My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to open this debate on free schools and the programme of this Government and the previous coalition Government, which I think I can safely say has been an unqualified success. It has been a success on many fronts: on quality and on bringing capacity, choice, innovation and competition to the system.
I will deal firstly with quality. Some 32% of free schools inspected have been judged outstanding by Ofsted, compared with 21% of all other schools, and 86% have been judged good or outstanding. This is truly remarkable, considering how early in their life free schools are inspected, when they have little if any test data to show and Ofsted inspectors generally are not rushing to award outstanding ratings to schools with few or no results. It shows that the pupils in these schools must be making good progress and that the schools must be demonstrating this to Ofsted.
It really is striking that free schools are 50% more likely to be rated outstanding than other schools. Last year, for the fourth year running, primary free schools were among the top-performing schools in the year 1 phonics screening check and key stage 1 SATs tests. Last year, for the second year running, secondary free schools were the highest performers at Progress 8, with an average score of +0.24. Indeed, four out of the top 10 performers at Progress 8 last year were free schools: Dixons Trinity Bradford, Eden Girls, William Perkin Church of England and Tauheedul Boys. At key stage 5 we have the London Academy of Excellence in Newham sending many of its pupils to Russell group universities, including Oxford and Cambridge, clearly raising the game of other sixth forms in Newham. At King’s maths school last year, 99% of students achieved an A or A* in maths A-level.
On capacity, 442 free schools have been opened, providing nearly 300,000 new school places. Adding those approved and in the pipeline but not yet open brings the total to more than 700. Half have been opened in the 30% most deprived areas of the country, and 83% address a need for places.
I must pay tribute to the free schools team at the Department for Education, headed by Mela Watts. You do not normally become a civil servant expecting to find yourself as a kind of venture capitalist opining on the merits of new organisations, but the people in the free schools team have adapted brilliantly to that challenge. I must also recognise the very significant role now played by regional schools commissioners in assessing free schools proposals.
On costs, free schools have been brought in at a cost one-third lower than under the preceding Labour Government’s BSF programme. Finding sites for these schools obviously is not easy, particularly in inner cities. I must also pay tribute in this regard to the Department for Education’s property arm, LocatED, very ably run by Lara Newman, which has been particularly effective and imaginative in this regard. Free schools have been opened not just in former offices and factories but in former police stations, a church, on top of a supermarket and in one case in a former fire station. I remember visiting that school. The planners had insisted for some reason that the pole that the firemen used to slide down had to be kept in place. I was particularly upset that, for health and safety reasons, I was not allowed to slide down it. I am delighted that 34 specialist free schools have been opened and 41 AP free schools, with more to come.
My Lords, I cannot speak in the debate, unfortunately, as I must be in the Chamber because I will be the last speaker on Monday night. I want to place on record the educational world’s thanks to my noble friend Lord Nash for his enthusiasm in creating the free schools movement. Without him and my noble friend Lord Hill, we would not be where we are.
I was a bit disappointed that my noble friend Lord Nash did not mention UTCs, which are a form of free school too. They are funded in the same way, are independent of local authorities and have some of the best results in the country, which we are proud of. We produce 30% of apprentices compared with 7% from other sectors, and 47% of our students go to university, three-quarters of whom do so to study STEM subjects. My noble friend supported us strongly in that, for which I thank him. Indeed, the UTC in Pimlico will join my noble friend’s MAT in Westminster later this year.
I am flattered by my noble friend’s remarks. I am sure that other noble Lords will mention UTCs, which are of course an important part of the programme.
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for bringing the debate to the House. It is good to have an education debate; we do not get as many of them these days as we used to.
I want to put on record the noble Lord’s commitment to the policy. I know that he believes in it and has put a lot of his own resources, effort and ability into trying to make it work. I will say that up front because in the next six and a half minutes, I will not support totally what he said. I also join him in thanking the schools he mentioned that have been successful in the free schools movement. We should welcome every good new school that we can get into the system. We cannot be against more good schools. That is the starting point. However, beyond that, I did not recognise the picture of this policy drawn by the noble Lord.
