Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con) I beg to move, That
this House has considered the Ofsted inspection of multi-academy
trusts. There is much excitement, as we are expecting to hear the
Division bell. I will speak slowly at the beginning of my speech,
and say that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship once
again in a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Robertson. I am grateful to
the Minister and welcome him to his new role. I spent time with him
on the...Request free trial
(Stoke-on-Trent North)
(Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Ofsted inspection of
multi-academy trusts.
There is much excitement, as we are expecting to hear the
Division bell. I will speak slowly at the beginning of my speech,
and say that it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship
once again in a Westminster Hall debate, Mr Robertson. I am
grateful to the Minister and welcome him to his new role. I spent
time with him on the campaign trail, as well as working with him
when he was in the Northern Ireland Office. I am delighted to see
the new Parliamentary Private Secretary, my hon. Friend the
Member for Wantage (), with whom I served on the
Education Committee for over a year and a half. He brings a lot
of experience to the Department of Education. I also welcome the
shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Hove ()—I thoroughly enjoy exchanging a
few heckles with him across the Floor of the House, but I also
know the passion he has in this area and I am pleased to see him
in the Chamber.
(in the Chair)
Order. The sitting is suspended, as previously advised.
16:31:00
Sitting suspended for Divisions in the House.
16:56:00
On resuming—
(in the Chair)
The debate can now run to 5.56 pm.
Thank you, Mr Robertson, for calling me to speak again, and I
thank everyone else in Westminster Hall for coming back swiftly
after the Divisions. I will not repeat all the love-ins that I
gave before the Divisions; instead, I will go straight on to
saying why we are having this very important debate.
When the people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke lent
me their votes in 2019, it was because they wanted change after
70 years of Labour neglect. A Conservative-led council,
Conservative MPs and a Conservative Government are finally
levelling up our fantastic city and unleashing the boundless
opportunity that it has to offer, while Labour Members are still
trying to find Stoke-on-Trent on their Ordnance Survey maps.
As a former teacher, I believe that the most important way to
continue levelling up our city is to transform education across
Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. It is unacceptable
that children from Stoke-on-Trent simply cannot access the same
standard of education that is on offer elsewhere in the country.
Where we are today, in Westminster, there are eight secondary
schools rated outstanding, with a further 16 outstanding schools
in Camden, Kensington and Chelsea, and Southwood. By contrast,
there is only one outstanding secondary school in Stoke-on-Trent,
with another outstanding school shared between the neighbouring
local authorities of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire
Moorlands and Stafford.
Such examples show why I firmly believe that if levelling up
means anything, it means that each and every child, no matter
where they live in our United Kingdom, has the chance to attend
the best schools, where they can receive the education they need
to attend first-class universities or gain skills via an
apprenticeship or vocational training. As a former teacher who
taught in academies for eight years, I think that academies are
one of the keys to spreading educational opportunity around the
country. Multi-academy trusts back great teachers and, most
importantly, they enable our children to reach their
potential.
As the “Lost Learning” report that I co-authored earlier this
year with Onward and the New Schools Network year argued, we
should
“much more aggressively use multi-academy trusts as the engine of
school improvement, by…holding them to account for their ability
to turnaround underperforming schools”.
Since 2010, the Conservative Government have invested in
multi-academy trusts, and throughout my teaching career I saw at
first hand how that investment acted as a vehicle for school
improvement by advancing the education that our children
receive.
That has been reflected in the Ofsted rating of schools. Between
2010 and 2020, the proportion of schools that Ofsted rated as
good or outstanding rose from 66% to 86%, while 2018 figures
showed that at converter academies open for one year, 65% of
pupils reached the expected standards in reading, writing and
maths—that figure rises to 71% in converter academies open for
seven years or more.
Coupled with the drive for academisation, the free school agenda
has been at the heart of the Government’s impressive record on
education since 2010. At free schools, 10% more disadvantaged
pupils achieve a pass between grades 5 and 9 in their English and
maths GCSEs than their peers at other types of state school.
I firmly believe that free schools and academies are key to our
mission to level up around the country, and therefore it is only
right that pupils in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke
should benefit from a free school opening up in the community. I
look forward to the Minister announcing that wave 15 is finally
coming down the track, so that we can bid for a disruptor free
school. I have very much enjoyed talking to Star Academies and to
Michaela Community School, which has the fantastic Katharine
Birbalsingh, to see if she will endeavour to come to
Stoke-on-Trent and shake the apple tree.
On top of their role in driving up school standards,
multi-academy trusts are vital in turning around failing schools.
To take a local example, the inspirational Learning Academies
Trust has transformed the fortunes of two schools in
Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke. Norton-le-Moors
Primary Academy became part of the Learning Academies Trust in
2015, following an Ofsted inspection that rated it as inadequate.
After the takeover, it received its first good grade from Ofsted
in 2017, and in 2019, 13% of pupils, which is higher than the
national average, were achieving beyond the expected standards
for reading, writing and maths. I will give a big shout-out to
Jack, who was a runner-up in my Christmas card competition. It
was a pleasure to visit him with Councillor Dave Evans and award
him the prize of the card, as well as Port Vale football match
tickets—Stoke’s first team, of course, unlike that team further
south, Stoke City.
We also have Whitfield Valley Primary Academy in Fegg Hayes,
which joined the Inspirational Learning Academies Trust in 2016.
