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Summer Adjournment

Even the most fervent or rabid fans of the school academy programme would find it hard to justify the fact that Heartsease high school in my constituency could be turned into such an academy. The two sponsors have each put money into the programme—up to £2 million. One is a Pentecostal ex-car dealer and the other is the Bishop of Norwich. It seems to be a phenomenon raging across the country these days. Nevertheless, we are in the middle of a consultation, which ends on 20 August, from which we will find out the views of at least some of the people in my constituency. I will not bore hon. Members with all the honeyed words that are said about the aim of such academies and schools: providing a lovely new building, which is welcome, and making a contribution to people's lives and so on. We have all seen those words. I do not think that I would find anyone who would ever disagree with that, whatever position they took. The school no longer appertains to be a faith school. I say that because, in its original documentation, it said:"““there is an opportunity to support an academy in Heartsease. This derives from our faith that the love of God should be seen in our lives””" in such a lively school. That has changed as the opposition has grown. It is now to be an open academy of the best sort and to be socially non-divisive—ethnic, and religious diversity will be the favour of the month. I should say too that it is a school that can improve; it has had trouble in the past. That was the original criterion for such academies. Let me quote from its Ofsted report following its hard years. In February 2007, inspectors said:"““This is a satisfactory and improving school. It has overcome significant turbulence caused by recent changes to headship””—" somebody whom I taught at university—"““and governance and it is now much more stable””" and there is a great spirit. It also interacts through the sixth form with the local Blyth-Jex high school and Sprowston high school. With the new middle school and early entry to secondary schools, there will be more pupils there than ever. I will say more about that later. One wonders about the vision for the school, because it is not always clear. When we enter discussions with the sponsors and others they say that they are going to have environmentalism—well, everyone says that these days—but they do not define exactly what that means in teaching in a school. They are of course to have their specialism, which is engineering. The school achieved specialist status in engineering. It is pretty rare in this country to take that on. It is a hard area to get people interested in, but by gosh when they do get into it they are interested and go on to universities and other places. The vision of how those things will merge has not been spelled out clearly and we have not seen any documentation explaining it. On a wide range of value-added measures of attainment, the school is among the most improved in the country. It has improved at all key stages. It dispirits people when they see that that is not rewarded and that perhaps many of the teachers and others will lose their jobs. It will have its new glossy buildings, presumably, and its ICT facilities and it might raise standards, but the question is how those standards will be raised. Will it be by diversion of pupils from other schools into the academy because of the attraction of it? Will it really be because of the Christian ethos and what is taught there—sustainable development or whatever? Will that bring people to that school to raise the numbers from about 600 to perhaps 900? They will have to come from the other schools in that district. One thing that has really established Norwich schools has been the interaction between them. Norwich is not north and south; that is only a constituency matter and two MPs. There is a unitary educational system, where the schools work together and through the years they have interchanged heads and helped each other. The products from our schools—the young people—go on to do excellent work elsewhere; that is second to none. Therefore, social grounds alone may have helped to develop that school. I am also concerned about the questionnaire that has gone out, which is quite interesting. If ever there were a questionnaire that you wanted to fail, this is it. The questions are biased and loaded. It is amazing. I will take just one example:"““Do you agree with the sponsor's vision for the proposed new Academy? ‘We believe in the unique worth of each child’. Yes, No, Undecided””." Who could ever be undecided about that kind of question? There are 16 questions just like that, for which the obvious answer is that Heartsease school, as it is now, is rubbish and we need an academy to make it better. No reasons are given. It is just pushing people in that direction. Many people have pointed that out. I am amazed that a county council—Norfolk county council—can allow such a questionnaire to go out in its name. I wonder as well about the Christian sponsors allowing that to happen. One other thing gravitates against giving the school academy status. Yesterday, there was a statement—it has already been referred to—that unitary status is coming Norwich's way. There is an argument about how it will come. It is not in one of the nine primary areas to which we were minded to give unitary status; the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Angela Browning) mentioned Exeter in that connection. Norwich is singled out and it is said that if we can widen the boundaries just outside Norwich—there is no green belt there now; areas have all merged together—to territory such as Sprowston and Hellesdon, we really have a chance to meet the five criteria. Everything I hear indicates that there is great hope that that might happen. That means that the local education authority loses its right to look after those schools, including Heartsease, Blyth-Jex and Sprowston. That reflects a difference from where we started, taking one school out of the system and trying to make it very different. It would be divisive to do such a thing in the current situation. I hope that the Minister will listen when we meet him to discuss that issue. Unitary status changes everything. The Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families has made some authentic claims about changing the criteria for academies, not dramatically but just enough. He said that it is just not enough to have a lot of money to be a good sponsor. One has to show leadership, innovation and commitment to act in the public interest. If one is going to run education, it would help to know a little about it before taking those responsibilities on. That is beginning to change, in terms of how the academy programme is rolling out across the country. There is a long way to go, but people are beginning to realise that sponsorship may not be the way to develop better standards in education. There may be better ways, such as addressing the size of the school or the interaction between schools. If someone gave me £25 million, I could take those three schools into the stratosphere, including Nobel prizes or whatever. Schools need better buildings and playing fields. The science labs at Sprowston high school are mediaeval. I had a meeting the other week with the director of education for the county and we showed him the appalling labs. The wooden desks have things like ““Tony loves Cherie”” scrawled all over them. We used to love such desks, but labs in good schools now look completely different. All those schools need an investment of money, and to interact with each other. That has started to happen with the sixth forms and it could happen in other areas of school endeavour. I also wish to raise a point that someone made recently in a big meeting about academies, and that is the human rights of people in academies. Are they covered by the 1944 Education Act and the rest of the 9 ft pile of legislation and regulations on education and grant-maintained schools and the rest? A lawyer from the eminent Matrix chambers, which I seem to remember hearing of somewhere before, said that that has not been tested yet, so that is another problem. I do not think that the academy proposal has been considered in terms of value for the £25 million that the sponsor gets to do what they like, such as appointing governors and so on. Because of the unitary status situation, it will take time to discuss with other local councils how they can work better together and how the schools and other services will be taken from the county council and brought under the umbrella of the unitary authority. In those circumstances, I call for a moratorium on the academy programme. The judgments that have been made so far are unsound, such as the questionnaire that I have mentioned. If one looks at the education situation in the round, the academy proposal will not give us a well funded, accountable or fair school system in my part of Norwich.