The title of the debate gives away the problem we have with the Government’s approach to free schools. It invites us to celebrate free schools’ contribution to raising standards. We owe it to the nation to do more than that. We owe it to our nation and its children to be more open-minded, not blind to the weaknesses and faults as well. The problem with free schools is that the Government have been too committed to them from the start and have lost any ability to be neutral or objective about their progress. While I acknowledge the success that there has been, I want to raise the other things that have happened in the free school movement.
Let us be clear what we are talking about when it comes to free schools. They do not exist in statute; they are essentially academies—no more, no less; there is no more legislation. They were set up to bring in new providers and parent-led schools, to increase competition and to promote innovation. Over the years of their existence, not one of them has delivered on the ambitions of their proposers at the start of the free school journey.
My Lords, I first express my gratitude to my noble friend Lord Nash for calling this debate. I think it is fair to say that nobody in government or politics has done more than him to support the free school movement both as a sponsor who has been known to put his time, effort and money into opening schools and during his four years as the responsible Minister. His positive impact on children’s outcomes in this country has been profound.
With just two speakers so far, there has already been much discussion of the merits or otherwise of free schools. As a founder and trustee of Floreat Education, which operates two primary free schools, it is probably fairly obvious where my loyalty lies, but I want to use this debate to revisit the reasons that the Conservative Party proposed and implemented the free schools programme in the first place, because I believe that it is against those intentions that the programme should be judged.
Having said that, there is another interest I have to declare, which my noble friend has already alluded to. Success has many parents, but I think it is fair to say that the Minister and I have particular reason to claim parentage of the free schools movement. As he said, the story began with the publication of a report for Policy Exchange in December 2005, authored by myself and Charlotte Leslie: More Good School Places. In producing that paper, we were strongly supported by one our trustees at the think tank—plain Theodore Agnew, as he was in those days. The purpose of that report was to suggest changes to the schools system in England in order to raise standards. Its analysis relied on the emerging literature on school choice and competition from the US, Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere.
I will not detain your Lordships with all the specific proposals in the report. Some of them were subsequently adopted by the Conservative Party when I became director of policy, including an early version of the pupil premium—the great cause of common interest with the Liberal Democrats and a foundation stone of the coalition education policy. Another proposal was to create a non-LEA-based route to setting up new schools. Others, such as locally elected pupil advocates, were not accepted. I believe that the key insight of that report still stands, which is that it is the Government’s job to help to create more good school places. The DfE is still using that language 13 years after we first coined it.
My Lords, when I looked at this debate I expected that we would discover most of the enthusiasm and intellectual drive behind this movement being expressed in this Room. I have not been disappointed. We seem to have everybody who knows anything about the subject here. For the rest of us, finding out exactly where the people who are involved in the free schools movement think it should go will be one of the lessons we will take away.
However, I am afraid I am with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. Indeed, she said much of what I was going to say—and, irritatingly, in a very good style—about the problems. The first is that if we have a lot of enthusiasm, where is the control? As the noble Baroness pointed out, more than 50 schools are closing. I thought, from the House of Lords Library briefing, that 29 free schools had closed in the past three years. We have a fairly high casualty rate. This must call to everyone’s attention that this is not a panacea that will be universally successful and guarantee success.
Once again the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, beat me to it: the fact of the matter is that free schools are a way of creating more academies that has been created by academy trusts. The problems of the academies are effectively going to the free schools. They are one and the same beast. It might be a different way of creating them, but they are the same thing. They are a movement. They have the same types of criteria, so the creature should be seen as one whole. Can we get an idea of how we will look at this?
I remember that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, discussed regional schools commissioners. Indeed, I think it was in this Room that we first discussed some things about them. It might be a good idea to find out exactly what they think they will be doing to give a more strategic focus. The days of the innovative, wonderful parent and teacher-led start-up are probably behind us—or they will occur only very infrequently. The noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, shakes his head, but it certainly has not been the fashion of late. He now nods his head. I wonder how Hansard will deal with that. We must look at what is happening now as a good example of where it might go.
