Academies Bill [Lords]

I thank the hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) for her thoughtful remarks, but she has already fallen into the trap that Tony Blair, the former Prime Minister and Labour party leader, identified on 24 October 2005, when he said that"““the system will finally be opened up to real parent power… Parts of the left will say we are privatising public services and giving too much to the middle class… both criticisms are wrong and simply a version of the old 'levelling down' mentality that kept us in opposition for so long.””" Having listened to the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), I am afraid to say that he demonstrated the sort of leadership that he would offer Opposition Members if they voted him in as leader of their party. He would take them to the left and be totally off the pace on the important debates and issues in this country. It was particularly mean-spirited of the right hon. Gentleman to cast doubt on our motives for reforming the education system. He said that Labour wanted the best for all but we wanted a two-tier system. Unfortunately, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) reminded us, we already have a two-tier system, which one accesses either by paying for it or by moving to the right area. If we look at all educational attainment, we find that after 13 years of Labour promising education, education, education, that two-tier system is entrenched. What is terrible is that, if one gets into it, one has no way of getting out, and that is why we want to create a system that opens up opportunity for all. The Opposition say that, because we will fast-track some schools that have done very well, that will unfortunately be at the expense of other schools. First, however, every school will be able to apply to become an academy; and, secondly, those that do apply will have to include in their application how they will help schools doing less well than themselves. So it is totally specious to keep harping on that, because some schools are going to be fast-tracked, we care only about those schools. The right hon. Gentleman also said that the Bill is deeply divisive and undermines social cohesion. Now I do not know about other Members, but I do not think that uniformity is the same as social cohesion. I do not know whether he wants schools that are uniformly bad or uniformly good, but I know what Government Members are striving for. No one can say that the current system delivers the educational attainment that our country needs, and, although the right hon. Gentleman talked about the Bill being deeply divisive, he did not address the fact that schools will not be able to change their admissions procedures once they become academies. So there is no chance of a school applying to become an academy and then, further down the line, introducing selection. He glossed over that point so that he could go over the old dividing lines as he sees them. The right hon. Gentleman spent a lot of time on capital spending and Building Schools for the Future. He has been going on about it for two weeks, and, like the attack dog that he is, he kept on going on about it today. However, the choice that we face is not about whether we need shiny buildings for people to learn in, but about whether the education that we provide for kids is good enough for them in terms of attainment, so that they have confidence in their futures. That is what the Opposition has been lacking. The issue is about good teaching, discipline, educational attainment and, above all, confidence. The skills that we give kids must provide them with a chance, a hope, so that when they leave school, they know that they will be able to pursue the path that they choose. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) said that the issue is not about databases or datasets, and I agree. It is about having the right ethos and educational standards and allowing the professionals to determine them. My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said that we should veer away from changing structures because the issue is about enabling individuals to flourish. However, individuals operate within a structure, and the enterprising head teachers who want to control budgets, decide how they pay their teachers, determine their curriculum and engage with their students differently cannot do so under the current structure. That is why we need a fundamental change in our structures. A parent today who really wants to change something in their school has no chance of doing so by writing to the local authority. Under the new structure they will have a better chance, because they can exercise quasi-commercial pressure on the school, and that is a good thing. We also need leadership, and for teachers to know that the buck stops with them, not with the county council or with Government policy, to deliver the right education for the students in their school. If they fail to do that somewhere further down the line, they will find that parents vote with their feet. That is right to encourage higher attainment and standards to be driven through our education system, and to arrest the decline that the Secretary of State identified. Having said all that, I will be the first to acknowledge that the proposed system is not perfect. It is not prescriptive, and there is no getting away from the fact that for it work, we need to ensure that a lot of the vested interests work with us, whether it is local authorities, civil servants, unions or teachers. A number of teachers liked the grant-maintained system but then found it abolished in 1998 after a new Government came in, so they are nervous. We need to do everything we can to give them confidence that the freedoms that we seek to give them this time are real, and will allow teachers, head teachers and parents who have a vision to implement that vision and ensure that we have higher educational attainment. That is what education should be about—not shiny new buildings, not some argument that we are going to punish the poor, but ensuring that we get better attainment. That is what I got from my education, and what I think we all got, and it is what we have to drive through our system.