Annette
Brooke: I agree with many of the hon. Gentleman’s
points. Would he agree that, when a school runs into such problems,
intervention at the earliest possible time is crucial? In the case of
academies, we shall have to see whether that intervention is flexible
enough when it comes from the Department for Education and Skills, or
whether a good local authority might have picked up the problem
sooner.
Mr.
Gibb: The hon. Lady makes an important point, but in all
the cases that I cited, the head was replaced pretty rapidly. I am
aware of community schools where heads languish, year after year,
producing poor results, and where nothing is done by the local
authorities. The structure of academies is more likely to lead to early
intervention, because those who have put their money and their
reputation on the line do not want the academies to fail. They will
take action, probably earlier than many local authorities
would. It is a pity
that the head of the school in Ealing had not researched the approach
taken by the best-performing schools before embarking on his damaging
experiment. Last year, at the Wellington school in Trafford, a
secondary modern school, 73 per cent. of pupils achieved five or more
GCSEs at grades A* to C.
When English and maths are included, the figure is 66 per cent. None of
those figures include GNVQs. That school ensures that every teacher has
ownership of their own classroom, which also acts as the
teacher’s office, to which he or she can retreat to prepare
lessons, and work after school hours and in free periods. Wellington
school is immaculate. Behaviour there is exemplary and standards are
extremely
high. Structures are
important, but so too are the issues that relate to best practice and
to eschewing ideology, whether of the right or left. It is ideology
that has been so damaging to our education system over the past 40
years, and continues to be damaging in too many of our
schools. With regard
to amendment No. 152 and the proposal to prohibit financial incentives
from the DFES to encourage the establishment of academies, I agree with
the Minister when she says that there are no such incentives other than
the “building schools for the future” programme, which
will eventually apply to all schools in the country. She will accept
that academies will of course have access to the capital funds provided
by the sponsoring business or organisation, but such funds would
presumably be available to schools that acquire a foundation. Will the
Minister clarify that position too? I await her response to the Liberal
amendment.
Greg
Mulholland: I shall speak briefly on a couple of points
that were missed or misrepresented. An additional cost is clearly
associated with academies when compared with maintained schools. Our
figure is £21,000 per pupil per year, compared with
£14,000. If that does not influence improved results, I do not
know what does. We cannot possibly take that out of the equation. As we
have heard from the evidence—evidence that the hon. Gentleman
acknowledges—the programme simply has not justified the extra
expenditure. I should
also like to talk about Conservatives’ supposed localism in this
matter. Academy policy is dictated from the Department in Whitehall. To
describe that as a local policy is extraordinary, and is very much at
odds with our genuine vision of local choice based in the community. My
point, however, goes back to parental choice. The idea that imposing
academies on communities gives the kind of parental choice that the
hon. Gentleman is talking about and the kind of vision that we can all
agree on simply does not stack
up. We have seen the
imposition of faith-based academies in certain areas. In Leeds, Braim
Wood school, which had a large number of Muslim pupils, was replaced by
a Church of England academy. The same thing happened in Leicester and
in south-east London, and no secular alternative existed. That is not
parental choice. We
must also accept that under the academy programme as it currently
stands, the Department for Education and Skills can impose academies
against parental wishes. In Barnsley, only 39 per cent. of parents were
in favour of the academy, and a similar thing happened in
Liverpool.
Mr.
Hayes: My hon. Friend illustrated the advances made by
city technology colleges, and highlighted them
as forerunners of academies. How many CTCs has the hon. Gentleman
visited, and have those visits enlightened his view on the
subject?
Greg
Mulholland: As the hon. Gentleman well knows, because I
told the Committee, I have been in my position for a matter of weeks,
so I have not yet done so. I have concentrated on visiting those
excellent schools that the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and
Littlehampton mentioned, and I shall continue to do so as a starting
point. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that it is a
sensible one. How can he talk about a localist policy imposed from
Whitehall?
Ms
Angela C. Smith: I challenge the hon. Gentleman’s
assumption that all local authorities who choose to have academies are
forced to do so. In Sheffield, the initial approach to establishing
academies came from a Liberal council and was continued by Labour out
of choice. Some 99 per cent. of parents in the school chosen to convert
to academy status were in favour of a city academy. Like the Liberal
Democrats, we made that choice because that inner-city school would
have closed if we had not done something
soon.
Greg
Mulholland: The case that the hon. Lady mentions is one in
which parents quite clearly wanted an academy. We are not saying that
when that happens, one should not be
created.
Andrew
Gwynne: The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. In
Stockport, which as he knows has a Liberal Democrat-controlled council,
the pursuit of an academy is being led by the local authority. Is he
saying that the local authority is
wrong?
Greg
Mulholland: The hon. Gentleman puts forward our view of
localism excellently. At a local
level —[Interruption.]