It is now not only rated good by Ofsted but has achieved an
above-average progress score in maths, as well as above-average
scores in reading and writing.
To look at another example, the Shaw Education Trust recently
took over Kidsgrove Primary and Secondary Schools, following
inadequate Ofsted ratings under the former multi-academy trust,
the University of Chester Academies Trust. That shameful trust
has been slammed by Ofsted for failing in its school improvement
strategies and below-average standards in some of its schools. In
May 2018, it received a formal warning from the Education and
Skills Funding Agency to get its finances in order, after racking
up a £3 million deficit. The trust confirmed that it was
considering cutting 24 support staff and 19 teaching roles across
its schools.
Since then, thanks to the Shaw Education Trust, Kidsgrove Primary
and Secondary have partnered in launching a new digital strategy,
allowing pupils to be taught with up-to-date technology. That
follows my “Silicon Stoke” agenda, a new prospectus setting out
the ambition for a digital transformation of the city of
Stoke-on-Trent, enabling it to become a smart city, attracting
new national and international businesses, and being at the heart
of the UK video games sector.
“Silicon Stoke” ensures that Stoke-on-Trent takes up
opportunities through digital connectivity, and the Shaw
Education Trust has ensured that our primary and secondary
students at Kidsgrove and Talke are kept up to speed with the new
digital age through the digital strategy. Since July this year,
all classrooms in Kidsgrove Primary, for example, have been
equipped with the latest Promethean boards for teacher and pupil
use, and since September, there has been a measure for all
students across both schools to receive an iPad, to support
school and home learning.
(Newcastle-under-Lyme)
(Con)
I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for giving way. I thank him
for referencing the Shaw Education Trust, which also has schools
in my constituency, such as the Orme Academy. Does he agree that
one of the benefits of multi-academy trusts is that they can
spread best practice from one area to another, and thus raise
standards for everybody across my borough and his city?
I am grateful to my hon. Friend and neighbour, with whom I share
Kidsgrove, Talke and Newchapel, since they are within the
Newcastle-under-Lyme borough. As we have just heard, the Shaw
Education Trust has spread good practice and is sharing
expertise, not just across that borough but also within the
Stoke-on-Trent City Council area. In fact, the current city
director of Stoke-on-Trent City Council, Jon Rouse, was formerly
the head of the Shaw Education Trust. I am sure that he is keen
to ensure that he declares that he has no interest any more in
that trust, having become city director. Ultimately, we could see
what he was doing in the Greater Manchester area and how Shaw
Education Trust has gone on to do many great things.
My hon. Friend has been a doughty champion for all the schools in
his community. Not a day has gone by recently without me seeing a
photo of him in a school in his constituency. I know he was
recently at Silverdale in the Knutton area, visiting some of the
fantastic schools there, alongside local county councillor
Derrick Huckfield, who is also doing a fantastic job in that
area.
Multi-academy trusts have proven, across Stoke-on-Trent, north
Kidsgrove and Talke, that they can level up education by driving
up standards and giving our children the education that they
deserve. We are committed to driving up school standards across
the city. The new education challenge board, approved by the
Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards, is
chaired by Sir Mark Grundy, a highly respected educational
leader. It will bring together city council leaders, the
Department for Education, local academies, Ofsted and the
regional schools commissioner. Working collaboratively, the new
education challenge board will provide oversight of educational
performance across Stoke-on-Trent, helping to turn schools around
through first-class teaching and leadership, by drawing on the
expertise of the trusts already succeeding within the city.
Unfortunately, not all the trusts are performing in the same way.
That matters, because 42% of schools are now academies, and 84%
of those academies are part of multi-academy trusts. Since they
have control over such a significant number of our schools,
families must have confidence in trusts, regardless of where they
are in the country. Parents and teachers work incredibly hard to
provide children with the best education they can, while
listening to various scandals of multi-academy trusts abusing
their budgets with excessive spending.
To pick just a few examples, 40 chains have spent more than £1
million on executive expenses, paying thousands for first-class
travel. The Aspirations Academy Trust, based near Heathrow
airport, has spent nearly £90,000 for its America-based
co-founders to fly across the Atlantic; the Paradigm Trust in
London has covered the cost of broadband at its boss’s French
holiday home; and the Academy Transformation Trust in Sutton
Coldfield has even paid to lease a new XJ Premium Luxury V6
Jaguar for a chief executive earning £180,000 a year.
I want to make it clear that I am a huge supporter of
academisation, and I believe that we should be going full
throttle to turn all schools into academies. Through my
experience as a teacher, I have seen at first hand how
brilliantly they can turn failing schools around, but we must
restore the faith of parents, teachers and, most importantly, the
pupils, and we must ensure that trusts are working on behalf of
students and not, insultingly, taking advantage of the big
budgets to which they have access. It is absolutely right that we
move from the local education authority model, but we do not want
to create less accountable and transparent LEAs by not having
multi-academy trusts properly inspected.
That is the heart of the issue. With no formal procedure in place
for inspecting the boards of trustees of multi-academy trusts,
how can parents and teachers know that their trusts are
performing with the best interests of the school and students at
heart? If Ofsted were able to consider the achievement of pupils
across schools covered by a multi-academy trust, the success of a
multi-academy trust in reversing educational underperformance,
and the quality of leadership, financial management and
governance of a multi-academy trust, we could ensure that
multi-academy trusts played a full role and, crucially, allow
those that are doing truly excellent work to be recognised.
(Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)
I commend my hon. Friend on securing the debate. I wonder whether
he will touch briefly on the issue of the regional schools
commissioners. As he has rightly outlined, there is concern that
multi-academy trusts lack transparency in their governance
structures and are difficult to hold to account, but there is
also concern about how we as Members of Parliament can access the
commissioners, interact with them and help to raise concerns
through the system. Will he draw that to the attention of the
Minister and give his own thoughts on that particular
challenge?
I am very lucky to have had a really healthy working relationship
with the west midlands regional schools commissioner, who is a
former headteacher at the Mill Hill Primary Academy in
Stoke-on-Trent North. However, I have serious concerns, and the
purpose and role of regional schools commissioners is an issue
that was raised in the Education Committee. When those posts were
originally set up, it was absolutely the right thing to do, both
to have accountability and so that parents, Members of Parliament
and teachers in the schools could raise any concerns. In my
opinion, regional schools commissioners should be brokering
deals, such as new deals for multi-academy trusts to come into a
local area, holding to account boards of trustees that they think
are underperforming, and feeding that information back to the
Department for Education.
At this moment in time, I do not think that regional schools
commissioners are utilised well enough, and there has to be a
discussion at some stage about whether they are the right model
to bring this change about in the long term, and whether they
could be given more powers. Hopefully, we will ensure that
regional schools commissioners are not just civil servants, whom
I am sure are very noble and worthy people, but that they have
spent years in the classroom at all levels of governance and
management and can bring their experience with them. That is when
a regional schools commissioner can really work. At the moment,
they are simply not fit for purpose. I know that the Education
Committee raised this issue, and I am sure the Minister will look
at it.
We have had a great 10 years of Govian and Gibbian reforms. We
will now have the Zahawi-Walker reforms over the next 10 years,
and I am sure there will be a White Paper in which we will start
to see the next 10 years of mission for education. I hope the
role of regional schools commissioner can be explored by the
Minister, and I look forward to hearing his thoughts on that. If
he cannot tell us today, I am sure he can write to us to let us
know how he sees that going forward.
Teachers are accountable for the education they provide to
pupils, with Ofsted inspecting schools, including individual
academies, and children’s social services. To restore faith
between teachers and trusts, multi-academy trusts and their
leadership teams must be accountable in the same way as teachers.
Ofsted’s chair, Dame Christine Ryan, has agreed with the need to
inspect schools’ governing bodies, noting in the Education
Committee meeting in September this year:
“I always felt it was absolutely essential to carry out
inspection activities on the governing area and its interactions
with the schools that it owned.”
Hospital trusts are subject to inspection by the Care Quality
Commission, so why can Ofsted not inspect multi-academy trusts in
the same way?
We have been moving in the right direction. In 2018, Ofsted
trialled inspecting individual academies under the same
multi-academy trust before visiting the trust’s head office to
evaluate its effectiveness. Although that certainly highlighted
the requirement to inspect multi-academy trusts, inspections
remain focused on individual schools, meaning that wider issues
at the heart of the trusts that run them can go undetected.
Inspections that cover only individual schools are the crux of
the multi-academy trusts’ accountability problem. Education
Committee meetings with Ofsted chief inspector Amanda Spielman in
June 2021 were revealing, as she said:
“We still operate what in some respects is historic inspection
legislation that constrains us to look at the level of the
individual school”.
That clearly limits our ability to hold those responsible to
account. The chief inspector noted in November 2020 that
“accountability needs to be able to look at the multiple levels
in the system to ask the right questions at the right level”.
To ensure that multi-academy trusts truly use their power for the
benefit of our schools, accountability must reflect the top-heavy
leadership style of many trusts, and thus hold those responsible
to account.
Ultimately, multi-academy trusts can, and do, turn schools
around, just as the Inspirational Learning Academies Trust has
done across schools in Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke.
By holding trusts to account through regular inspection—they do
not fear being held to account because they are proud of their
work—we can ensure that schools, staff and students alike are
performing to their full potential. The inspection of
multi-academy trusts will allow us to recognise those that
perform well, and incentivise the best multi-academy trusts with
generous funding to take on struggling schools. By keeping trusts
responsible for their performance, we can seek to harness their
power, especially in parts of the country where school outcomes
are weak. With my personal experience in the teaching profession,
I believe that multi-academy trusts are the proven route to
ensuring that every child, no matter where they live, can attend
a school where they will reach their potential, and open doors to
the career routes they wish to pursue.
When I was elected, I promised to level up communities like
Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, and providing a
quality education for every child is vital to doing this.
Multi-academy trusts have had a crucial role in the great
improvements in school standards in the last decade; it is our
responsibility to identify the best of them and use their power
to prove to every child, up and down our United Kingdom, that
they are not forgotten and opportunity sits right on their
doorstep.
This debate comes off the back of my introduction of a ten-minute
rule Bill, for which I was delighted to receive cross-party
support from members of the Labour party and from the Liberal
Democrats. It shows the strength of feeling on this issue. I was
lucky enough to secure the signature of my hon. Friend the Member
for Wantage before he was promoted to become Parliamentary
Private Secretary at the Department for Education. He knows how
great this is, and I am sure that he will use his position within
the Department for Education to lobby the Minister. Ultimately, I
think this shows the strength of feeling that this is the right
way to have fairness, accountability, transparency and to
ensure that multi-academy trusts are a positive driver for
improving education outcomes across England.
