§ Ms Julia Drown (South Swindon) (Lab)I wish to raise with my hon. Friend the Minister the process of deciding on specialist school status, and in particular the renewal or otherwise of that status. My concern arises because Churchfields school in my constituency was awarded specialist school status as a performing arts college in September 1999. It made a huge success of that, yet when it applied to have the status renewed from April 2004, all that success was apparently unrecognised and the school lost its designation.
The decision to de-designate Churchfields school was wrong and has, understandably, resulted in a loss of morale in the school. It will mean that the opportunities for students at Churchfields, and for the wider community in Swindon, are not maximised and that the great work that has been going on in the school is not properly rewarded. If Ministers have any powers to reverse that decision, they should do so now, but I have been told there are no such powers.
I do not want what has happened to Churchfields to happen to other schools or to Churchfields again, and that is why, in this debate today, I am asking the Minister to review the process of designating specialist schools so that either Ministers make the decision and take into account all the necessary factors, or those making the decision are charged with having a much wider view of the education and community benefits than they have at present.
The main complaint that I and the school share is that the huge achievements of the school as a performing arts college were not recognised in its application to continue as a specialist school. The one inspector who came to judge the school stayed for one day only. The school was recommended for de-designation and an appeal was considered on the basis not of further visits, but of the head teacher and two senior teachers presenting their case to an independent panel at the Department for Education and Skills. The panel seemed to be interested only in the number of five A to C grade GCSEs that the school had achieved. All they wanted to know about was why the percentage passes had not increased.
I recognise that GCSE qualifications are important, but it is just as important for people, particularly those who are disadvantaged or excluded from society, to learn, to be inspired and to achieve, be that in performing arts or elsewhere. Anyone who visits Churchfields school and sees its productions, or just walks into one of its performing arts classes, will see children, often from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds, thoroughly absorbed in their schooling. In dance, the school achieves what many others have failed to do: it makes boys as inspired by dance as girls are. One can see students who, in other schools, would have been excluded, keen to attend and to perform in art, music, dance and drama. Yet all that the appeal panel seemed interested in was why the school's GCSE results for 2001–03 had riot exceeded those in 2000.
The Government know that results are crude indicators and that added value should be looked at. Churchfields school's value-added performance has continued to improve over the past two years at both 125WH key stages. The whole-school value-added improvements have also taken place in separate subject areas, most notably in the performing arts.
I recognise that, at a superficial level, the results look dramatic. In 2000, 42 per cent. of Churchfields students achieved five A to Cs. That fell to only 22 per cent. in 2001, rising to 31 per cent. in 2002 and 28 per cent. in 2003. However, any serious analysis of the situation at Churchfields school fully explains why there is an improving school underlying those statistics. The school is on target to achieve 36 per cent. five A to Cs this summer and more than 45 per cent. in the summer of 2005.
So what is the bigger explanation? Performing arts status was achieved in September 1999, at the very same time when the school completely changed because a neighbouring school—Oakfield school, which served the most disadvantaged part of my constituency and whose results in 2000 were 11 per cent. five A to Cs—closed. I opposed that closure, but Ministers confirmed the borough council's decision. Churchfields school took most of the pupils from that school. There was a destabilising of the school as a result of an influx of new students, a significant number of whom were disaffected and further disrupted by their previous school having been closed against their wishes.
Churchfields now serves one of the 10 per cent. most deprived council wards in the United Kingdom, and 17 per cent. of its students are entitled to free school meals, which is a higher figure than that for other specialist schools, where the average is 14 per cent. Churchfields has increasing numbers. Currently, 23 per cent. of pupils do not have English as their first language. The number of students on the special needs register has more than doubled, going from only 13 per cent. in 1998 to 30 per cent. in 2000.
However, the big increase in the size of the school and the fact that many of those joining it had special needs was not the only issue. Because of the major change for the school and other difficulties. Churchfields school was placed in special measures in January 2000. October 2001 saw the head teacher leave, and Swindon local education authority failed its Ofsted in 2001. October 2001 saw a new head teacher appointed, and within 13 months, by November 2002, the school had turned round and was removed from special measures. That turnaround was incredible and part of the achievement resulted from the work done and the boost that the school had been given by being a specialist school.
Against that background, the school's results are impressive. It would have seen even more improvements had the results of 22 children who were not educated at the school been excluded, but that seemed to count for nothing. Nor did the great improvement in dance GCSE results seem to count; there was a near 30 per cent. increase in passes between 2002 and 2003.