My Lords, I am sure that your Lordships will all agree that every child in this country deserves the best education possible. Before I speak about free schools, I will say a few words about our 47 schools, which include 13 free schools.
Almost one in 40 children in London now attends a Harris Academy and 95% of our secondary schools are outstanding, against the national average of 23%. With the exception of two schools, all were either failing or in special measures when we took them over. We have four world-class schools: in Thurrock, Greenwich, Crystal Palace and Battersea. Battersea was the worst school in Wandsworth only four years ago and last year the Progress 8 score made it the best school in Wandsworth and the fourth best in the country. Last year’s results for primaries were: national average 64%, Harris 79%. The average proportion going to a Russell Group university was 12%; ours was 24%. Some 90% of our students now attend university—an amazing number.
Before I continue, I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who started the CTCs. The first school he ever gave us was Crystal Palace, when it had a pass rate of 9%. Today it is world-class. We are changing the lives of many children in that area over the years. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and Michael Gove for continuing to give us failing schools and free schools that we can make successful to give the children of this country a better education.
Turning to the subject of the debate—free schools—I think the idea was brilliant. It was what the country needed to put new schools into difficult areas. We have 13 free schools. Seven are outstanding, two are good and four have not been inspected yet as they have not been open long enough. With most of these schools, the parents have asked us to run them.
Harris Westminster, a sixth-form free school, has had amazing results. It is a school for bright children from working-class homes. More than 45% of them are on free school meals and free transport. Last year, 16 students got to Oxford or Cambridge, eight of them black—your Lordships will remember the report by David Lammy in 2015 which said that there was not one black student going to Oxford or Cambridge—and 70% of these children got to a Russell group university. This year 64 students are having interviews for places at Oxford or Cambridge, providing they achieve their results. The sixth-form college now has more than 600 students, which is more than Westminster School itself. I have to say that Westminster School has been very helpful in allowing us to use some of its facilities. This school is changing the lives of many students and giving them a better future.
My Lords, I find it so refreshing to hear input from real-life, personal experience rather than simply a Library brief or desktop research. I congratulate my noble friend, who is my good friend.
“Uncertainty” is a word we hear constantly these days, but noble Lords will not hear it from me; I would most certainly never use it in the context of free schools. I could not be more certain and confident of the real need for free schools and their positive impact on our society. However, I recognise that there are understandably some weaknesses, faults and failures in the movement, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, passionately told us about them earlier. We can and must learn from them, and we ignore them at our peril.
On the topic of certainty, I am equally certain that I could have derived more benefit from my time at school. In recent years, I have come to know schools and their vital role in society rather well through my work with two charities, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and The Outward Bound Trust. I chair one and I am deputy patron of the other. The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, in particular, has had to respond to the squeeze on local authority funding by building direct links with schools. Today, it has more than 3,000 directly licensed organisations providing access to its life-changing awards. Most of these directly licensed organisations are schools, and they cover the full range from local authority controlled schools to free schools, academies and ancient public schools. All of these can be good schools of course—there is no doubt about that—and surely all that should matter to any of us is that as many of our children and grandchildren and the nation’s children as possible are receiving the very best education that we can provide. So on this occasion perhaps we should put ideology to one side and just ask whether free schools are helping to deliver the desired result. I think we can unequivocally say that they are. In fact, in my considered view, free schools are already shining very brightly indeed.
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for making this important debate possible, for his work in this area over so many years and for opening this debate in the way he did. I also pay tribute to him as vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Looked After Children and Care Leavers, and for his most important work when he took through the Children and Families Bill five years ago. He introduced or accepted an amendment—I think he introduced it—that placed a duty on local authorities to allow young people in local authority foster care to remain with their foster carers until the age of 21, where both the young person and the foster carer wished to do so. It is very moving when I speak to foster parents who are so pleased they can keep on looking after their young person until the age of 20 or 21. Scotland and Wales then chose to follow. At the time there was a clamour that the same thing was not done for children’s homes, but in his report on children’s homes last year, Sir Martin Narey introduced the notion of staying close, so that now children’s homes are developing a similar model to allow their care leavers to stay close to their home. I pay tribute to the noble Lord for this important work.