17:12:00
(Hove) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the very
first time, Mr Robertson, unlike the hon. Member for
Stoke-on-Trent North (), who seems to be a
regular in your sessions. I am also very grateful to the hon.
Gentleman for securing the debate, and for the persistence with
which he is championing this cause. It is extraordinary; he had
so much time in which to speak in this debate, and yet he did so
at such a ferocious pace. For the benefit of our friends in
Hansard, I will speak more slowly so that they can rest their
weary quills for the next few minutes.
There are 7,680 schools in this country that are now part of
multi-academy trusts. Even if each of those schools had just 500
pupils, that would mean several thousand young people whose
futures are in the hands of multi-academy trusts. Regardless of
ideology, that should give us pause for thought. Due to the
reforms of recent years, multi-academy trusts now have a level of
influence over the school system that few could have predicted,
even when the first trusts emerged. In fact, most other
authorities with responsibilities for young people are subject to
extremely stringent inspection regimes—even if they are
responsible for far fewer children than many multi-academy
trusts. That is why we must do all we can to ensure that,
whatever regulatory framework we develop for MATs, it reflects
the level of influence that these trusts now exert.
For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussion
of school structures. I noticed that in his speech, the hon.
Member for Stoke-on-Trent North fell into the same trap, if he
does not mind my saying so. As someone who has helped set up two
academies, I know their strengths—that they can be a phenomenal
tool for delivering improvement—but also their limitations. To
suggest that they would have the same impact in every situation
stretches the single tool that academisation presents as an
opportunity for the education system. Other tools are available
to Ministers, principals of schools, school leaders, MATs and
local education authorities, and we need to use all the different
tools that are at our disposal, not disproportionately favour one
for reasons that are simply ideological.
For too long, education policy has been dominated by discussions
about school structures—that was, after all, the key plank of the
reforms implemented by the Conservative-led coalition after the
2010 general election. Obsessions over school structures have
held our schools back, because they have hidden new and emerging
challenges in our school system such as the complete failure to
root out sexual harassment in our education system. Though it has
been found by Ofsted to be routine in all schools, there have
been particularly high-profile cases of poor practice in
“outstanding” schools that are part of well-established trusts.
That is not an argument against trusts or against collaboration,
but it is a clear example of how focusing on structures can
obscure the real issues that are existing, emerging and
developing within our school system. Our focus should not
be on radical changes in school structures: it should be on what
delivers improvement in the 2020s and beyond, not in a bygone
era.
To his credit, I believe that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent
North is focusing on this issue with a sincere desire to drive
improvement, going forward. The Labour party and I are very
grateful for that, which is why we have offered what I hope the
hon. Gentleman will perceive as constructive support since he
introduced his ten-minute rule Bill and beyond. He has drawn
national attention to the proliferation of multi-academy trusts
under this Government, and has pushed for a specific loophole
around inspections to be closed.
As has been noted, Ofsted has carried out summary inspections on
multi-academy trusts since 2019. Recent updates to the guidance
on those inspections should help to broaden their remit and
increase their volume. However, Ofsted itself has highlighted the
need to go further: its chief inspector, Amanda Spielman, has
highlighted the “peculiarity” of not inspecting MATs on their
governance, efficiency and use of resources. Appearing before the
Select Committee on Education, she also referred to a suite
of
“historic inspection legislation that constrains us to look at
the level of the individual school”.
We in the Labour party completely agree that inspections of
multi-academy trusts should take place. We also agree that those
inspections should include a proper assessment of leadership,
governance and safeguarding arrangements, so we look forward to
hearing the Minister’s response today.
As a former chair of governors involved in setting up two
turnaround academies, I know how important leadership is to the
success of schools. What is more, we never feared being held to
account. Inspections are important: in fact, we relished the
chance to show what we could do and learn how to perform better.
I was there at 7.30 in the morning as chair of governors,
alongside the principal, to await the team of inspectors. We
welcomed them to our school and we saw their inspection as a tool
for improvement, even though we all felt the heat—the
anticipation—and did so with great nerves, because we wanted to
show off what was great about our school.
When I got the reports in from those inspections, I found them to
contain incredibly helpful insights into the performance of
schools, which often reinforced the direction of travel within a
school and highlighted those things that we did not quite notice.
Even on school inspections, classroom visits and walkarounds, it
is very hard for people who are not trained educationists to see
with their own eyes precisely what is happening in every corner
of a school, rather than just going on the data that is presented
to them by that school. Inspections are a really important part
of improvement, whatever the organisation. So, I have no doubt
that genuinely forward-looking MATs will take the same approach
to a more rigorous form of inspection for their own organisations
than the current regime offers—a form of inspection that
champions innovation and gives the insight and analysis of
performance to help MATs improve in practice, just as a good
inspection should seek to improve individual schools as well.
Adopting a new form of inspection to challenge and support MAT
leaders is one thing, but driving up performance and leaders will
take far more than a new inspection regime, especially given how
badly both they and pupils have been let down during the
pandemic. According to research conducted by Teacher Tapp, only
2.5% of school leaders felt supported by the Department for
Education throughout the pandemic. Think about that for one
second: 97.5% of teachers—over 400,000—trying to respond to a
once in a lifetime disruption to education without anyone backing
them up. The sense of isolation they felt was profound.
