2015, the Government commissioned a cost of school uniforms survey, which found that, after adjusting for inflation and excluding the PE kit, the average cost of a school uniform had decreased since 2007 to £213. While two thirds of parents were happy with the cost of a school uniform and PE kit, nearly one fifth reported that they had suffered financial hardship because of having to buy school uniforms for their children. The Bill, which the Government wholeheartedly support, is designed to ensure that the costs of schools uniforms are reasonable, and that schools secure the best value for parents.
Amendments 1, 3, 4, 5 and 8 relate to the content of the statutory guidance to be issued under the Bill. It is important that such issues are considered in the statutory guidance rather than in primary legislation, as suggested by the amendments. That approach maintains a level of flexibility and responsiveness, so that over time, statutory guidance on uniform costs can be amended and improved. I welcome the way that the hon. Member for Weaver Vale has constructed the Bill.
On amendment 1, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Sir Christopher Chope) that every school should ensure that second-hand school uniform is available for parents to acquire. It is, however, important for this to be a matter for statutory guidance, rather than primary legislation, so we can get the details right and schools have some flexibility about how to do this.
On amendment 5, as we know, families already benefit from a zero rate of VAT on clothing designed for children under 14 years old. This is already a significant cost to the Exchequer, costing £2 billion each year in lost revenue. Expanding this to include a wider size of school uniforms would not specifically target low-income families. HMRC already provides guidance on this matter in VAT notice 714. However, my hon. Friend is right to point out that, having left the European Union, we are now free to make these changes if we wish, and I am sure the Chancellor of Exchequer will have heard his comments.
On amendment 8, we want to see schools providing clear information to parents about their uniform policies, but we consider that this is a matter for the statutory guidance to enable us to ensure that these requirements are flexible and responsive, rather than placing a requirement to publish in the Bill. My hon. Friend raised the issue of schools that do not have a school uniform policy. The current non-statutory guidance says:
“The Department strongly encourages schools to have a uniform as it can play a valuable role in contributing to the ethos of a school and setting an appropriate tone.”
That is in the current non-statutory guidance, so I will take my hon. Friend’s point in his speech as an exhortation to include that sentence or something similar in the statutory guidance, which we continue to work on.
On amendment 6, the crux of the phrasing in the Bill—“must have regard to”—is that schools must comply with the guidance unless they have a good reason for departing from it. Put simply, it means that schools cannot ignore this guidance. This amendment would in effect mean that schools would be able to disregard the guidance whenever they wished, which is the opposite of the intention behind the principal tenet of the Bill.
On amendment 7, it is important that the principles that will be set out in the statutory guidance on the costs aspects of uniform are considered by schools when they are developing or changing their uniform policies so that they are embedded right from the start. This amendment would mean that schools would not have to have regard to key factors that Members have raised as being crucial to the cost of a uniform when developing such a policy. This would severely undermine the reasons for introducing statutory guidance, as it would in effect mean that the application of the guidance would be limited and unlikely to be effective in keeping costs down.
On amendment 9, the Government will want to update the guidance as and when necessary, and as circumstances require it. The Government want the new statutory guidance to have time to bed in once issued and would not want to be looking to make arbitrary or unnecessary changes, but placing arbitrary restrictions on the Government’s ability to make changes to the guidance, even if schools were to make it clear that revisions would be welcome, would prevent us from being responsive to the needs of parents and schools, and risk schools being required to have regard to guidance that was out of date.
Amendments 10 to 14 seek to disapply certain types of school from the Bill. There is no good reason to treat these schools differently. For example, not all special schools and alternative provision schools have a school uniform, and that is appropriate. However, for those that do, it is important that this Bill applies to them, as well as to mainstream schools, to ensure that they also consider value for money for parents when setting their policy.
On amendment 15, I do not consider it appropriate to list selected external bodies to be consulted in primary legislation, but as I said in Committee, I am committed to engaging with representatives of schools, parents and other interested parties as we draft the statutory guidance.
