Catherine McKinnell MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I will answer the right hon. Gentleman’s three questions in reverse order. On the first, I think parents are perfectly capable of understanding a more complex report card than one word. I also disagree with his characterisation of the changes. We are very much about harnessing all the great things that academies have achieved, including the great reforms, improvements and innovations that they have pioneered. We want to spread that right across our school system. The purpose of the report cards is to shine a light on all that great practice so that it can be spread more widely, and to shine a particular spotlight on where improvement is needed, to deliver it as quickly as possible. How Ofsted will deliver is a matter for Ofsted, and if he wishes to respond to its consultation, I am sure his views would be welcome.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady is right to highlight the issue and what she says sounds very concerning. We are looking at multi-academy trust level accountability and how parents can engage in the relationship with schools, ensuring that the proper lines of accountability are available. I will continue to keep that under review and will report on it in due course.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for welcoming today’s statement. We are very much strengthening the tools we can use for faster and more effective school improvement with the introduction of the new RISE teams. In addition, as he points out, the greater transparency and diagnostic approach of Ofsted reports will enable us to identify both where great practice is and where there is room for improvement. I will take away his question about the impact on other parts of the UK.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  Our Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a whole package of measures that will not only deliver landmark reforms to child safeguarding, but unleash the ability of all schools to collaborate and work together in operating under this new accountability system to drive high and rising standards. This will ensure that every child has the offer of a national curriculum, a qualified teacher in every classroom, and high and rising standards in every school in England.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I will take it away and look at it.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He has not only diagnosed the problem, but recommended a solution. We have established a child poverty taskforce, chaired by the Secretary of State for Education along with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, to take a fundamental look at the levers that we have in Government to support children so that they no longer grow up in poverty, which we know is affecting their outcomes both in education and in life.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. We wish to see a change in the drive towards an inclusive mainstream as part of this new Ofsted accountability system, and the changes in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bills will obviously support those endeavours. The curriculum and assessment review will also look at how barriers to inclusion can be removed in the curriculum and assessment system, and at how we can get high standards and expectations of great progress for all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  As part of its proposed reforms, Ofsted will be looking at the leadership of schools, including their governance, because good leadership is clearly the route map to children’s success within them. We are legislating for all schools to have a duty to co-operate with local authorities on place planning and admissions to ensure we have a whole schools system that works together. We encourage collaboration by outstanding, excellent, exemplary schools—trusts in particular—that can share their expertise across the board: a collaborative schools system that serves the community and, where possible, ensures that every child has access to a good local school within their community.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and I commend him for his experience in the classroom, which is clearly valuable. We always want to encourage more teachers. Indeed, the whole reasoning behind these reforms is to create an accountability system that recognises good practice and identifies where improvements can be made, but also diagnoses how such improvements can be made and ensures there is the ability to create a self-improving system among our schools, so that they can support one another to drive forward those improvements in the interests of everybody. It is not about punishing schools; it is about supporting schools to create those improvements, which we know that they want and we want to see for children.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  We expect the range of structural interventions to continue as currently, at least for the next 12 months, because we will continue to intervene where schools are causing concern and to mandate structural change. We will also continue to mandate it where significant improvements are required in schools. We will, however, see a doubling of the number of schools that need significant improvement through the RISE system; so we are not reducing the number of interventions that the previous Government undertook, but doubling the number of schools being helped and supported to improve.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I absolutely recognise the challenges that my hon. Friend sets out. Many schools right across the system, whether local authority maintained or academies, face similar challenges. The report card system will be a really important reflection of a whole school’s experience, and will laser-focus on areas such as attendance and inclusion, creating toolkits to enable schools to know the standards they need to reach, but also enabling schools to work together collaboratively, supporting one another to achieve those outcomes for children. We are not in the game of punishing schools; we are in the game of supporting them to bring about the change that we know they want to see.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right to focus on that issue. Improving the SEND system is clearly a focal point for delivering on our opportunity mission to break the link between background and opportunity. We have made a clear commitment to inclusive mainstream education. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill includes measures to give local authorities more levers on admissions, and Ofsted has made it clear that inclusion will be a key feature of inspection—not instead of high and rising standards, but as well as. She will know that we are keeping this matter under review. Our reform plans are in progress, and we will make further announcements on them in due course.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend puts it very well. We absolutely need to be laser-focused on schools that have consistently underperformed but have not received the support, help or intervention they need to succeed. We will be laser-focused on supporting those schools to achieve the outcomes that we know they want to achieve for their children but just need the support to do so.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I encourage the teachers mentioned by the hon. Lady to feed into the consultation. Let me allay some of their concerns. Although how it conducts its consultations and reports on its inspections is for Ofsted, as a Department we are very focused on creating a self-improving system of collaboration, using the new report cards to identify exemplary practice and share that more widely. That will identify where support is required and encourage schools to work in collaboratively to deliver it. RISE teams will bolster that targeted approach, particularly for stuck schools, which we know have been ignored for far too long. I hope that the teachers she referenced will feel more confident about the system, and I encourage them to respond to the consultation.