Education and Adoption Bill — House of Commons, 2016-02-23
Topic: Education
Nicholas Dakin (Labour, Centre-left): First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) and for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe), who led for the Opposition when the Bill came through the House, as I do to all other right hon. and hon. Members who, as the Minister bore witness in his opening statement, contributed in Committee and in the Chamber to improving the Bill. I commend those in the other place who have worked hard at least to extract some small movements in the right direction, which come before us today in the form of Lords amendments It is quite amazing that, when there are so many real challenges facing the education system on the Conservatives’ watch, the first education Bill of the new Parliament does nothing to tackle them: parents concerned about the crisis in school places; parents anxious about the crisis in teacher supply; parents worried about changes to the school assessment system. Parents get no answers to the things that matter to them from the Bill and this Government. Instead, the Education Secretary brings forward another Bill obsessed with structures, seizing more powers for herself while marginalising parents and local communities—the very people who understand their areas, their local economy and what their children need to succeed Let us take the amendments in turn. I welcome the Government’s proposals in Lords amendments 1 to 5 that the coasting regulations will be subject to an affirmative procedure the first time they are laid. Hopefully, things will then become much clearer—they are still pretty murky at the moment. We do know, however, that primary and secondary schools will be identified on the basis of their 2014 to 2016 pupil results through a devised progress measure. We do not know when that final designation will occur for primary and secondary schools, with GCSE results about a month behind final key stage 2 results. We can only wonder how many schools will be identified. It could be 200, it could be 2,000 We do not know whether the measures will work. After all, the Schools Minister has form on promising to fix the problem of coasting schools. He came to this House in November 2011 to say that we must concentrate on the schools in the leafy suburbs that are not challenging their pupils as well as they should be. He promised that all schools would be subject to scrutiny to make sure that they raised standards and he placed his faith in the new performance tables that would identify how schools perform in relation to children of high academic ability as well as to those of lower academic ability. There is no evidence that the new panacea of academisation will be any more effective than the old panacea of performance tables We welcome amendment 7, as it finally recognises that parents exist and have an interest in their children’s school. Frankly, though, it does not go far enough. The 2015 Conservative party manifesto boldly states that "power to the people" is "a core Conservative belief". [Interruption.] Thank you. I am not sure whether that is right, but I do know that in this Bill that belief is not extended to the people most concerned about their children’s education—their parents. Surely parents deserve to be as fully engaged as possible in decisions affecting their child’s education. Where the ownership of the school is changing, they should surely have the right to be consulted, and not simply, in the Secretary of State’s words, "given the opportunity to understand just how a sponsor aims to transform their child’s school." The right hon. Lady serves up advertising jargon when she should be giving power to parents The selection of a sponsor is a critical strategic decision. As the Sutton Trust has shown, not all sponsors are as effective as others. Some are failing to provide an acceptable standard of education. Indeed, Ofsted recently said that the Academies Enterprise Trust, the largest academy chain, is "failing too many pupils" and that poorer pupils are doing "particularly badly". None of us wants that. We are agreed across the House on that, but the reality is that that is what is happening in a number of multi-academy trusts. Ofsted has also branded standards at secondary schools at another multi-academy trust, E-ACT, as "too low", while the performance of pupils from poorer backgrounds was "causing serious concern." This is the chain that wants to cut local people out of governance arrangements, replacing them with "academy ambassadorial advisory bodies"—more jargon.