The
Chairman: Order. There is far too much hullabaloo. We
shall conduct our discussions according to “Erskine May”
and Standing Orders. That means that everyone will have the chance to
be heard, and I shall see to it that that is
so.
Greg
Mulholland: Thank you, Mr.
Cook. At a local
level, people have to make decisions that they believe will be in the
interests of their local community. Let us be realistic—because
this and earlier Governments have been so centralising, every local
authority has to work within the framework of legislation. If they have
to make certain decisions within that framework, that is perfectly
reasonable. I go back
to my previous point on the influence of private sponsors. I still do
not feel that that question has been adequately dealt with,
particularly given that when the academy proposals were first
suggested, 20 per cent. of the cost was going to be met by private
sponsors. That ended up being about £2 million, when the cost of
the academies was up to £38 million. Yet the same influence over
the curriculum, staffing
decisions and ethos is still there. How can that possibly be called
local accountability? I ask the Minister one simple
question. She is well aware of, and has acknowledged in debates, the
issue of results in respect of academies, specifically relating to the
issue of intake, powerfully raised by Professor Stephen Gorard of York
university in his evidence to the Select Committee. There are also
other issues, such as exclusions. What will the Minister do to give
people confidence that the academies will not have a distorting effect
on local education provision as a whole? That is why we tabled
amendment No. 70, which is key.
If parents want academies under
the current system, they should have them. However, if they are not
wanted by parents or local authorities, they should not be imposed.
There should not be extra financial incentives to influence the
decision, as there clearly have been through “building schools
for the future”. We want the Minister to say that academies are
not a panacea. They are still unproven and there are serious issues
that need to be
resolved.
Jacqui
Smith: I want to make a technical point about amendment
No. 69, which would give the Secretary of State the power to suspend
the inclusion of academies in competitions for new schools for as long
as it took for their effectiveness to be evaluated. Its practical
significance would be negligible, as the exercise of the power would be
at the discretion of the Secretary of State. In any case, under current
legislation on academies, proposals for academies may be brought
forward at any time outside competition. Technically, amendment No. 69
is pretty feeble. The
hon. Member for Brent, East was completely honest. She was not
interested in the technicalities of the amendment. What she was
interested in and what we have received is an unhealthy cocktail of
diatribe, anecdote and misrepresentation on the development of
academies. More significantly, we have had an amendment and discussion
based on a false premise—that somehow the approach to and
achievements of academies are unproven.
Let us get a few facts on the
record. We already know that academies are working; the proportion of
pupils gaining five or more good GCSEs has risen from 21 per
cent.— 3.19
pm Sitting
suspended for a Division in the
House. 3.34
pm On
resuming—
The
Chairman: May I ask hon. Members to deactivate their
pagers or mobiles, if they had them on during the Division, or to rig
them for silent
running?
Jacqui
Smith: When we were interrupted I was attempting to get a
few facts into the debate about academies. I had just pointed out that
it is not the case that the success of academies is unproven: actually,
the GCSE results show that in 2005 the proportion of students gaining
five or more good GCSEs had risen
from 21 per cent. in academies’ predecessor schools to 36.4 per
cent. in the academies.
If we want not only more recent
but more wide-ranging information, we can look at the
recently-published key stage 3 results, which show that academies are
continuing to make strong increases in the numbers of their pupils
reaching level 5 or above at key stage 3. In many ways, that figure is
more representative because most academies have children who have had
their key stage 3 assessment, whereas many have not yet had cohorts
take their GCSEs. The
key stage 3 results published last month show that yet again—as
with GCSE results—academies are raising standards. Overall,
academies are showing an increase in the number of pupils reaching
level 5 or above at key stage 3—of 8 per cent. in English and
science, and 7 per cent. in maths. Those figures are all much higher
than the national average increase. In academies, the average points
score at key stage 3 has risen by 1.1 per cent.—nearly three
times the national average increase for all schools, which is 0.4 per
cent. That is evidence that academies are improving their academic and
exam performance.
That is backed up by the
positive assessments from recent Ofsted inspections and the ongoing
independent PricewaterhouseCoopers evaluation of the programme, to
which the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton referred.
Furthermore, academies are proving hugely popular with parents and
students. For example, the City of London academy in Southwark received
about 1,200 applications for 180 year-7 places for September 2005.
Almost all academies are heavily over-subscribed.
We know that the status quo is
not working for some of our most deprived children. The schools that
they are or were attending have failed them, year in, year out. To
delay the establishment of academies would be to risk failing yet
another generation of children. Waiting, or carrying out some bizarre
controlled experiment, as suggested by the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset
and North Poole, might be the approach that the Liberal Democrats want
to take, but the Government are frankly not prepared to see some of the
most deprived children in our communities continue in schools that do
not enable them to fulfil their
potential. Let us
consider the inclusive nature of academies. As I have said, the most
important point is that academies are established in disadvantaged
areas. Overwhelmingly, if they are over-subscribed, proximity is the
key priority in their admissions arrangements. Section 482 of the
Education Act 1996, as amended, requires that the children at an
academy be wholly or mainly drawn from the local area. They are local
schools, attended by local families, but the difference is that,
whereas before, parents would do almost anything to send their children
to schools further away, rather than the predecessor school, local
parents trust and choose academies for their children.