Changes to inspection regimes will go so far, but will not remedy
the worst failures of this Conservative Government. What is
worse, the Department’s muddled and inconsistent advice was often
actively harming our school leaders’ ability to respond. One
teacher said of the guidance that she received:
“I physically look at it and I can’t even bring myself to open it
right now, because you just get saturated with it”.
Threatened with legal action if they closed—only to be forced to
close the very next day—schools and trust leaders have lacked
proper leadership throughout the pandemic. They are now lacking
properly resourced catch-up support and tough action to clamp
down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates.
I want to put it on the record that I completely agree with the
hon. Gentleman regarding the disgraceful action of anti-vaxxers
standing outside schools filming young people coming in and out
of that school, as well as parents. It is absolutely abhorrent
and there is absolutely no place for it. This Government have to
come down hard on those people.
School, for some of the most vulnerable people in our
communities, is the safest place for them. As a former head of
year, I used to have a lot of children who hung around after
school—despite the fact they told me it was the worst place to
be—because it was where they felt safest. The fact that we have
these disgusting individuals targeting young people is abhorrent.
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will also call for action. I
want to make sure this is on the record for the Minister: we have
to go in hard; we have to make our young people and teachers feel
safe.
This is something that I have been deeply concerned about since
the start of the autumn term in September. On 19 July in the
Chamber, when I raised concerns about the vaccine roll-out among
children aged 12-plus and argued that it should be rolled out
over the summer months, so as to use the mass vaccination
existing infrastructure, so that schools could be protected come
autumn and stabilised, but also so that they did not become
targets for anti-vax protests, the then Vaccines Minister, the
right hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (), told me that children were
protected by a “wall of vaccinated adults” and therefore it was
not a priority. He was wrong. Now he is Secretary of State for
Education and we are picking up the pieces.
The principal of a school told me recently that he feels his job
is no longer primarily that of leading an institution for
schooling, but of running a logistics centre: twice-weekly
testing in school, organising the logistics behind a vaccine
roll-out in school, dealing with local outbreaks, and dealing
with the need to control the flow of students. He said the first,
second, third and often fourth items on the agenda of his daily
senior management team meetings were about logistical challenges,
not teaching and learning. That is the price of not seeing this
coming down the road. It was predicted and predictable and was
not dealt with.
The Labour party has tried to be constructive about this. Last
month the Leader of the Opposition proposed a solution—to update
the legislation around public spaces protection orders. They are
unwieldy at the moment and could take several weeks to implement.
However we believe that, with a very simple amendment to the
Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003, the process could be streamlined
so that an order could be brought into force in just one hour,
with one phone conference between a school principal, the local
authority and the local police force. They could bring into the
order the powers to keep anti-vax protesters away from school
gates for the duration of the vaccine roll-out programme. We
offered that suggestion, but sadly the Government have not
responded. The Secretary of State for Education said in response
to my oral question just two weeks ago that he was in
conversation with the Home Secretary, and that all powers would
be implemented. Again, nothing happened. I cannot see that that
conversation actually took place in a meaningful way.
However, there is another opportunity, and it is great that I
have been given the opportunity to put it on the record.
Tomorrow, in the House of Lords, will table an amendment to the
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill that would amend the
2003 Act to give schools the powers that I have just described to
instigate exclusion zones for anti-vax protesters within one
hour, and they could do so pre-emptively; if one school is facing
disruptive anti-vax protests in which children are being bullied,
harassed and intimidated, in all likelihood the same will emerge
down the road when the protest moves to another school, so
schools need those powers to prevent that protest from happening.
The Government have an opportunity to give them those powers. We
would get this through in a heartbeat. The Labour Opposition in
the House of Lords stand ready to table that amendment
tomorrow.
I will have my say on another issue, because I feel as strongly
as the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North, and we have another
25 minutes of debate, so I am sure I can get this on the record
before I sum up the debate. In my constituency, anti-vax
protesters have gone on to a school bus to tell children that
they will become infertile if they take the vaccine. Outside
schools in my constituency, there have been so many harassing,
bullying and intimidatory protesters that schoolchildren have had
to detour out into the busy main road in order to go through the
driveway into the school. A child was grabbed by the collar and
told that he could endanger the lives of his teachers and his
parents.
I bring those experiences and my anger about that kind of
behaviour because, let us be clear, these people are not just
anti-vax. Six months ago, they were anti-face masks. A year or
two ago, they were anti-covid altogether, believing it was all
fake news. If they were alive 350 years ago, they would have been
calling for Galileo to be burned at the stake for saying the
earth revolves around the sun. We went through the scientific
revolution, we went through the Enlightenment, in this country so
that we could not base policy on superstition. We did so by
bringing the best of scientific understanding to the heart of
Government. Let us not allow these people to determine how public
health unfolds in this country. I thank the hon. Gentleman for
that intervention and for giving me the opportunity to put that
on the record. I feel very strongly about it.