I fully anticipate that results will improve further over the next few years, but I would be even more confident if the school maintained its status as a specialist arts school. The £125,000 that it received each year as a specialist school was used well to expand students' opportunities and to inspire them to learn. The money was not spent only on the students; the whole community benefited. With the loss of that status, the 126WH school's links with 10 primary schools—allowing them, for example, to do joint productions with key stage 2 and 3 students—will not be able to continue. We have had community carnivals and there has been work with special needs pupils, and that, too, will be threatened.
We in Swindon have one of the nine national dance schools and have used performing arts status well to bring professional dancers into the school. These include Banksi, who was brought up in Swindon and is a nationally renowned professional street dancer and breakdancer. He often revisits the town and never fails to reach out and raise the expectations of some of the most disadvantaged people in our community. Through dance, he and the Churchfields staff give youngsters the confidence and self-esteem that is too often sadly lacking in young people. Without that support. they could become aggressive and be excluded from our society.
The loss of status also means that there will be fewer students able to learn a musical instrument, a probable reduction in technical and support staff and an obvious reduction in learning opportunities both in the school and in partner schools and other organisations. There has already been a need to reduce arts staffing, the funding of artists in residence and facilitated resources.
The extra money that Churchfields had was used well. People could not get better value from specialist school status, either financially or, more importantly, in terms of the impact on students' lives. Because the school is doing everything that Ministers want to see in schools, particularly those that serve disadvantaged areas, it is clear that something went wrong with the decision. There should be something such as a three-year warning system before specialist school status is taken away, and realistic targets should be set, taking into account the circumstances of individual schools, so that any hardworking school that has achieved specialist school status will stay that way.
I also question whether the appeal decision should be taken by an independent panel rather than Ministers, who can consider the bigger picture. This is about supporting a school in a disadvantaged area that competes with schools elsewhere to be a success. It is hugely disappointing that a school of which the Government should be proud is seen by an independent panel to fail on crude indicators. In my mind, Churchfields school will continue to be a specialist school and performing arts college, and it will be one of which I am extremely proud.
I am encouraging the school to continue to work with others in the town in performing arts and other fields. It has made a strong application for artsmark gold and is currently applying for performing arts status again in two years' time. I hope that, by then, the Government will have changed the designation rules to ensure that schools such as this, which can succeed with specialist arts status, are allowed to do so. I do not want any school like Churchfields to go through the disappointment and loss of morale that results from the loss of specialist school status. That is why I appeal to the Minister to change the mechanism for this in the future.
§ The Minister for School Standards (Mr. David Miliband)First, I offer my genuine congratulations to my hon. Friend on securing the debate and, more importantly, on her tireless prosecution of the case for Churchfields school and other schools in her constituency. We have talked about this at Education Questions. We have corresponded two or possibly three times about this. Her work on behalf of Churchfields is a real source of support and encouragement for the school. It has a relatively new head teacher, Mr. Steve Flavin, who is playing a critical role in both the school and some of the collaborative work that is going on between Churchfields and other schools in the constituency. The support from the wider community, including the MP, is of enormous help in taking the school forward in an obviously challenging time. That is recognised on all sides.
I want to talk about the specialist school programme and how it works, and about our approach to the re-designation process, and to add a few words about the specifics of the Churchfields case. I do not want to go into that too deeply because I do not know whether it is appropriate for the particular issues of an individual school to be advertised in quite such a public way. If my hon. Friend is keen for me to do that I will be happy to give further information in that area, but I do not want this to become a prosecution and defence of Churchfields school. It is in all our interests to support the school in its future development.
The importance of specialism and specialist status has been developed enormously over the last seven years. My hon. Friend will know that in 1997 there were just over 150 specialist schools, mainly in the technology area. There are now 1,700 specialist schools, spread across nine different specialisms. We are well on the way to the Government's ambition that every school in the country should become a specialist school and be re-designated as such.
The specialist schools programme is designed first to raise standards in the area of the specialism—the performing arts in this case—and secondly to raise standards across the school. Specialist schools deliver the whole of the national curriculum. It is an important part of the specialist schools programme that the development of a centre of excellence in one part of the curriculum should contribute to the raising of standards right across the curriculum. The third and particularly innovative aspect of the programme is the requirement that the specialist school contribute to the wider school community by partnering with five or six primary schools and/or with other secondary schools.
We know from the evidence of exam and test results, as well as from independent inspection by Ofsted and anecdotal evidence, the power that specialist status can offer in the development of school standards. I pay tribute to the work that is being done in specialist schools right around the country. The success of specialist schools—the premium in terms of exam results for all specialist schools is now about 7 per cent. on GSCE A to C grades—is explained by a number of factors. They include the challenge of becoming a specialist school, the requirement to engage with the wider community, to develop wider sponsorship and governor arrangements and to engage wider community partners.