I declare my interest as a trustee of a mental health service for adolescents and the of the child welfare charity, the Michael Sieff Foundation. I join in celebrating the academic attainments achieved at so many academies, particularly the academy that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, kindly arranged for me to visit: the King Solomon Academy in Paddington Green, north central London. It is part of Ark Schools, a multi-academy trust. It is in an area of high deprivation, with many families living on low incomes, many immigrant families and many families living in social housing. The King Solomon Academy has a focus on depth before breadth, with a strong emphasis on English and mathematics. In December 2008 and December 2009, Ofsted rated the school as outstanding. In 2015, the school was rated as the best non-selective secondary school in England, according to the Department of Education GCSE league tables. When one walks in the door, one reads an inscription on the wall along the lines of, “We expect all our pupils to go to university”. It is an academy, not a free school. I am afraid I can speak only from my experience, but I hope it is helpful to the discussion.
When I visited, I found the 28 year-old Head, Max Haimendorf, a graduate of St Hugh’s College, Oxford, enthusiastic and inspiring; he was one of the first Teach First programme cohort. An acquaintance spoke to me of the extraordinary dedication of one of the school’s teachers, whom he knew well and said that sitting observing an English class, he saw that all the pupils were concentrating on what their teacher was saying and that as they listened, they clicked their fingers, an expression of their excitement at learning, encouraged by their calm and assured teacher. In a science class, he spoke to one of the BAME pupils, a girl—by far the majority of pupils were from that background. She spoke of how much she enjoyed her education, how her family were thoroughly involved by the school in her education and of the extra-curricular activities that she enjoyed: the theatrical performances and the symphony orchestra. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Nash, for that that experience, which stays with me vividly to this day.
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On innovation, the Sutton Trust has found that one-third of free schools have been shown to demonstrate a genuinely innovative approach to ethos and curriculum. Unfortunately, a limited number of schools have engaged with the knowledge-rich curriculum and teacher-led instructional approach now shown to be the most successful compared with the now debunked more progressive approach followed in this country for the past 30 years. As that approach is favoured by the Government, with hindsight it might have been better if the Government had been more prescriptive in this regard and aligned their policies more. I exhort them to do that in future.
However, there has been innovation in other areas. Dixons Trinity Academy, Bradford, follows Carol Dweck’s “growth mindset” approach. There is innovation at the four maths schools at King’s College London, in Exeter, in Cambridge and at the University of Liverpool—the latter two are in pre-opening—at Saracens High School, Barnet, which is supported by Saracens rugby club, and at Bolder Academy in Hounslow, which has teamed up with Sky—to name but a few.
Of course, the free schools programme has provided much-needed competition for the state school sector, as has the academy programme. All monopolies suffer from a lack of competition, which breeds inefficiency and complacency—a point that Marxists always seem to miss when they are keen to create yet more monopolies. The free schools programme has been particularly effective at providing competition and creating an environment in which a rising tide lifts all boats.
In conclusion, I pay tribute to my right honourable friend Michael Gove, my noble friend Lord Hill—I see that he is in his place—who started the programme, my noble friend the Minister, who continues it so well, and my noble friend Lord Baker, who has been involved in it so much. I also pay tribute to my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy—I see that he is also in his place—who invented the programme with his 2005 paper, More Good School Places. I particularly want to mention the teachers, school leaders, MATs and sponsors who have supported the programme since its early days, when it often faced significant opposition. In this regard, I will mention in particular Katharine Birbalsingh at Michaela Community School, Ed Vainker at Reach Academy, Feltham, Hamid Patel at Tauheedul and Luke Sparkes at Dixons Trinity, Bradford—but there are many more. Those of us who have been involved in starting new ventures, organisations and schools know how challenging it is; we should be extremely grateful to these social entrepreneurs and pioneers.