On amendment 2, we are progressing well with the changes to the draft statutory guidance. We will reflect on the comments made during this debate and the debates in Committee as the Bill progresses through this House as we draft the statutory guidance. That includes the comments made by all hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), as well as, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Friends and hon. Members who have spoken in this debate.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Last week, the Secretary of State confirmed that 120,000 pupils have been reached by the national tutoring programme, but it has reached fewer than 10% of all children on free school meals. Given that we know that the need for additional tutoring support will extend to all pupils on free school meals, and many more besides, how do the Government have the brass neck to claim that they are doing all they can to tackle disadvantage and are being ambitious for children—our country’s future—when their flagship scheme is reaching only a fraction of those pupils who need additional support?
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
Our flagship scheme—both the national tutoring programme and the academic mentors—will reach 750,000 disadvant-aged pupils once it is fully rolled out. The Government are absolutely determined to ensure that all children are able to catch up, particularly the most disadvantaged pupils in our country.
School Closures: Support for Pupils
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(3 years, 10 months ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
May I add to your embarrassment, Dame Angela, by adding my congratulations to you on your very well deserved damehood, and say what a pleasure it is to serve under your chairmanship this morning? I congratulate also the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) on securing this debate.
Education is a national priority for this Government. That is why we have endeavoured to keep schools open throughout the pandemic. The hon. Gentleman is right to point to the inequality in education that existed even before the pandemic. That is why closing the attainment gap has been the driving force behind all our reforms in education since 2010, which had led to the attainment gap closing by 13% in primary schools and by 9% in secondary schools since 2011.
During this period of restricted attendance in schools, early years settings will remain open, as will schools for vulnerable children and the children of critical workers. All schools and colleges in England have switched immediately to remote education for students who do not attend face-to-face provision. Preparations and expectations for that were set out in revised guidance last year.
Despite restricted attendance, lateral flow testing should continue for students and teachers who are attending schools, and from 4 January, rapid asymptomatic testing has been successfully rolled out for secondary schools and colleges, alongside weekly testing of staff and daily testing of close contacts for staff and pupils who test positive. That rapid testing programme will help to identify asymptomatic positive cases, and will further help to break the chain of transmission of the virus and minimise further disruption.
We recognise that teachers are under enormous pressure in dealing with the impact of covid-19 on their schools. I join the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington in paying tribute to staff in our schools for their enormous efforts since the beginning of the pandemic. We know that significant time in the classroom has been lost already, and that will continue as the pandemic continues. It is critical that we mitigate the impact on students of being out of school, through high-quality remote education. Most pupils are now receiving education remotely, and schools have made huge progress in developing their remote education provision, so it is right that we increase the expectations of what pupils receive.
In October, the Secretary of State issued a direction under the Coronavirus Act 2020, placing a legal duty on state-funded schools to provide remote education. In our July guidance, which was again updated last week, we set out clear expectations, including a requirement that schools provide between three and five hours of teaching a day, depending on the child’s age. Schools are now expected to provide remote education that includes either recorded or live direct teaching.
Teachers and heads have gone to enormous lengths since March to improve the quality of remote education. Ofsted’s report on visits to schools during the autumn term commended the increasing sophistication in schools’ approaches to remote education. I would, of course, be delighted to discuss with my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) and the Blue Collar Conservativism group the future opportunities that online education can bring to our schools.
To support remote delivery, we are investing more than £400 million to support access to remote education and online social care. We have bought more than 1.3 million laptops and tablets, and by the end of this week we will have delivered three quarters of a million devices, more than half a million of which had been delivered by December last year. That has been a huge procurement exercise: more than 1.3 million computers bought to order on the global market.
We have targeted support at those who need it most. On top of the 1.3 million computers, schools already have 1.9 million laptops of their own and an estimated 1 million tablets, all of which can be lent to their pupils. As the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) pointed out, we have partnered with mobile phone operators to deliver zero rating for the Oak National Academy and BBC Bitesize, and the free data uplifts for disadvantaged families. We are grateful to EE, O2, Sky Mobile, Smarty, Tesco Mobile, Three, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone. We continue to invite a range of mobile network operators to support the offer.