128WH Head teachers often say that specialism has been a tool for them to raise expectations for standards right across the school, not just in the area of specialism. It is an approach that could be characterised as one of challenge and support. In addition it brings some capital benefit, which has been used to good effect in many schools. The specialist schools programme is very much something for something. There is a capital benefit and a revenue benefit of £126 per pupil per year, and a capital investment of some £100,000. It is a challenging programme and there is a requirement, in spending public money, to ensure that the money is well spent and that it delivers what was set out at the beginning of the programme. That balance of support and investment on the one hand and challenge on the other is critical to our approach to re-designation—the second aspect on which I wanted to speak.
Specialist status has never been for life. It has always been renewed over four years through a process that is challenging and rigorous. This year 39 schools were not re-designated on the first time of asking. Virtually all of them appealed, and I think that I am right in saying that 32 gained their designation in the end. We take the process extremely seriously. There are two objectives to the process. One is to allow schools to review their progress and to build on it in the next four years. The other is to provide an informed challenge to the specialist schools that have not yet met their own targets, or that have significantly underperformed.
In that sense, re-designation is distinct from the initial process of becoming a specialist school, because after four years we expect specialism to be firmly embedded in the school and its community partners. That is why the specialist schools that apply for re-designation are assessed against three rigorous criteria. They are assessed first in relation to the objectives of the programme and the targets set by the school, to which my hon. Friend referred; secondly on improvement in academic performance, both in specialist subjects and across the school; and finally on the quality of the school and community plans submitted for the next four-year phase.
My hon. Friend was concerned about whether non-examination performance was considered in assessment. I can reassure her that at all stages in the re-designation process, non-examination as well as examination achievement was considered. At the final re-designation decision panel, the school showed some of its work in its production of "Fame". That was included in the panel's decision making. The non-examination performance is a part of the assessment.
It is important that my hon. Friend should know about two significant changes that have occurred.
§ Ms DrownIt may be, on paper, that more than the crude examination results are taken into account. However, those from the school who were present at the appeal panel felt that the only thing in which the panel was interested was the crude measure of five A to C results. Although Churchfields may have set targets at the beginning of the process, they were inappropriate by the time it had gone through changes. Does the Minister recognise the loss of morale that occurs when a school loses its designation? I hope that he will discuss the 129WH question whether there should be more warning and reviews, and whether it should be possible to change targets more regularly.
§ Mr. MilibandI assure my hon. Friend that I am only just getting up to full speed. There is plenty of scope for me to deal with her concern about the way in which the programme works. I was just about to deal with her point about how the re-designation process supports school improvement. Two significant changes have been made to the re-designation process in the past couple of years. They speak pretty directly to her concerns.
First, previous practice was that any school that left the specialist programme had to wait four years before re-entering it. The thinking behind that was that schools needed a period of readjustment and a chance to start afresh. We have now relaxed that requirement, so that schools need spend only one year out of the programme before they can reapply, ensuring that any school that is in that position and is confident of its future plans can re-enter the specialist fold more speedily. I hope that my hon. Friend will recognise that that speaks to the frustration that I understand can exist in staff rooms at the time of de-designation. It offers our commitment to the school that we want to work with it to help it back into the specialist school family.
The second change that I have made deals with something that my hon. Friend mentioned: the role of the independent panel. It was a significant decision to ask a group of experts to play a key role. However, under the framework that I have established in the new system, senior education professionals spend a significant time scrutinising the characteristics of each situation, ensuring that every contextual factor can be carefully examined and assessed. If I may provide a slight correction, it is not a matter of a school competing against another school for a limited number of slots in the specialist schools programme; it is a matter of the school showing that the specialist status is being used to good effect.
The specialist panel has introduced a degree of openness into the process and also allowed schools and others to make representations. I hear what my hon. Friend says about the frustration that those who attended the panel felt, and I take seriously what she says and what her constituents have reported about the process. If there were any suggestion that the panel had not operated the criteria fairly or had not engaged with the challenge that the school faced appropriately, I would investigate that charge seriously. The people on the panel have experience of schooling and specialist schooling, and they perform their duties with real rigour and seriousness. If there are any issues relating to the appeal, how the panel worked or how the questioning and discussions took place, I would be happy to look into them. However, my hon. Friend and her constituents might judge that that is not the right thing to do now and that we should get on with the future.
The process of re-designation is not designed to be punitive. It is designed to offer the challenge and support that we think are important. The panel has just finished its first full year of operation. We are looking at any glitches and, as I said, I would be happy to incorporate into that process anything that comes out of the case in question.
