Neil O'Brien MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is not theoretical.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 84, in clause 50, page 110, line 4, at end insert— “(4A) Where making a decision the adjudicator must take into account— (a) the performance of the school; and (b) whether the school is oversubscribed.”

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We heard some concern about clauses 48 and 49 in our evidence sessions. One of the issues is the potential conflict of interest between the local authority being both the regulator of the local system and, at the same time, a provider of some of the schools but not others. Sir Dan Moynihan said, “there is potentially a conflict of interest if local authorities are opening their own schools and there are very hard-to-place kids. There is a conflict of interest in where they are allocating those children, so there needs to be a clear right of appeal in order to ensure that that conflict can be exposed if necessary…Some of the schools we have taken on have failed because they have admitted large numbers of hard-to-place children…I think there are schools that get into difficulty and fail because there is perceived local hierarchy of schools, and those are the schools that get those children. That is why there needs to be a clear right of appeal to prevent that from happening.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 73, Q158.] Luke Sparkes from Dixons also made roughly the same point. Amendment 90 would require the Secretary of State to set out statutory guidance on “how actual or potential conflicts of interest arising from the role of local authorities in directing admissions to schools they maintain and those they do not are to be identified and managed; and… how the best interests of children and young people are to be prioritised in all decision-making.” New clause 45 would write into the legislation: “A direction under this section may not take into account whether a school is a maintained school or an academy.” Neither measure would fundamentally change the clause, but they require a solution to address that potential conflict of interest and ensure that things are fair, and are seen to be fair.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I am not suggesting that they cannot be adjudicated. I am pointing out to the Minister that for them to be adjudicated in a completely new way will mean something very different will happen to our education system. At the moment, the adjudicator can be brought in if a school dramatically wants to cut its numbers. That is fair enough. We need to make sure that all pupils have a place to go to school. But this is something completely new. There is an objection not just to expanding, which is an attack on the principle of school choice, but to schools wanting to keep their published admission number the same. This is a completely revolutionary change. The adjudicator is not dealing with these kinds of things at the moment for academies, so it is a huge change and a move away from the principles that have allowed good schools to expand and the voices of those who say, “There are too many surplus places; you can go to a worse school and not to your first-choice school” to be squashed by the process of school choice and competition.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 90, in clause 48, page 108, line 24, at end insert— “(3) Within six months of the passing of this Act, the Secretary of State must issue statutory guidance on the decision-making process that must be followed when directions are given under section 96 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998. (4) Guidance issued under subsection (3) must include details of— (a) how actual or potential conflicts of interest arising from the role of local authorities in directing admissions to schools they maintain and those they do not are to be identified and managed; and (b) how the best interests of children and young people are to be prioritised in all decision-making.”

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  To be clear, is it the case that under the clause the schools adjudicator will have the power to set the published admission number to zero—in other words, to close a school?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eleventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I can see that very easily.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Harborough, Oadby and Wigston. “Harborough” is fine.