As every child and young person in the country has experienced unprecedented disruption to their education as a result of covid-19, they will need support to catch up, alongside remote education and the delivery of devices. The Government have introduced a catch-up package of £1 billion, including a catch-up premium of £650 million for all state-funded schools. Schools will be able to tailor the funding for specific circumstances and target the pupils who need it most. To support schools in making the best use of that money, the Education Endowment Foundation has published a covid-19 support guide for schools, with evidence-based approaches to catch-up for all students.
All schools should use their catch-up premium as a single total from which to prioritise support for all pupils, guided by individual need. That will often focus on pupils from deprived backgrounds, but will include other pupils, especially those facing challenges, such as those with a social worker, young carers, and those with mental health needs.
Alongside that, we have the £350 million national tutoring programme for disadvantaged pupils, which will increase access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people, helping to accelerate their academic progress and tackling the attainment gap between them and their peers. The national tutoring programme for schools was launched in November 2020, and nearly 90,000 pupils are now confirmed to have enrolled in it. It is estimated that, this academic year, approximately 15,000 tutors will support the scheme, offering tuition to more than a quarter of a million pupils. During this academic year, the national tutoring programme is also providing funding to support small-group tuition for 16 to 19-year-olds and the improvement of early language skills for reception-age children.
We know that time out of the classroom affects disadvantaged children and young people most significantly, and the Government remain committed to ensuring that they continue to be supported. In March, we took the decision to continue to provide free school meals to eligible children while at home, and to extend that during the Easter holidays and the Whitsun half term. The national voucher scheme that we introduced has distributed some £380 million of vouchers for families, and with the prompting of Marcus Rashford we extended the voucher payments during the summer holiday, too.
During the current national lockdown, schools should continue to provide meal options for all pupils who are in school. Meals should be available free of charge to all infant pupils and pupils who are eligible for free school meals who are in school. Furthermore, we are providing extra funding to schools to ensure that they continue to support eligible children who are at home. Schools can work with their school caterer to provide food parcels, or they can consider local arrangements, such as vouchers. Schools will be able to claim for reimbursement of those additional costs. The centrally funded national voucher scheme will reopen from next week to ensure that every eligible child can access free school meal support while schools are restricted from opening to all pupils.
The quality of the food in the photographs shared on social media is totally unacceptable and does not reflect the high standard of free school meals that we expect to be sent to children. Chartwells has rightly apologised and admitted that the parcels in question were not good enough. My colleague the children’s Minister met its chief executive officer yesterday, and they assured her that they have taken immediate action to stop further deliveries of poor-quality parcels. Chartwells will ensure that the schools affected are compensated and provide additional food to the eligible children, in line with our increased funding.
Vulnerable children and young people are strongly encouraged to attend their school or college, but where a child does not attend, school absence will not be penalised. We expect schools to follow up attendance where absences are not related to covid-19, as they would normally do when schools are open. We have asked all social workers to strongly encourage those in care to attend school. Children with at least one parent or carer who is a critical worker can go to school if required, and schools should speak to parents and carers to identify who needs to go to school. If critical workers can work from home and look after their children at the same time, they should do so.
We know that every school will have a different number of children of critical workers who need to attend, so it is important that on-site provision is provided for those pupils. There is no limit to the number of those pupils who can attend, and schools should not limit the attendance of those groups. That is because, as the hon. Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) said, we are reducing overall social contact across areas and the country, rather than individually by each institution.
The hon. Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) raised exams. We recognise that the decision to restrict access to schools means that primary assessment cannot go ahead as intended. We will therefore cancel the statutory key stages 1 and 2 tests and the teacher assessments planned for summer 2021, including the key stage 2 tests in reading and maths. We remain determined to ensure that every young person, no matter their age or background, is provided with the education and opportunities they deserve, despite the challenges faced by schools. We know that schools will continue to use assessment during the summer term to inform teaching to enable them to give the necessary information to parents.