Increasingly, new providers are existing MATs. In the past three years of the policy, more than 80% of free schools have been just expansions of existing multi-academy trust schools. That has been at the expense of parent-led schools. The number of parents opening schools has dropped drastically during the past three years. As for competition, free schools will become the default model for the schools system in England. If you open a new school, it will have to be a free school. It is going to be a monopoly; it is a default system; it is not somebody trying to change the system but what every new school will be.
Belonging to an organisation that sponsored free schools, my experience of them is that what we have now is the most tightly controlled, most measured, most weighed, most monitored, most structured and most supported set of schools in the whole schools system. If anyone here has sat around a table discussing the progress of a free school, they will know that you have educational advisers from the DfE, people from the regional schools commission, people from the funding agency and, in the background, people from the New Schools Network. There are more paid bureaucrats around that table than in any other educational situation. I do not mind that. If that is the way to bring about success, let us go for it—but let us not pretend that these schools are free; let us not pretend that they are being allowed to get on with it.
As the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has just said, perhaps the Government should have been even more prescriptive. Gone is the autonomy, gone is the “stand-alone”, gone is the “get on with it”, gone is the “get bureaucracy out of it” and gone is the idea that the centre does not know best; what we have is that the centre apparently does know best and will do what it takes to make sure that those schools thrive. That is fair enough if that is what you are promoting—but for heaven’s sake change the title. These are not free schools, and they are no badge for anyone who believes that schools should be autonomous.
The schools are not without failures—every type of school structure will have them. Eighty-six projects did not start and we spent millions of pounds on them. Forty-two projects that started have closed—we have wasted money—and 15 schools that started have been re-brokered. If this is what we have to spend to find out what works in education, I could defend that, but what I find indefensible is somebody standing up in a debate about free schools and not acknowledging that failure. We need to learn from that failure; we need to know why the Government are spending 19% above value rates for properties in London; we need to know why £8 million was spent on a site for a UTC that never opened; we need to know why more than 50 free schools have closed and kids have had to be sent outside. Again, there is no open analysis or realistic evaluation of the progress that has been made. I shall not go through the costs, but if any local authority had spent so much money to so little effect, as central government has done on some aspects of its free schools, the commissioners would have been through the door. There is no arguing against that.
The problem is that the Government have been blinded to the weaknesses of free schools. They set them up not as a pilot to see what worked, or as an open approach where they asked, “What can we learn to put to the rest of the system?”; they set them up determined that this should be the dominant structure within the English schools system, and the evidence is not there. Where it has been good, it has presented an ideal situation for some schools—a small number of schools —to be incredibly imaginative, and every system needs a place for incubators where innovation can work. I think free schools have offered that to some extent, but they have not proven themselves as a model that should be rolled out so that every school is a free school.
Quite simply, for far too long politicians throughout all parties and generations have looked at school structure as a way of guaranteeing success for every child and every school, and it does not work. It did not work with comprehensives, it did not work with academies, it does not work with free schools and it will not work with any one structure. What works is good leaders, strong teachers, good support and effective governance, and there is nothing about free schools that guarantees more of that. If we are intent on delivering high standards for every child, let us look honestly and openly at what in all parts of our system brings the best leadership, the strongest teaching, the most effective governance and the most support from parents. If we get that right, we will do it. Some of that has been exhibited in some free schools, but it has also been exhibited in a lot of academies, comprehensive schools and local authority maintained schools. That is the problem. Free schools are an interesting experiment but they are not a blueprint for the future of our school system.
So how does the free school programme measure up? In that report we proposed that excellence should be achieved through two means. First, there needed to be an expansion of the number of good school places, making it radically easier for new providers to come into the state sector to open schools, challenge underperformance and bring new ideas.