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I will begin by asking a question up front, so that the Minister has time to confer with officials if she needs to in order to reply. We learned during the debate on clause 50 that, as well as existing schools, local authorities will be able to go to the schools adjudicator regarding school openings. Will a local authority be able to object to the published admissions number of a school in another local authority, or is it limited to schools within its own area? Possible answers are: yes, they will be able to object about another authority; no, they will not be able to; or, the Government have not decided yet. As drafted, the Bill does not tell us what the Government’s intent is. I will now speak to our amendment 85 and clause 51. Local authorities can already establish local authority schools if there is really no one who wants to start a new school, although, as the Government’s notes to the Bill rightly say, the current legal framework for opening new schools is tilted heavily towards all new schools—mainstream, special, and so on—being academies. As we have discussed, clause 44 repeals the requirement to turn failing local authority schools into academies; clause 51 is effectively the other half of that shift away from academisation. It ends the rule that new schools must be academies and allows local authorities to choose to set up new local authority-run schools instead. Both changes will reduce the flow of new schools into the best performing trusts. For that reason, we think it is a mistake. Ministers keep saying that they want greater consistency —that seems to be one of the guiding principles of the Bill—but in the long term the combination of clause 51 and clause 44 will leave us with two types of school. That will sustain the confusion that we talked about in previous debates, where the local authority is simultaneously the regulator and a provider in the market it is regulating. The schools system is currently a halfway house: more than 80% of secondary schools are now academies, but less than half of primaries are, so just over half of all state schools are academies, and most academies are now in a trust. I understand why Ministers have moved to find a legislative slot, and I know that anti-academies campaigners and people who do not like academies will welcome the clause. My question is where this is taking us in terms of a structure for the system as a whole. The Minister will say, “We want the flexibility to set up local authority schools,” but the combination of clauses 44 and 51 means that, in the long term, we will continue to have two types of school, rather than continue the organic move of recent years toward a system that is clearly based on academies and trusts, and trusts as the drivers of overall performance. That became apparent during the Government’s announcement the other day of their consultation on the new intervention regime. Ministers are now talking about RISE—regional improvement for standards and excellence—as one of the drivers of school improvement, leading to lots of questions about where the balance is between RISE and trusts, and what happens where the advice of a RISE team contradicts a trust’s views about what should be done in the case of a school with problems. We have rehearsed a lot of these issues before, but I am keen to get an answer from the Minister about whether, in the case of new school openings in a different local authority, another local authority would be able to send the question of that school’s PAN to the schools adjudicator under clause 50. I am also keen to get the Minister’s sense of the finality of the system. Are Ministers happy for us to have just local authority schools and academies in the long term, and do not think that that is a problem they need to address? Do they not have a vision for the final situation, or do they have some other vision that the Minister wants to set out?

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I rise to speak only to clause 56, which is a big old Henry VIII power. I am sure that their lordships will want to explore it in detail. In the interests of time, I have not tabled an amendment to it at this stage and I will not go into lots of detail, but it is always important to note such things. It is no small thing to give the Government the power to amend primary legislation without coming back to the House. Of course, there are certain limits to what they could do by means of such measures, but it is a big deal. I place it on the record that the Minister will be well aware of some of the concerns about the clause that are coming to us from civil society. I am sure that she will have seen the comments from Jen Persson, the director of Defend Digital Me, on the information powers in the Bill. When we make laws in this way, it relies on someone noticing and raising an objection to Parliament to get any kind of democratic debate, and we can only stop such things in hindsight. As the Minister will know, Defend Digital Me has put forward 30 different areas and proposals that it has concerns about, particularly on the information side. On previous clauses, we debated the constant unique identifier and eventually using the NHS number for that, and other things that we have objected to, such as the requirement to give information about how much time a home-schooled child is spending with both parents. I will not reconsider all the debates that we have already had, but all those important decisions will potentially be in the scope of this Henry VIII power. I am keen to move on to the new clauses, so I will not go any further now, but I am sure that the Government will receive lots of probing questions on this point as the Bill moves to the other place.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 85, in clause 51, page 111, line 7, after “authorities” insert “, including academy trusts,”.