Wes Streeting
As the Minister thinks about what the plan for assessments looks like, can he make sure that there is provision for private candidates to be assessed and awarded a grade? Many of them have been waiting for some time for some clarity on that.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(4 years ago)
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Nick Gibb
We have been very clear that exams are the fairest and best way of assessing student attainment, but we are also conscious of the fact that a large number of pupils have suffered a different experience from other pupils up and down the country. We want to ensure that the exams are as fair as possible while also being valid qualifications. That is the work we have been doing with Ofqual and the exam boards for several weeks, and we have announced a delay of three weeks to holding those exams to try to free up as much teaching time as possible.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
We all agree that exams would be the fairest and best way to assess pupils this year, and given the absolute chaos at the heart of last year’s exams, it would have been reasonable to expect Ministers to have a plan in place by now, yet the Minister’s answers this afternoon have been woefully inadequate, at a time when school leaders, teachers, parents and pupils are crying out for certainty. Given the obvious challenges to ensuring that exams go ahead in a way that is fair to all pupils, and the fact that any delay makes the job harder, when will Ministers present a plan, which teachers and pupils can see, for exams to go ahead in a fair way?
Nick Gibb
The hon. Gentleman is a serious Member of this House—I was delighted when he was appointed shadow Schools Minister; I congratulate him on that appointment and welcome him to the Front Bench—so I know that he knows that these issues are complex. They need to be thought through and they need to be consulted on, and that is what we are doing with pace, rigour and energy, but I recognise that, in opposition, there is always a temptation to reach for the slogan rather than the solution.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(5 years, 4 months ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
I am delighted to confirm that we are committed to the development of a BSL GCSE. Daniel Jillings and his mother Ann have been formidable campaigners on this issue. Daniel in particular, despite his young age, has been very influential indeed with his campaign. We are pushing this work forward as soon as we can, while also ensuring that it can be completed to the highest standard. My hon. Friend will be aware that the development of a new GCSE is a complex and lengthy process, but, as I say, we are committed to it as a new GCSE.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(5 years, 5 months ago)
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Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
We calculate the area cost adjustment using data on teacher pay and data from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government on general labour market costs. For teacher pay we use the regional teacher pay bands as zones, but we will keep it under review to ensure that funding always matches need as closely as possible.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
Higher Education (England) Regulations
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Wes Streeting
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier this week, I raised a point of order, because I believed that in Education questions the shadow Minister of State, Department for Education, the right hon. Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is present in the Chamber, made an inaccurate statement—
Wes Streeting
Excuse me; it was wishful thinking. In response to my question in Education questions, the Minister of State made what I believe to be a factually inaccurate, possibly inadvertently misleading statement, when she said that Learndirect would no longer be providing apprenticeships. The following day, I rather forensically set out that that was not the case. As she is present, perhaps she might take this opportunity to correct the record and give us some reassurance that Ministers have an idea about what they are doing.
Education: Public Funding
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Nick Gibb
What we are doing is helping schools to manage those cost pressures, which exist because we are having to tackle an historic budget deficit. That is imperative if we are to maintain a strong economy that delivers record numbers of jobs. We have maintained school funding overall in real terms, and it has continued to rise as pupil numbers rise.
Nick Gibb
Yes, I can give my right hon. Friend that assurance. Certain local authorities, from up and down the country, have suffered from underfunding for more than 12 years, and their funding formula is based on out-of-date data. That is unfair, and we are determined to tackle that unfairness. On top of that, we have announced that no school will lose funding under the new formula.
Wes Streeting
The schools funding formula is a total red herring. Before it has even come in, schools are having to lay off staff, increase class sizes, cut back on the curriculum and cut back on enrichment opportunities; and headteachers are struggling to recruit and retain good staff. Instead of talking about a formula that is yet to come in, when will the Minister tell us what he is going to do about the cuts that are already being made, and when will he recognise that education is the best economic policy that there is?
Nick Gibb
We do believe that education is the best economic policy that there is. That is why we are improving standards in our primary schools. We have improved the curriculum and the teaching of reading and mathematics. We have revised, reformed and improved GCSEs, so that children leave our schools with qualifications and an education on a par with the best in the world.
Whatever the hon. Gentleman likes to say, we have protected school funding in real terms. I do acknowledge that schools face cost pressures over a four-year period from 2016-17, and we are helping schools to deal with those cost pressures. Those pressures are being faced right across the public sector, and they are there because we have to deal with the economic mess left by the last Labour Government.