Academies are required by law
to cater for children of all abilities. They must take part in local
admissions forums and have regard to their advice to ensure that
admissions arrangements are co-ordinated locally, consult on their
admissions arrangements each year, and have regard to the special
educational needs code of practice and statutory guidance on inclusion.
In
relation to the specific point about the looked-after children
improvements that we are making in this Bill, they will apply to
academies as well. The route may be different—it will be through
the funding agreement and direction from the Secretary of
State—but the effect will be the
same. The 2005 PWC
evaluation confirmed that academies are inclusive. For example, it
found that the average level of academy pupils’ prior attainment
at key stage 2 is near the bottom of the national spread: it is lower
than that of other local schools with an overlapping intake. It also
found that academies have been drawing pupils from within the local
feeder primary schools whose average key stage 2 attainment is even
lower than the overall average for their primary school. So they are
doing a good job with some of the pupils with the least good prior
attainment in the
area. The average
number of pupils known—from available data—to be eligible
for free school meals in the 2004 year-7 academy intakes is 34 per
cent. compared with a national average of 14 per cent. Because more
families are willing to trust academies, there are now more pupils on
free school meals in academies than there were in their predecessor
schools. On
exclusions, of course academies are established in disadvantaged areas,
where generations of pupils have been denied the quality of education
that we would have wanted them to have. Some academies have had a large
number of disruptive pupils, and some of those have been excluded.
However, they are working incredibly hard and behaviour in them is
improving, with the result that the number of exclusions has fallen.
The hon. Member for Brent, East referred to the King’s academy.
That academy permanently excluded 28 pupils in 2003-04 whereas in the
last year of the predecessor school 37 students were referred to
Middlesbrough’s pupil referral unit—so fewer pupils were
excluded by the academy than were taken out of the predecessor school.
The situation is the same in respect of fixed-term
exclusions. In its
first year, the Manchester academy excluded 80 per cent. fewer pupils
than the predecessor school had done, and in the summer term 2004
exclusions from the city academy in Bristol were also down by 80 per
cent. on the previous year under the predecessor school. It is not true
that the contribution of academies is unproven. It is beginning to be
proven: academies are turning round the opportunities for their
children. As I suggested earlier, I am not willing to put that progress
on hold to please the prejudice of the Liberal Democrats.
The effect of amendment No. 70
would be to require a local authority, in deciding between proposals in
a competition, to have regard to the effect of an academy on other
schools in the area. I can reassure hon. Members that local
consultation is already required in the development of every single
academy proposal. All those with an interest have to be consulted,
including neighbouring schools, FE colleges and sixth form colleges.
All concerned have the opportunity to make their views known.
We are clear that academies are
required to be part of the local family of schools, sharing their
facilities and expertise with other schools and with the wider
community, and contributing to raising standards in the area. We are
confident that academies will have a
positive impact on neighbouring schools as they increase choices for
pupils and help to regenerate the communities in which they are
located. For example, at the Capital city academy in Brent, the school
sport co-ordinator programme is already making extensive links with
other primary and secondary schools. I am sure that the hon. Lady would
not want to see that removed from her constituency. Finally, the effect of
amendment No. 152 would be to prohibit the Secretary of State from
offering an inducement to a local authority that is deciding a
competition for a new school that includes proposals for the
establishment of an academy.
Let me reassure hon. Members
and put right the comment that was repeated twice about the funding
differential. Academies are funded in recurrent terms at a rate
comparable to that used for all the other maintained schools in their
locality. Academies’ building plans are based on the same cost
benchmarks as those of all other schools whose buildings are approved
by the DFES. So academies do not receive any more funding than other
schools. In receiving an initial substantial capital investment in
their buildings, they are simply sharing in this Government’s
ambitious capital plans to replace or modernise every secondary school
in the next 15 years.
If I am asked
about my priorities, I will say that I believe that the investment in
academies is worth while when it gives new opportunities to communities
that have been failed educationally for generations. It is part of a
programme that will benefit every school in the country, and which is
already producing record levels of investment, particularly under
“building schools for the future”. Given those levels of
investment, I do not think it is unreasonable that the Government
should say that, where secondary schools are deemed to be failing or
underperforming, we expect local authorities to consider objectively
the potential role of academies as part of their “building
schools for the future” strategy. The programme is about
transforming not only the fabric of buildings but educational
opportunities for children in those
areas. 3.45
pm
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