130WH Churchfields has had significant challenges and has been subject to special measures in the past. I recognise that the loss of specialist status can be significant, and I empathise with the statements that my hon. Friend made. I do not want to dwell at length or in too much detail on all aspects of the school's performance. The school's case was considered twice. Its appeal against the initial decision was delayed until October of last year in order to allow it to present further evidence of 2003 performance, but it was unsuccessful. In both cases, school and community performance was considered.
I was pleased to hear my hon. Friend refer to value added. She was right that Churchfields' performance was 0.1 per cent. above the local education authority and national average between key stages 2 and 3, but between key stages 3 and 4 there was a significant gap in the other direction. I am happy to go through those figures with my hon. Friend afterwards, if that would be helpful.
§ Mr. MilibandNo, the value added between key stage 3 and key stage 4—that is, at GCSE level—was significantly below the local and national average.
§ Ms DrownIf I may say so, the school's results at key stage 3 have been improving over the last two years and have added value at key stages 2 and 3.
§ Mr. MilibandI do not believe that I have the key stage 3 results with me, but I am happy to take my hon. Friend's word for that. All I would say is that value added does not exist at key stage 2 or at key stage 3. Rather, it exists between phases. Value added measures the progress between the ages of 11 and 14 and the ages of 14 and 16. The value added between the ages of 14 and 16 was not what we might have hoped for.
My hon. Friend was also concerned about the number of visits to the school. The person who conducted the visits knew the school and had been there before. The appeals panel that considered the matter was made up of senior representatives, who of course met representatives of the school. However, I do not want to go into too much detail. I have some figures on which targets were hit and which were missed, but I am not sure whether discussing those would serve the best purpose.
There are three things to be said about the future. First, we are looking at the re-designation framework. We want to ensure that we learn from the experience of the first year. Secondly, we want to create the conditions under which schools will be prevented from becoming involved in the appeals process in the first place. We want to move from cure to prevention. We want the specialist schools re-designation programme to be rigorous and challenging, but we want schools to rise to the challenge. That is the rationale behind the funding that we have provided for the leadership incentive grant in Swindon, which offers £125,000 per year for three years to Churchfields and other schools to strengthen leadership, other important issues and the excellence cluster in which Mr. Flavin is engaged. Some 300 partnerships are funded around the country.
131WH Finally, Churchfields is, as I said earlier, eligible to reapply for the specialist schools programme in October this year. Happily, six of the 39 schools that left the programme have since returned, and two became academies last September. Obviously, it is important that a specialist school application should be right for the school, and made at the right time; it will be for the school to judge whether, as it seeks to improve itself, it is the time to go for specialist status.
I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend that we take seriously the development and implementation of the re-designation procedure. We take her concerns seriously. We would all agree that the key is to give the maximum appropriate support to Churchfields. I think that she will agree that there is a significant amount of effort going in to support the school and to ensure that it manages to reach and go beyond the levels of academic achievement that it had two or three years ago, whether through national or local initiatives. In the end, that is key for her constituents, for the pupils in the school and their parents.
On that note, I hope that we can reflect on the issues that she has raised and be sure that we are developing a programme that is rigorous and challenging, but that is also supportive: that is the right balance for an education system that is trying to move forward.
§ Ms DrownI am pleased to hear that, a year in, the Minister is going to consider the framework again. I wonder whether giving some sort of warning could be considered as part of that review. Part of this issue is 132WH about managing expectations. Staff salaries are often at stake, but it is not only about staff morale; the issue affects a whole school and the wider community.
Would it not help to manage those expectations if, rather than it being a yes or no issue at the end of the period, one could have a review at points during the specialist school status process? Such a review could state, "If you do not achieve this and this, then you will lose specialist status." That would enable people to manage the process so much better.
§ Mr. MilibandMy hon. Friend will be pleased to know that every school in the country, whether it is specialist or not, is engaged in a process of self-evaluation and engagement with the local education authority and beyond. Specialist schools know the targets that have been set and can follow the progress that is being made.
The specialist schools movement, far from saying that it wants earlier warning during the four-year process, has suggested that it should be stretched out in the other direction; that schools should be given longer to show how much progress they have made. The fifth year of exam performance is now taken into account in specialist school re-designations.
Although I will of course think carefully about what my hon. Friend has said, I hope that she will understand that the information from published figures, Ofsted and other inspections is there for critical self-review, and that many schools believe that an early warning system would work against their interests, because they want further time to show how much difference the specialist schools movement is making to them.
§ Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.