School Funding (London)
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(7 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
I will not give way. Haringey will remain the 11th highest-funded authority.
Allocations are based on 10-year-old data—2005 data—but during that 10-year period deprivation in London has been reduced. In 2005, 27% of pupils in London were eligible for free school meals; today, that figure is 18%. By ensuring that we allocate funding on the basis of up-to-date data and fairly, we can allocate £5 million more to boroughs such as Merton, the funding of which will rise from £114 million a year to £119 million a year, reflecting the fact that Merton has been underfunded in the past. It was disappointing—
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(8 years ago)
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Mr Gibb
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, which I will take as a response to our consultation document. The proposals in the document for an area cost adjustment are about using either a general labour market methodology or a hybrid methodology with two elements: the four regional pay bands and a general labour market methodology for non-teaching staff costs. We will respond to the consultation shortly.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I was not around in 1966, when that decision was taken. The reality of the Government’s policies in London is that schools are having to rationalise the range of choice in modern languages and are cutting back on subjects such as drama and music. The funding settlement for London does not currently meet the real needs of pupils in London today. Instead of mucking about with ideologically driven projects like grammar school expansion—there is no evidence that that will improve social mobility—why are Ministers not focusing on the bread and butter issues of the right funding, the right teaching and proper opportunities for all pupils across all parts of London?
Mr Gibb
We are protecting core school funding in real terms. We can do that because we have a strong economy. The hon. Gentleman may not have been here when the last Labour Government were in power, but he should be aware that the number of students taking modern foreign languages plummeted as a direct consequence of a decision taken by Labour in 2004 to stop languages being compulsory up to GCSE.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Gibb
My hon. Friend makes a good point. So far this year, for example, we have received 24,000 acceptances on to teaching training programmes at universities and schools. That is marginally ahead of where we were this time last year. We have exceeded targets for primary school trainees and for history and PE teachers, and we are ahead on acceptances for maths, physics, chemistry and design and technology compared with this time last year. We do not underestimate the challenges, but those are the challenges that come from a strong economy, and I would rather have that than a weak economy.
Wes Streeting (Ilford North) (Lab)
I should declare that I am an unpaid member of the London borough of Redbridge and a member of the governing body of Grove primary school in Chadwell Heath. Just last week, both Labour and Conservative councillors expressed concern about the school places crisis in Redbridge. Given that we have one of the fastest growing populations in London, what assurance can the Minister give us that we will receive the funding necessary for additional schools and school places and that there will be the teachers there to staff them?
Education and Adoption Bill
Debate between Wes Streeting and Nick Gibb(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Wes Streeting
The Minister is more than welcome to visit my constituency, as he did during the election campaign. I very much enjoyed playing the recorder with him. Given the stab that Government Members have made at defining a coasting school, will he put us out of our misery and give us his definition of a coasting school? He has not yet told us.
Mr Gibb
The hon. Gentleman will just have to be patient. I will say a bit more about that later.
By strengthening our ability to turn around failing and coasting schools, the Bill will ensure that more children receive a good education, regardless of background, neighbourhood or circumstance.
The adoption system remains fragmented and inefficient. Around 180 different adoption agencies currently recruit and match adopters to children in need of a caring, stable home. That over-localised system cannot deliver the best service to some of our most vulnerable children. We are therefore introducing regional adoption agencies, which will work across local authority boundaries and in partnership with voluntary adoption agencies, to find the right homes for children without delay. That policy was supported by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who spoke powerfully about the need for ongoing adoption support.
We had some excellent speakers and speeches in the debate, but we also had one not so excellent speech from the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt), who wanted to know when he could see the definition of the word “coasting”. He should not be so concerned about the definition of “coasting”, because his performance today falls squarely in the “failing” category, which is very well defined. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, we intend to publish draft regulations on the definition of coasting schools for full parliamentary scrutiny in Committee. We can be clear now about the principles that will underpin the definition. This is fundamentally about social justice and a coasting school is one in which pupils are not reaching their potential. Will the hon. Gentleman support that definition?