Secondly, we proposed the creation of what we called an equity challenge: making sure that in this system those who had the least—who had been failed by schools—were given extra support, including extra financial support, to make them attractive to successful schools, and had the resources needed to address their educational challenges. Expansion challenge and equity challenge were, we posited, the way to achieve excellence. It is against those yardsticks that we should judge the success of the programme.
On the expansion front, the evidence is incontrovertible. The preceding Labour Government had inexplicably allowed 1,500 schools in England to close between 2001 and 2010, despite the birth rate increasing by 128,000 per year over that period. The Government have opened—as my noble friend mentioned—442 new free schools, which will provide 250,000 places when full, and 261 further free schools have been approved but are not yet open. According to the New Schools Network, 83% of open free schools have been opened in areas of recognised need—because of a shortage of local places, a lack of choice, or poor local standards.
Expansion is not just a numbers game: it is also about innovation and choice. The free schools programme has allowed the creation of an extraordinary range of schools—schools such as Floreat and the University of Birmingham School that have a major focus on character development; schools such as Michaela and the West London Free School trust that have pioneered a modern approach to knowledge-based learning—as well as a range of other exciting provisions, including new boarding schools such as Holyport College and Dixons Music Primary. In a way, that is the greatest achievement of the programme: to have unleashed—to take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—dynamic leadership, followed new ideas, challenged the status quo and delivered higher standards.
The free schools programme also measures up well on the equity challenge. According to the New Schools Network, free schools are three times more likely to be set up in the most deprived areas of the country than in the least deprived, and are more than averagely likely to attract pupils with a first language other than English. There is more work to do to attract the least well-off pupils to the schools, but from first-hand experience I can tell the Committee that it becomes much easier to attract those families when a school is up and running, because they are often very risk-averse, wanting to stick with the known rather than taking on the risk of being a pioneering group of parents. Once that risk has gone—once the school is established—the number of children on free school meals tends to go up.
The result of getting both expansion and equity challenges right is excellence, of which my noble friend outlined many examples in free schools: they are more likely to be judged as outstanding by Ofsted, the average secondary free school Progress 8 score is the joint highest of all school types, and there are many other examples. These considerable achievements will only increase over time.
As we look to the future, however, it is important not to be Panglossian, and to accept that the programme needs to evolve and improve further. As my noble friend Lord Nash said, the DfE has sometimes struggled to find the right sites for free schools. Indeed, the lack of a permanent site forced the deeply regrettable closure of the Floreat school in Brentford, a heart-breaking event for pupils, parents and staff. The creation of the LocatED group within the DfE should stop this happening again, but can the Minister reassure the Committee on that?
Furthermore, while there has undoubtedly been a need to generate more school places to meet a rapidly growing school-age population, the birth rate is now falling. For me, that means that the programme should shift back towards creating new provision in areas of underperformance or lack of choice. There was an imperative to create seats for the many extra bums, but that tended to favour large incumbent academy trusts. Does the Minister agree with me—and with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris—that the time is right to recapture some of the dynamism of the original programme, which was more supportive of teacher-led start-ups?
Finally, many open free schools now find themselves in single-academy trusts or small multi-academy trusts. Such organisations, which often have only a few year groups, can be vulnerable to events outside their control, and there is a need to bring these schools together into larger, less fragile groups. Will the Minister say what the DfE is doing to make this happen?
To conclude, the free schools programme has been highly positive for children in our country. Combined with other reforms, such as the creation of a much more rigorous curriculum and exam system, it is leading to consistently better educational outcomes. An expansion of choice, combined with a focus on equity, has indeed led to excellence, with hundreds of thousands of pupils benefiting. That is a wonderful achievement, of which we should all be proud.
