Education and Inspections Bill

I welcome the changes that have been made between the White Paper and the Bill, particularly those to the admissions code. In Wandsworth, there are a lot of partially selective schools, so I am thankful for the ban on the expansion of such schools. There was an anomaly in the Education Act 1998 that allowed adjudicators to increase as well as decrease the level of selection where it has been decreased since 1998. I see Committee stage as an opportunity to close that loophole. Trust schools seem to be the most controversial part of the Bill. I take them very seriously. Last month, some colleagues and I went to Sweden to look at one of the models for trust schools used by the White Paper team, to see for ourselves and reach our own conclusions. No doubt, we have reached different conclusions, but we have done so on the evidence of our own eyes. Sweden has schools that are fully funded by local authorities. They get the same funding per pupil as local authority schools and are not allowed to charge fees. They are not allowed to select in any shape or form, but they are independently owned. Some are parents’ co-ops, some are Montessori-type schools, some are Church schools, but about half of them are owned by businesses. That would be precluded by this legislation. When those schools were set up 15 years ago, they had three aims: to widen choice, to raise standards and to reduce costs. I shall briefly set out their experience. They have widened choice, mainly by introducing new teaching methods in their curriculum—not only Montessori but many others—which have spread out to local authority schools, too. Some of the schools introduced new specialisms that are also spreading to the local authority sector. Some use personalised timetables and personalised level groups, whereby children are taught not in year groups but according to the level they have reached in a subject; for example, a student could be in year 3 for English and year 6 for mathematics. Those new methods are spreading throughout the system, so there has been some widening of choice. Raising standards is a key aim. The schools obtain higher grades than local authority schools, but that is not surprising as, on average, they are more likely to be in higher income areas. They also have higher added value, which research has shown fairly conclusively. The key question is whether they have had any effect on the rest of the school sector. It was said earlier that there was no evidence, but in Sweden there certainly is evidence that the existence of those free schools—only 8 per cent. of the total—has raised standards in local authority schools. The evidence is not wholly conclusive; there have been four studies, not all of which reached a statistically significant conclusion, but those that did so show that the rest of the system has improved. That is mainly because the free schools are more likely to be innovative, which acts as a spur to innovation change in the local authority sector, where schools are changing in directions pioneered by the independent schools. In terms of reducing costs, the schools have been a complete failure. At first, in some areas, they succeeded in reducing costs, but the costs have now increased. Local authority schools have had to raise their game to compete with the nearest independent school and have had to carry a fair amount of overcapacity to make choice a reality. What some people considered a way of reducing costs has turned out to be more expensive, which causes planning difficulties for local authorities. They do not know how many children will be enrolled in their schools in August or September because the independent schools are in the market, too. Overcapacity may be the price we have to pay for real choice. The independent schools make up 8 per cent. of the total and only 4 per cent. of them are business-owned, so it would not be right to make grand claims on their behalf. However, we have to face the possibility that the existence of even a small independent sector may be a spur to improvement throughout the system. I have no brief for private providers in public services. In my ideal world, the public sector would provide all public services, but we have to be prepared to look at the evidence. Until 1999, only 4 per cent. of students at a school in my constituency were gaining A to C grades at GCSE—the sixth lowest in the country. No school in Liverpool, Manchester or Sheffield had such bad results. The school has now been turned around and the number is up to 30 per cent., which is a great achievement, but 70 per cent. of students still fail to achieve the basic A to C grades. If we are failing 70 per cent. of our children, and there is any chance that an innovation could raise the quality and standard of education for low income people, there is nothing I would not do to achieve it.