• 6 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. Amendment proposed : 48, in clause 51, page 112, line 4, at end insert— “(5) After section 7A (withdrawal of notices under section 7), insert— ‘ 7B New schools to allocate no more than half of pupil places on basis of faith A new school for which proposals are sought by a local authority under section 7 must, where the school is oversubscribed, provide that no more than half of all places are allocated on the basis of or with reference to— (a) the pupil’s religious faith, or presumed religious faith; (b) the religious faith, or presumed religious faith, of the pupil’s parents.’”— (Ian Sollom.) Question put, That the amendment be made.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister keeps talking about private schools, but am I right in thinking that this also applies to academies?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Sir Martyn Oliver gave us a good example of how the current freedoms are used on our first day of evidence. He said: “In the past, I have brought in professional sportspeople to teach alongside PE teachers, and they have run sessions. Because I was in Wakefield, it was rugby league: I had rugby league professionals working with about a quarter of the schools in Wakefield at one point.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 49, Q108.] When he said that, I thought about when I was being taught rugby league not far away in Huddersfield, and how much we would have loved it if the professionals had come from Fartown to teach us. We were never told what the rules of rugby league were, nor was it revealed to us that there was a different type of rugby. It would have been amazing to have the professionals with us. That is just one example of how schools use non-qualified teacher status teachers in a brilliant way to bring in people who would otherwise never be in state schools. Former headteacher David Thomas told us on the same day: “I have concerns about limiting the number of people with unqualified teacher status who are not working towards qualified teacher status.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 92, Q199.] He also said: “I have worked with some fantastic people—generally late-career people in shortage subjects who want to go and give back in the last five to 10 years of their career—who would not go through some of the bureaucracy associated with getting qualified teacher status but are absolutely fantastic and have brought wonderful things to a school and to a sector. I have seen them change children’s lives.” –– [ Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 14 January 2025; c. 92, Q200.] Rebecca Leek from the Suffolk Primary Headteachers Association gave another good example, telling us: “I had to step in as an interim headteacher in Ipswich just prior to covid. I did not have an early years lead… There was someone who was not a qualified teacher, but who had been running an outstanding nursery… I took her on, and although she was not qualified, she was really excellent. I was able to do that because it was an academy school, and it was not an issue. In a maintained school, there is a specific need for a qualified teacher to teach in early years, so I would not have been able to take her on.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 83, Q174.] Likewise, when I asked Julie McCulloch from the Association of School and College Leaders whether it was better to have a non-QTS teacher than no teacher, she noted that “sometimes that is the case, particularly when we are looking at vocational subjects at the top end of secondary school and into colleges.” –– [ Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 22, Q44.] When the Secretary of State was asked about this on “The News Agents” last night, she made exactly the same point. Indeed, the Government’s own impact assessment for the Bill says that “some schools may struggle to find the teachers that they need” as a result of the measure. It adds: “From September 2026, we estimate this could affect around 700-1,250 potential entrants to the teaching profession per annum…This represents around 1-2% of all entrants to the teaching workforce in…2022.” The only phrase I take issue with in that is “to the teaching profession”, because it is not the teaching profession as a whole but state schools that those potentially brilliant teachers will be locked out of. Private schools will not have the same burden put on them. In attempting to construct an argument for that restriction, the impact assessment also says: “Evidence suggests that being taught by a high-quality teacher can add almost half a GCSE grade per subject to a given pupil’s results”. Obviously, we all know that high-quality teachers are key in education, but amazingly, the Department for Education does not go on to produce a single shred of evidence—it does not even attempt to give a tiny particle of evidence—that teachers without QTS are of low quality. When Ministers have been pressed on that, they do not demur; a policy is being adopted without any evidence at all. There is also no estimate of what impact the creation of a new barrier to entry might have, particularly in the sorts of subject area that non-QTS teachers are employed in, which are often those that are more difficult to recruit for. Even the Government sort of acknowledge that the measure is not needed, as we find out by reading a footnote at the bottom of page 24 of the impact assessment, which was published halfway through the Bill Committee process. It is like “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”; the plans are available if we go to a locked toilet in an abandoned room on the bottom floor of a building that is open twice a year. The footnote reveals