I discovered when looking through some of the briefing about what academies are doing, if we can accept that this is a way into the academy movement, whether independently or as part of it, that we have a juicy little problem of off-rolling when it comes to taking exams. I am afraid that a name that stuck out when I was reading through an article sent to me by the Guardian is the Hewett school in Norwich. I discovered only today—I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, for letting his office know only today—that it is an academy in the trust that he helped to run, or I think was the head of. In one year it lost 20% of its pupils before they took exams. The Hewett school always strikes me because it is the school that I went to, as did my siblings. It is a very big school. It went through days when I was there of being the big comprehensive success story, with a huge sixth form, to special measures. What can go up can go down under any system. I hope that the free schools remember that. Sometimes things can go horribly wrong.
Are the schools commissioners going to look at and check off-rolling to stop the gaming of the system? If they are not, we will miss the group that we should be concentrating on: those who are difficult to educate, who probably do not have the best parental backing, and those with a very high number of hidden special educational needs, which is quite normal in those who fail. Will we look at this? Will the schools commissioners take a lead in this, or are we looking at somewhere else? Will it be Ofsted—although Ofsted cannot look at somebody who is not there? Will we make sure that academies, free schools and everybody else take full responsibility for those people they have recruited and who go through the system? If we are not going to, there is a fundamental flaw here in the way we are being organised. We must address this vigorously.
We have a system which may well have benefits, in a Panglossian way, as the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, would have it: everything for the best in the best of all possible worlds. If the sun is always behind you and everything is going well, any system will do well. If you recruit the right parents and the right students, you will succeed. But when things go wrong is the test of any system: how do you handle the problems and the mistakes? I hope we get a good answer here, because if that is not built into this system, it does not really matter what you do with your successes—your failures will still mar it, probably to the extent that it will have to be got rid of in the end.
Our outstanding free schools include: Harris Academy Tottenham, which has primary, secondary and a sixth form and which, after the building that has been going on for the past four years, got outstanding; Harris Invictus Academy Croydon, Harris Primary Academy Shortlands and Harris Primary Academy Beckenham, which all got outstanding; Harris Westminster, which I mentioned; and Harris Primary Academy East Dulwich. The Mayflower Primary School is going to be one of the biggest primary schools in the country with more than 1,000 students. It was also in Portakabins for two years.
One of our schools, Harris Aspire Academy, which has been graded as good, is for children who have been excluded from not only Harris schools but other schools in the area. Inspectors said this school has “outstanding leadership” and “outstanding teaching”, and the only reason why they could mark it as only good was that the attendance was 93%—which is excellent for a school with such difficult students. They said that the school would be marked outstanding if attendance were 96%.
I believe that free schools have helped the Harris Federation to give children a better chance in life, and our schools are now four and a half times oversubscribed. The only thing I would like the Minister to look at is the funding of them at the beginning. It is very difficult when you have a school with the potential to have 1,000 or 1,200 students, and you start off with 180; on average, you would need £900,000 to keep the school going. That is very difficult as you cannot make it break even until the second or third year. However, what has happened with them has been great. It has given free schools the opportunity to put in new buildings which will be there for the next 30 to 40 years and I am really in favour of that.
Before finishing, I would like to thank Sir Dan Moynihan and his team for all their hard work in making these schools so successful and changing the lives of many children. I recommend that the department and the Minister continue the free schools programme. We have three more to open next year.
Disruption is critically bad news if you are running Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport, a railway or a logistics business, but it is always a massive positive everywhere else. I know from my pretty wide business life that competition is seldom welcomed, rarely embraced and quite often painful in the extreme but, objectively, it is a good thing. It is good news because it motivates and encourages improvements in quality and services and most certainly pushes up standards across the board in schools. That stimulus for all to do better is just one spin-off benefit of a new free school. They undoubtedly shake up and wake up the mediocre in education. They can also satisfy parental demand in areas where existing school provision is poor or standards are persistently low, and they have a proven ability to be nurturing as well as focused on high academic achievement.