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  Children get only one childhood, so it matters deeply that they get to go to a great school while they are still children, which is why we are determined to deliver faster improvement to the schools that need it. While academisation has been successful in many places, it can be a slow process, and not all schools can be matched up with strong trusts, which is why we will utilise the RISE teams to support schools to work together, drive improvement and create that whole-system reform that we know children need to see.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend spoke to my heart as he referenced areas of his constituency that I represented in this place for 14 years from 2010. He went to an excellent school in the neighbouring constituency. He is right that this really is the first step on the journey of improving our schools and making sure that every child has the best start in life and the best education possible.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I encourage those headteachers to feed back to Ofsted as part of the consultation process. Obviously, it is Ofsted’s consultation process. It determines the mechanisms by which it will undertake the new inspections, and it sets the framework. As the Department for Education, we are responsible for implementing the findings of an Ofsted inspection, but we are interested in making sure that it achieves what we want it to achieve, which is to drive high and rising standards. We are confident that the new framework will do that. The Department for Education also has its consultation document out on how we see the reforms working in practice. If the hon. Gentleman would like to meet and discuss that, I would be happy to do so.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady raises an important point and we absolutely want to hear from schools about how issues like inclusion can be successfully measured and incentivised and held accountable as part of this system. Along with the document Ofsted has produced today it has produced toolkits that set out its inspection framework, and I urge the hon. Lady and those in her constituency who are making representations to take a look. If additional issues are outstanding, of course she should get in touch.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  The determination of the report cards is within Ofsted’s remit. It has launched its consultation. The right hon. Gentleman is invited to contribute to the consultation, and I encourage anyone within his local area to do so, too. We are open to feedback. In terms of the retro question, we are very much looking forward to how these reforms can support the Department for Education in its work to target reform where we know it is needed. Our system is not working well, and we know it needs to change. That is why we have introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. It is why we are designing a school system that supports and challenges every school to deliver for every child. Between our reforms and those that Ofsted is consulting on—we welcome feedback and are open to it—we are confident that together we can deliver those high and rising standards for every child.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend advocates very powerfully for the families in his area who have been struggling with a SEND system that is clearly in need of reform. The changes that Ofsted and the Department are proposing are designed to create a more inclusive and effective schools system for all children, including those with special educational needs and disabilities. Indeed, we will continue to listen to their voices as we plan our reforms.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has correctly identified that we see the future of school improvement as very much driven by a whole school self-improving system, where schools will support one another to drive that improvement. We are putting the extra money in place and we really want to be laser-focused on those 600 schools that have been stuck on far too low a rating for far too long, to ensure that the more than 300,000 children in them are supported as quickly as possible with improved outcomes. As my hon. Friend says about peer support, it is important that we tap into knowledge and expertise from trusts that we know are doing an excellent job.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  Following the end of headline judgments in September, Ofsted undertook the big listen, and listened very carefully to feedback on the way it conducts inspections while also reviewing the format for reporting on those inspections. I note the hon. Lady’s comments in that regard. In the new system that has been designed, that work has paved the way for the roll-out of school report cards. Subject to consultations—both the Government and Ofsted are very open to the views of the profession—they will be rolled out in September. Alongside a reformed Ofsted, we are creating the RISE teams, comprised of leaders with a proven track record of improving school standards. Those teams will draw on bespoke improvement plans for stuck schools, with significant investment. The previous Government made £6,000 available for stuck schools; under this Government, it will be more like £100,000 per school to drive that improvement. [ Official Report , 11 February 2025; Vol. 762, c. 3WC.] (Correction) The hon. Lady’s comments in relation to SEND are well made. As I said to the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), that is something that Ofsted will be judging, looking specifically at inclusion as well as—not instead of—high and rising attainment standards in schools. The reformed accountability and improvement systems very much build on the work of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which will: require teachers to have, or work towards, qualified teacher status; ensure that all schools teach a cutting-edge national curriculum, following the curriculum and assessment review; and restore teaching as an attractive profession through a floor, but no ceiling, for pay and conditions. All those reforms combined will drive high and rising standards and break down the barriers to opportunity for every child.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I will happily meet my hon. Friend. I know she is committed to securing better outcomes for the schools and children in her area. We are making these reforms so that we can go further to make improvement better and faster. We want to add to the tools in our box to help schools improve. We are not taking anything away; we are only adding to the ability to ensure we get the change within our school system that far too many children desperately need.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his service, which is hugely important. We often do not recognise enough the work that governors undertake and the important role they play in our school system. We thank all school governors for their service and encourage more people to sign up. In response to my hon. Friend’s initial comment, he may be interested to know that between January 2022 and December 2024, 40% of schools in a category of concern took over a year to convert to sponsored academies. That is too long. We need to intervene more quickly, which is why we will use the opportunity of a more diagnostic Ofsted report card to identify where improvements need to happen so that we can get in there with RISE teams much earlier—as soon as a school has failed its inspection—and no longer focus solely on structural intervention, as he said, but on however school improvement can be best undertaken.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is a powerful advocate for the children in her area, and she is absolutely right to champion better outcomes. We know that the journey towards not achieving the grades that children should achieve starts at the earliest stage, which is why, as I have said, we are investing in the early years. The Ofsted report cards will shine a light on the issue of attendance—we know that children cannot get a great education if they are not at school to get it, and attendance must be a priority for schools—but we recognise the challenges, so we want to support schools to be able to achieve better attendance figures, and we will do so by diagnosing those challenges and putting in place the self-supporting schools system that can drive those better outcomes.