that: “Unqualified teachers will not require QTS to work in further education, 14–19 and 16-19 academies, university technical colleges, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings.” My first question to the Minister is, if it is so desperately important to ban non-QTS teachers from our schools that we have to make primary legislation to do it, why are all those other types of school not included? How many non-QTS teachers are in those settings and will therefore be exempt? Last month, data came out showing that the Government had recruited only 62% of their target number of students into initial teacher training for secondary schools, with particularly dramatic shortfalls in subjects such as physics, where only 30% of the target number had been recruited, business studies, design and technology, music, computing and chemistry. The National Education Union rightly talks about a “global teacher recruitment and retention crisis”. Most school systems across the world are battling to recruit teachers; if anyone googles “teacher shortage Ireland” or “teacher shortage Australia”—or “teacher shortage” pretty much anywhere—they will see what I mean. Between 2011 and 2022, the last Government added 29,454 extra teachers to schools in England and grew the total school workforce by 96,555, or 11%. yet we still have a shortage of teachers in key subjects. About 3% of teachers are non-QTS, so this might seem like an odd time to make things harder for schools to recruit good teachers, especially in the specialist subjects where they tend to be used. To that end, our amendments seek to at least limit those counterproductive new restrictions, which have received a wide variety of criticisms from the sector. Amendment 73 proposes in a five-year grace period, because not requiring QTS can get teachers through the door into state education. What message does the Government measure send to people who are mid-career, who might want to become teachers and give back but who cannot actually afford to do a PGCE or an apprenticeship? The Government’s plan will grandfather non-QTS teachers, but if they move school, they will have to get QTS. Amendment 74 would allow mobility and fix that. Amendment 75 would retain the freedom at least for shortage subjects; amendment 94, in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham, also looks at that issue. Amendment 76 would allow academies to maintain discretion about whether to employ teachers without QTS if they are subject matter experts and have received training from the academy in question. The bottom line is: where is the evidence—any evidence—that this is a problem in our education system, never mind one of the most important problems that we need to make primary legislation to resolve? Where is the evidence that DFE Ministers know better who to employ than school leaders themselves? They have not produced a single shred of evidence in the impact assessment. I am afraid that this measure is another example of Ministers believing that they know best, but it will make recruitment challenges harder, create a barrier to entry into state schools, and prevent some great sports people, IT people and other people who want to give back from doing so. The unions may want this—they have for years—but it remains a mistake.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I beg to move amendment 71, in clause 33, page 86, line 12, leave out lines 12 and 13.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  To be clear, it will be illegal to employ them if they do not have QTS. People can turn up, but they cannot be employed. I do not know whether the hon. Lady is deliberately trying to muddy the water, or whether she has just missed the point. I notice that the Minister has not chosen to intervene. To be clear, the clause will stop Sir Martyn and people like him doing exactly what he said he had found it useful to do: employing non-QTS teachers, alongside teachers, to come and give back to their community. During the course of my remarks, nobody has offered me a single shred of evidence that non-QTS teachers are bad teachers, are somehow a big problem in our schools, or are one of the top problems that we need to address. The clause will make things harder for schools, and it will mean that fewer pupils get a good lesson. Our amendments aim to stop this piece of vandalism, which is something that the unions wanted, that Ministers have given them, and that will be bad for our schools and our children.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister talks about maintaining or continuing with various things but, to be clear, the clause will introduce a new exemption. This is not just about later phases of education; it is about children in normal secondary schools. The Government have chosen to exempt further education, 14-to-19 academies, 16-to-19 academies, UTCs, studio schools and non-maintained school early years settings. There are a heck of a lot of state schools that are being exempted from the things that the Ministers say are so desperately important. I still have not heard the reason why, if they are so important, they do not apply to them, too.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I thank my right hon. Friend, and I completely agree with him about the respect due to teachers. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North mentioned a “race to the bottom”, yet that is not what the Secretary of State is saying, and there is no evidence in any of what the Government are doing that there is a problem with the quality of non-QTS teachers. Indeed, we heard from Rebecca Leek at the start of our proceedings that it was a race to the top. She was getting one of the best people—she happened to be running a nursery and had not gone into teaching; but she knew all about the early years and was one of the best people one could possibly get, even though she was non-QTS. Another hon. Member on this Committee has said that there was “no reason” not to get QTS, but in many cases, there are reasons. Perhaps someone is at the very end of their career and is not going to go through all the bureaucracy to do that, in order to do the last two years of— [ Interruption. ] It was said—

