I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches today, in particular my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), whose powerful speech made a big impact on me. I would have liked to talk about adoption, but I will concentrate on schools today.
I welcome the new categorisation of coasting schools. Having worked as a lay Ofsted inspector, I know exactly what those sort of schools look like: schools that are not stretching every child and are happy to just reach the minimum level. I have been rung up by parents asking me why their very nice primary school has been classified as inadequate, and why their great teachers were not doing as well as they thought they were. Schools would be classified as inadequate because bright children were getting level 4 rather than level 6, and other children were getting level 3 when they should have been getting level 4. It is these schools that have been classified as inadequate. They were not failing their children completely, but they were coasting and not doing a good job.