People leading schools and teaching in classrooms through the
pandemic lack resources for catch-up support and tough action to
clamp down on anti-vaxxers outside school gates. In contrast to
the Government, the Labour party is on the side of pupils,
teachers and leaders. Our goal is a well-functioning school
system, backed with resources, direction and inspection, that
prepares students for the world of work and the world of tomorrow
that they will encounter. Under the new leadership of my right
hon. and learned Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras
(), we have updated our
positions on key issues in schools policy to meet the new
challenges that schools and trusts face. The Government have not.
We innovate; I am afraid that the Government stagnate.
What is the Minister’s assessment of the strength of the current
inspection regime for MATs? What plans does he have to expand
Ofsted’s inspection powers with regard to MATs, and does he
intend to support any greater powers with the required resources?
What other steps is he taking to support schools that wish to
exit their trust if that is in the best interests of pupils? Will
he commit to a new era of strong leadership from the Department
for Education? This is a fantastic opportunity, as we hopefully
see the finish line of the pandemic in sight, and with a new
ministerial team, to commit to new, strong leadership—one that
trust leaders, school leaders, teachers and students can at last
trust, replacing the years of drift and decline.
As I made clear at the start, ensuring robust standards for all
MATs is crucial. It would matter if they educated just one child;
it certainly matters when they educate so many thousands. A young
child has only one shot at their education; the state must do all
it can to make that shot a success.
(in the Chair)
I would like to leave two or three minutes at the end for the
mover of the motion to respond.
17:30:00
The Minister for School Standards ( )
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr
Robertson. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member
for Hove (); it was great to hear him speak
so passionately about the value of school inspection. I know he
has had his differences with his party’s Front Bench in the past.
Obviously, given the manifesto for school inspection that Labour
fought the last election on, that is a pretty major difference. I
welcome many of the points he made and, although it is not the
subject of the debate, I share the absolute condemnation of
bullying and intimidation by anti-vaxxers. It is, of course,
totally unacceptable.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North
()—also the Member for
Kidsgrove and Talke—on securing the debate. I know that its
subject reflects his immense commitment and, indeed, successful
frontline experience in improving educational outcomes for
pupils. As we would expect, he has spoken with great passion and
eloquence about the transformative potential of the academy
system and the need to harness that so that pupils across the
country, and particularly in his Stoke constituency, can
benefit.
I am also pleased that, through the Stoke plan, there is a
place-based pilot aiming to level up education in the city and
identify strategies to build up MAT capacity in the area, and
that my colleague, , and the Secretary of
State were recently able to attend the inaugural meeting of the
education challenge board in the area. I am glad to hear of the
positive developments that my hon. Friend the Member for
Stoke-on-Trent North reported at both the Inspiration Trust and
the Shaw Education Trust, as well as the support they have given
my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme ().
My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has rightly
emphasised the importance of having the right accountability
arrangements in place to support continuous improvement in
educational quality and, ultimately, to change the lives of
children for the better. I thank him for that. We have also heard
a number of valuable contributions from colleagues who are now
elsewhere and, indeed, from the Opposition spokesman.
I am also conscious of the contributions of the Education
Committee, its role in scrutinising current accountability
arrangements and its interest in promoting Ofsted’s inspection
role over a number of years through its reports and discussions,
which underlies the relevance and importance of today’s debate
across the House. I also acknowledge the desire of Her Majesty’s
chief inspector and the Ofsted chair to go further.
I absolutely agree that accountability arrangements should
develop over time to reflect the delivery of education and the
decision making that goes on. It is clear that that delivery is
taking place within an evolving landscape in which academies and
MATs are playing an increasing role. A little more than a decade
ago, there were just 203 academies. I am pleased to report that
there are now more than 9,700 open academies, free schools,
studio schools and university technical colleges, with around
1,200 academy trusts running more than one academy.
Today, more than 55% of pupils in state-funded education study in
academies, but that of course means that almost half do not. The
dual system of educational delivery in this country persists. We
are on a journey to change that but we have not yet reached our
destination: a world-class school-led system in which every
school is part of a family of schools in a strong multi-academy
trust.
Our commitment to reaching that destination is fuelled by the
evidence of the benefits we already see in strong MATs. My hon.
Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has alluded to some of
them today: the flexible deployment of teachers and leaders to
where they are needed most; the opportunities for teachers to
gain experience across school settings; the sharing of resources
and mobilisation of the best available evidence of what works;
the use of economies of scale to improve outcomes; and great
resilience, which has been particularly important during the
pandemic. The list goes on. Put simply, a group of schools in a
trust, working together with a single aim, can make a profound
difference. I agree with my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for
Hove that not all trusts are as strong as they could be, which is
why accountability is a crucial part of the equation.
Ofsted already plays a role through its routine school inspection
programme, which, as Members will know, was paused temporarily in
response to the pandemic. The programme not only resumed in
September, but has now accelerated so that all schools, including
outstanding schools that were previously exempt from routine
inspection, will have at least one inspection between last term
and summer 2025—a year earlier than previously committed to—to
provide swifter assurance for parents and more timely recognition
of schools’ work as they strive to support pupils’ recovery.
Ofsted school inspection provides robust assessment of the
quality of education and the strength of leadership and
management in each and every academy. It is important to
recognise that through the lens of the individual school Ofsted
gazes at and captures the impact of MATs. After all, when an
academy is part of a MAT, the board of trustees is the governance
body and the role played by trustees in relation to the school is
evaluated by the inspectors as part of their judgment of the
effectiveness of leadership and management at the school. In a
school with good leadership and management, inspectors will
expect trustees and local governing boards to ensure that the
school has a clear vision and strategy, manages its resources
well and holds leaders to account for the quality of education
provided to pupils.