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister says “ to the…academy sector”, but she is not doing it to 14-to-19 academies, to 16-to-19 academies, or to UTCs and studio schools, which are both types of academy. It is not, as she says, all academies; it is only some, and I do not know why.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Section 102 of the 2008 Act requires the proprietor of an academy to make an application to the Secretary of State for the approval of a material change, as defined in section 101 of that Act. Clause 33 introduces a new definition of material change, which adds to the list of material changes in the 2008 Act. Proposed new subsection (2)(g) will require the notification of the Secretary of State when there is “a change of the buildings occupied by the institution and made available for student use”. Some of the things in the proposed list are reasonable things for the school to have to apply to the Secretary of State for—if it is a complete change of the proprietor or a change to the age range, or if it stops being a special school or moves to a completely different location, that is fine—but the idea that schools should have to apply to the Secretary of State if there is a change of the buildings occupied by the institution is too vaguely defined. If I build a new building or get some new bits stuck on the end of one of the wings of my school, do I have to apply to the Secretary of State? It is not clear from a natural reading of proposed new subsection (2)(g). We worry that this will end up with even minor changes requiring approval from the Secretary of State, which is not necessary. Given that a breach of the provision can lead to an academy being deregistered as an independent educational institution, or the imposition of restrictions on the academy, it seems excessive. Amendment 71 seeks to delete paragraph (g), which would be the best outcome, while amendment 72 seeks at least for the Secretary of State to provide guidance. Will the Minister provide some reassurance that we are not going to end up with schools feeling like they have to apply to the Secretary of State every time they build a new building, move out of one wing or add an extension to another? It seems like a recipe for unnecessary bureaucracy, creating legal risks for academies that really should not be there.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady says that all of our pupils deserve a QTS teacher, so why are the Government exempting those in further education, 14 to 19 and 16 to 19, academies, university technical colleges, studio schools, non-maintained schools and early years settings? If it is so desperately important, why are they exempting the settings that have more non-QTS teachers? The hon. Lady thinks that is a mistake, presumably.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  This will be relatively short and sweet. Amendment 70 aims to prevent a large and, I hope, unintentional expansion of the Secretary of State’s powers. Academies and free schools are, of course, independent state-funded schools. I think that under clause 30, an academy school, but not a 16-to-19 academy, is an independent educational institution for the purposes of the 2008 Act. This amendment to clause 31 would ensure that the powers under proposed new section 118A(1) may not be exercised in relation to an academy; instead, the Secretary of State should rely on the provisions in funding agreements with the academies and free schools. Our amendment is grouped with clause stand part, so I also want to ask the Minister about something I read in the regulatory impact assessment. Page 56 states: “We have identified one possible adverse distributional impact. Based on our current understanding, the Independent Schools Standards: Registration Requirements measure is expected to disproportionately impact some religious or faith-based schools. Where in scope of the new regulation, these schools may have to meet the Independent School Standards, which may entail costs.” Will the Minister say how large those costs are, or explain why faith schools are disproportionately impacted? It may be unrelated but I also noted various references in the impact assessments to the Haredim; will the Minister speak to why that group is particularly affected by some of these measures?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  The Minister keeps saying “private schools”, but we are talking about independent educational institutions. As I understand it, that includes academy schools, which are state schools. The Minister also keeps talking about proportionality. Proposed new subsection (2B) states that, for the purposes of proposed new subsection (2)(g), the Secretary of State would have to be notified of any change to either “part of a building” or a “permanent outdoor structure”. If a school wanted to build a bike shed, it would potentially have to go to the Secretary of State. That does not seem proportionate at all. Perhaps the Minister can answer that point.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Is that not also the case for 16-to-19 academies already? I do not understand why they have to be exempted in the Bill, but non-16-to-19 academies are not. Surely they also have the same kind of funding agreement.