Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation — House of Commons, 2016-03-16
Topic: Education
Caroline Louise Flint (Labour, Centre-left): I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and for his support for my Bill as a colleague on the Public Accounts Committee. He is absolutely right; that is shameful and not acceptable. This practice has been going on for too long, and I hope that we can find different ways of attacking it on a cross-party basis. One way is the proposal in my Bill to clamp down on such activity I wrote to the Chancellor last week, but clearly he did not see my letter seeking his support for my proposal to go into the Budget. However, he should not worry, as it is not too late. A new Finance Bill will follow the Budget debate, and with cross-party support behind me I will seek to amend it. Alternatively, the Government could adopt the measures that I have outlined. I believe they are in the interests of social justice, fairness and good business. Publication can make a difference and put pressure on companies to play fair and pay up Finally, I want to say something about education. I am worried at what I believe is an ill-thought-out plan to force every school to become an academy under the guise of more autonomy for schools. I support tackling failing schools, I supported local community schools in becoming community-run trusts, and I have supported academies in my constituency, but I do not believe this is a policy for local autonomy I met parents and teachers at Pennine View School in Conisbrough, a wonderful special school with a good Ofsted rating. It is a community school with committed staff and governors. Why should that school, which does a good job, be forced to become an academy? I do not think the argument is there. What is more sinister is the insistence by regional school inspectors that single academies, often local community schools, must be forced into multi-academy trusts. When academies began, schools in the same pyramid would join as a group and support each other; the model was collaborative. Today, however, academy chains are becoming huge businesses, with headteachers receiving instructions from a head office 100 miles away I was recently at Auckley School, where I met a governor, Keith Scott, who has served that school for 14 years. It is a good school; why should it be forced into a chain? It is well run and well regarded. As more data are collected, we find that previously well regarded academy trusts have failed, and in a number of cases, the test of improved standards and outcomes is not being met. Some have suggested that the growth of academy chains has not helped I have never shirked from challenging those whose provision of education is not good enough, and I still will not. As an MP, though, I want to know how this new idea will ensure the accountability that there has to be for whoever is providing education for our children, and how it will help children to achieve. It is a dogmatic policy. Just as there were those who refused to acknowledge when local education authorities were not always doing a good job, the same thing applies now. Two wrongs do not make a right. I hope that the Government will look again at this experiment, as it has been called, and ensure that we do not harm the future education of our children.