A friend of mine drew my attention to an exceptional free school in one of the most deprived areas of Newcastle upon Tyne, West Newcastle Academy. It is doing an amazing job of raising standards and empowering staff, parents and pupils alike in a community where excellence and aspiration has to date been in pretty short supply. That free school is also exceptional in another respect: its geographical location. As we know, the overwhelming majority of free schools that have opened are in London and the south-east. The people of the north—that remote other country where workers make things and also voted leave in large numbers—deserve to have the same chances and opportunity as Londoners to send their children to schools that enable them to maximise their potential and flourish.
Wherever there is pressure on existing schools—and let no one underestimate the stress that oversubscribed schools can create for parents and pupils alike—or where established schools are underperforming, let us please encourage the creation of new free schools to provide choice and opportunity, particularly for those from disadvantaged backgrounds. These new openings should never be considered or seen as a threat to existing schools—any more than a new furniture store on the opposite side of the high street or retail park spelt doom for the businesses I used to own and run—rather, as a spur to work even harder to deliver the best results. By the best results, I do not mean just hearing impressive parental feedback or achieving stellar examination rates, but teaching social skills and giving kids the resilience and self-confidence they need to become employable and to be good parents and responsible citizens. If we are to fulfil the potential of our country, every single child must have the opportunity to go to a great local school. Free schools can help increase the numbers who have that opportunity, regardless of their background, where they live or their parents’ income. We should enthusiastically and unstintingly support their expansion across the country in the interest of all our children.
However, when we speak about educational attainment in free schools, we must also ask ourselves at what cost this comes to children who are not in academies or free schools, or who do not fit in with the culture of these schools. I think this has come up in previous discussions. I was pleased to hear the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy, talk so strongly about ensuring equity in these schools. Most of the young people going to an academy were the children of immigrants who had great aspirations for them, but what about those children who are not from those kinds of backgrounds? What about Traveller children, looked-after children and children from families who have been failed by the system for generations? Professor Sonia Blandford, chief executive of the charity Achievement for All, points out that about one-fifth of our children are being left behind. She grew up in a low-income family and she was the first person in her family to go to university. Her charity is widely respected and effectively supports many schools. She points out that free schools cost the Government £57,000 per annum per pupil with any form of needs, which is about £30,000 above other pupils. That seems an extraordinary difference. I am sorry not to have written to the Minister, but maybe he can confirm or challenge that figure.
We know that high-quality early years education provides an invaluable boost for vulnerable children, yet the best provision, maintained nursery schools—schools that receive supplementary funding because they provide a qualified head teacher, qualified teachers and a qualified special educational needs co-ordinator—are struggling to find the £59 million a year they need to survive. It appears that there are favourite children in the system, a favourite model, and others may be losing out as a consequence. I urge the Government to be more even-handed in their approach and to take the following steps to make our education system more inclusive and effective.
First, I urge both the Government and the Opposition to avoid any further revolution in our education system. Revolutions are always tempting but they seldom deliver on their promise. They tend to detract from the most important tasks. Secondly, I urge the Minister to embrace the most important tasks, which are recruiting and retaining the best people in education, offering excellent continual professional development to those in posts and ensuring the most disadvantaged children and young people benefit from the best teachers. We hear that it is often the case in the new free schools that those who are the most challenged and disadvantaged are getting the best experience. I know there are currently funding pressures, but it is troubling to read that last year continuing professional development funding in both secondary and primary schools significantly reduced.
Thirdly—and relatedly—the Government should make Ofsted less punitive and more supportive in its approach. The best-performing nations do not have an inspection system as punitive as ours; they have more supportive ones. I ask the Minister to look at Lucy Crehan’s book on education and the highest performing PISA nations. I warmly welcome the commitment from the previous Education Secretary to reform Ofsted, and I hope that is being sustained. The anxiety that Ofsted currently creates drives good teachers and head teachers out of the profession. They are put off by a limited regime where the primary focus of the school is Ofsted, not the children or the best way to help them learn.
My time is up. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise these concerns and to join in celebrating the achievements of the free schools—which I recognise—but there are complexities in this area. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Free Schools: Educational Standards · Order Paper · Order Paper