The bottom-up accountability for MATs provided by Ofsted’s
school-level inspection is supplemented by a programme of MAT
summary evaluations, which provides more of a top-down view and
insight into the role and impact of the MAT itself. Those
evaluations draw on the inspections of individual academies in a
trust, along with direct engagement with trust leaders to review
how well a trust is delivering a high quality of education and
raising standards for all pupils. To be clear, it is early days
for the programme, which began in December 2018 and which builds
on the previous batched inspection approach, and it has involved
12 MATs to date. As with routine inspections, the evaluations
have rightly been paused in the light of the pandemic, but will
now move forward under the recently revised Ofsted arrangements.
The Ofsted updates are intended to bring evaluations more in line
with Ofsted’s education inspection framework, with its focus on
the quality of education and curriculum. The evaluation includes
consideration of key information about the MAT and aims to
recognise where it is having a positive impact, as well as giving
the MAT helpful recommendations on aspects that could be
improved.
I want to come back to the MAT summary evaluation programme, but
before that I want to provide a wider context to the arrangements
for MAT accountability. Academy trusts’ status as companies,
charities and public-sector bodies means they are subject to
significant scrutiny, beyond the necessarily periodic Ofsted
inspections and evaluations. The Department, as regulator,
requires a level of transparency from trusts, and its regional
schools commissioners and their teams, together with the
Education and Skills Funding Agency, provide robust educational
financial oversight of all academy trusts. Trusts themselves must
publish annual reports and audited accounts. That is in addition
to the Department publishing a wide range of information, such as
tables setting out measures of educational performance and
financial benchmarking data. Both the regional schools
commissioners and the ESFA hold trusts to account where schools
are underperforming or where there are weaknesses in
safeguarding, which we have heard about in today’s debate,
governance or financial management. That can include
commissioning support or issuing a pre-warning notice, a
termination warning notice or a notice to improve, all of which
are published if necessary. The funding agreement can be
terminated and a new sponsor identified to take on responsibility
for the academy.
On managing MAT expansion, we have increased the rigour around
how regional schools commissioners decide on which academy trusts
can grow, with oversight from the national schools commissioner.
Before approving a decision about growth, RSCs will consider
evidence about the educational and financial capacity of an
academy trust. In doing so, they should consider the
circumstances and maturity of the academy trust, reducing the
likelihood that trusts grow in an unsustainable way as, I
acknowledge, they have been known to in the past. To support that
approach, regional schools commissioners regularly engage with
trusts to ensure strong processes are in place to maintain and
improve educational performance and to inform decisions about the
suitability of a trust to support new schools.
I hear the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for Central
Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) raised and my hon. Friend
the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North endorsed about the role of
regional schools commissioners. Their role has evolved and I
suspect that that will continue to happen. There is an increasing
focus on financial management, supported by the ESFA. Regional
schools commissioners and the ESFA need to work together to test
both financial regularity and value for money in all trusts. I am
happy to engage further on the issue with hon. Friends.
Financial accountability is founded on a clear framework
communicated and regulated by the ESFA through trust funding
arrangements and the academy trust handbook. As mentioned
earlier, academy trusts must publish annual reports, audited by a
registered statutory auditor. As part of their annual reports and
accounts, trusts must also publish details of their objectives,
achievements and future plans, including what they have done to
promote value for money in support of those projects. The
oversight arrangements go beyond the requirements for local
authority maintained schools and provide the Department as
regulator with confidence that the oversight is professional and
consistent, as the auditors themselves have to confirm standards
set by an independent regulator. It is right that we consider
adapting and implementing the current academy transparency
measures across the maintained sector to strengthen
accountability for maintained schools and ensure we have strong
and balanced arrangements across all schools. We are taking
action as part of the Department’s 2020 transparency consultation
response.
On the issue of financial mismanagement—my hon. Friend the Member
for Stoke-on-Trent North has raised cases of that in the past—a
number of steps have already been taken to strengthen academies’
financial accountability and transparency. That includes the
introduction, in April 2019, of requirements for academies to
declare to the ESFA, up front, any related party transactions,
and in turn to seek approval for any transaction—or cumulative
total of transactions—exceeding £20,000.
To be clear, the vast majority of academy trusts are delivering
strong financial management and governance. The latest published
data shows that in 2018-19, 99.3% of academy trust accounts
received unqualified opinions. However, where there is any risk
to public funds, the ESFA will intervene. That can include
issuing a notice to improve, seeking to impose sanctions on
individuals engaged in misconduct or, where appropriate, in the
most serious cases, terminating funding agreements.
With the combination of Ofsted school inspection and Ofsted MAT
summary evaluations, together with regulatory oversight through
regional schools commissioners and the ESFA and transparency on
educational outcomes through MAT performance tables, I hope hon.
Members will agree that significant accountability safeguards are
already in place for MATs. However, that does not mean that we
should stand still. We need to keep arrangements under review and
seek to build further assurance, where appropriate, while
ensuring a balanced system, particularly when they are compared
with local authority-maintained schools. I would like to see
Ofsted’s MAT summary evaluation programme expanded in the short
term, the MATs visited diversifying, and the model continuing to
develop. I know that Her Majesty’s chief inspector is keen for
that to happen. We will absolutely keep reviewing actively where
and how we might go further.
