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Children, Schools and Families

My Lords, I believe that the right reverend Prelate was referring to Teach First, which is the programme expanding out of London. I would dearly like to see it play a role in the north-east, too. We are expanding it progressively because it is very important that the quality of the management of the programme, which has been very high, and the attractiveness that it has to high-performing graduates, is not diluted as it expands. That is why we are moving at the rate of one city a year, building up from London where it started. It is a testament to the success that we are having in recruiting good graduates into teaching that, from the leading universities, which 10 years ago were sending very few of their graduates into state school teaching, we now have massive overapplication to Teach First. This year there were over 1,500 applications for 300 places. Teach First is regarded as a highly prestigious programme, which is a testament to the changing attitudes of young people to teaching—and very welcome that is too. It is also a testament to reform, because the establishment of Teach First, which was done in partnership with the teaching unions, involved a complete rewriting of the rules on teacher education. We ended the requirement to do a full-time PGCE for one year; in place of that, teachers train at Canterbury Christ Church University for six weeks over the summer and are then placed in properly supervised groups in schools. Their commitment to teach is for only for two years. We were led to think that the overhead cost of training them might not be justified but, in fact, more than half of Teach First graduates stay in teaching for more than two years, which is an immensely valuable resource to our schools. I give the right reverend Prelate the assurance that we shall seek to expand the programme and not neglect the needs of the north-east. The Church of England has been a very important and highly successful promoter of academies. As the right reverend Prelate will have heard, one of the new academies that I announced today is a Church of England academy in the London Borough of Southwark. We want to see the church play a key role in the expansion of the programme, as local communities wish to see the church engaged—because this is all about local consent and preference. However, it will not have escaped the notice of the right reverend Prelate that the church is not itself a high-performing university, college or school. It has many other attributes but those three are not among them, so it will not qualify for, so to speak, passing ““Go”” without making any payments—the concession that we are announcing today.