Beyond that, I come back to my original theme: our plan is to
move, over time, away from the current dual system approach to a
more unified one in which all schools are in strong MATs. As part
of that we will be taking a careful and detailed look at how
better to hold MATs to account, including Ofsted’s role in that,
to ensure MATs are delivering for children. The schools White
Paper, which we expect to publish in early 2022, will articulate
a long-term vision of how our education system can deliver on the
Government’s priorities of building back better after the
pandemic and levelling up across the country.
Whatever the future accountability arrangements are, they will
need to be developed on the basis of ensuring proportionality and
coherence, as well as transparency; it is in no one’s interest
for us to micromanage MATs, to stifle their innovation or stamp
over their autonomy. Those are the very things that mean the
strongest MATs can make such an impact.
We also need to examine accountability at school and MAT level
together, to ensure that arrangements do not overlap, confuse or
create unnecessary additional burdens that get in the way.
Importantly, we need to keep engaging closely with the sector,
with organisations, agencies and individuals with a close
interest and expertise—I very much include my hon. Friend the
Member for Stoke-on-Trent North in that—to work through the
issues and be confident that the system delivers. We need to get
the right accountability balance, and we will not make changes
until we are sure that we have it.
The hon. Member for Hove challenged me with a number of question,
and I appreciate that I have not been able to answer them all
directly today. However, I can confirm that this is an area that
we will keep under active consideration. As we move forward with
our school system reforms, we will need an accountability system
that empowers trusts and ensures that they are meeting the needs
of our young people, and I expect Ofsted will play an important
role in that. I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for
Stoke-on-Trent North again on bringing forward this important
debate.
17:43:00
I am delighted to hear about the schools White Paper—the
Zahawi-Walker legacy document —that will be launched next year. I
will absolutely be pushing for my ten-minute rule Bill to play a
key part in that. I am obviously happy to always try to be
flexible and fair, but I think—we heard it from the hon. Member
for Hove ()—that this is something that
brings everyone, across the House, together. We want the very
best for our young people and therefore want the very best
education to be accessed.
I could not agree more with the hon. Member for Hove; none of the
multi-academy trusts I have spoken to fear this idea, because
they believe firmly in what they do. I think the overwhelming
majority of multi-academy trusts do their best, work hard, spend
their money correctly and invest in the schools within their
trusts, and I think they have no problem with it. The only ones
that will be worried about are those that do not want to face the
scrutiny. That gives the DFE the power to get rid of them—disband
these ones—and broker new deals with good existing multi-academy
trusts to then come in and take over.
I like to be a bit punchy every now and again, and the hon.
Member for Hove is fantastic when he gets going about the
Government’s record, so I could not help but remind myself of a
few facts. At the end of the day, when the Conservative party
came to power in 2010, about a year before I entered the teaching
profession, the legacy left by the Labour party was that the
Confederation of British Industry stated that employers had lost
confidence in Britain’s exams, the Wolf Review found some
courses
“fail to promote progression into either stable, paid employment
or higher level education”,
and some 350,000 young people had been let down by courses that
had little or no labour market value. In 2008, the Sutton Trust
found that only 40 pupils out of the 80,000 eligible for free
school meals went on to Oxbridge, and in May 2010, the Office for
Fair Access said that by the mid-2000s the most advantaged 20%
were
“seven times more likely than the most disadvantaged 40% to
attend the most selective institutions.”
We only have to look at Labour-run Wales where education
standards are falling down the league tables. It is an
abomination and Mr Drakeford should be ashamed of himself. He
should be held to account for his dismal record in failing to
deliver for the people of Wales.
I welcome the hon. Gentleman’s words, and his challenge and
scrutiny of Labour’s record. I make the simple point to him that
when Labour came to power in 1997, just over 40% of students were
getting five GCSEs including maths and English. By the time we
finished in power, it was almost 80%. On a range of different
measures, outcomes were more than doubled. If he criticises the
legacy that Labour left, can he picture what we inherited last
time his party left office?
(in the Chair)
Order. We are actually on a wind-up speech about multi-academy
trusts. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North has 30 seconds
to respond to the intervention, but he must then wind up.
Apologies, Mr Robertson. The hon. Gentleman asked me to picture
1997 and put my head back in that time; I was seven years old
when came to power, so it is hard for
me to fathom and picture that. Obviously, I had to suffer through
the Labour doldrums in that education system, but I am grateful
that I had a fantastic school and an inspirational teacher there,
who was, by the way, a Labour councillor in Tamworth and who is a
role model for me.
Finally, on the subject of the “not education union”, Dr Mary
Bousted and Kevin Courtney need to resign with immediate effect.
They are an abomination to the profession. I will come up to
their offices, pack their stuff and send it to their houses. The
National Education Union is a disgrace.
Going back to the most important point in the debate, Ofsted want
there to be inspections of multi-academy trusts and there is
cross-party consensus on that. As we have heard from Members,
multi-academy trusts that are really well run are not afraid of
this. I hope in the White Paper, the Zahawi-Walker legacy
document, we will see some fantastic innovation to turbocharge
these schools and multi-academy trusts, and ensure that kids in
Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke are no longer forgotten
and left behind.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Ofsted inspection of
multi-academy trusts.
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