Andrew Lewer is the Conservative MP for Northampton South, and a member of the Education Select Committee.
As many have written on these pages in recent months, the record of success within England’s education system in recent years is one of which the Conservatives can be rightly proud.
As a result of changes introduced since 2010, schools are more orderly, teachers are better trained, the curriculum studied and exams taken are more rigorous, and when it comes to reading, our primary pupils are now among the best in the West. Evidence-informed reforms have raised standards, whilst ministers have increased the core schools’ budget to record levels, both in terms of overall size and per-pupil funding.
But money is not everything. Greater autonomy for headteachers and the involvement of parents in how schools are run has delivered more efficient spending which is better tailored to the specific needs of a school’s community.
This is the principle of choice: give parents more control over which school is best for their child, and schools encouraged to drive up standards and compete, or work together, to the benefit of students.
For decades, parents in England have been able to express a preference as to which state school their child attends, with the vast majority being offered a place at their top choice. Simultaneously, funding is pupil-led, meaning it follows the child, and a school’s funding reflects the number and characteristics of its pupils. Headteachers thus respond more directly to the needs of pupils and concerns of families.
However, a common attack against school choice is that it most benefits middle-class children, whose parents have the time and resources to get more directly involved in their education.
Many working-class pupils have benefitted from education reforms over the last decade. But those at the bottom of the economic pyramid do often have both the least control over their children’s educational experience – and the greatest need for it.
So what can be done to extend the benefits of recent reforms to those who need it most? By extending choice further.
In a new paper, Choices for Children, published this week by the Centre for Policy Studies, I propose three measures targeted at improving family choice for three student groups who experience the worst educational outcomes: ‘looked-after children’ (LACs), children from poorer backgrounds, and those in ‘inadequate’ schools. Let’s look at these in turn.
Children are only taken away from their parents and placed in the care of others in the most extreme of circumstances, so it is almost inevitable that by this point there has been a negative impact on the child’s emotional and academic development.
It is no surprise that looked-after children (LACs) tend to have extremely poor outcomes educationally, economically and otherwise; only 12.1 per cent of ‘children in need’ get 5s or better in both English and Maths GCSE, versus 49.8 per cent of other pupils.
Existing measures to support LACs education include being placed at the top of a waiting list if they need to change schools and local authorities being advised to place them only in schools judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
Authorities are also told that they should “seek a school or other education setting that is best suited to the child’s needs”, and that this “could be in a maintained school, academy or independent school, and those schools could be selective, non-selective, boarding or day schools.”
There is a transformational opportunity here.
The Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation (RNCSF) runs a scheme which finds fully-funded places in state boarding and independent schools for children in or on the edge of care. Since 2020, 150 such children have benefited, without any money from the Department for Education (DfE) beyond a small grant to cover administrative costs. The fees were funded by philanthropists, the schools themselves, and contributions from a small number of local authorities.
By matching these donations with the money that would have followed the looked-after child to their chosen state school, LACs can access some of the best schools in the country at no additional cost to the taxpayer.
One of the strongest indicators of a child’s likely education performance is household income; pupils from low-income families tend to do worse than the more affluent.
The education system attempts to counter this by adjusting the school funding formula to deliver more money for schools that have more deprived pupils – the ‘Pupil Premium’. As part of the Covid recovery efforts, schools have also been given money as part of the National Tuition Programme (NTP), to provide one-to-one or small group tuition to pupils who need it.
The problem from the children’s point of view is that none of this funding is ring-fenced for the pupils in question. It can be spent by the school in whatever way it sees fit and on whichever pupils it considers need support. There are good reasons for this, but it means that money intended to help poorer pupils isn’t necessarily spent on those pupils.
In the case of the NTP, it often is not spent at all. Across 2020/21 and 2021/22, a third of the money allocated to schools was not spent. In the 2022/23 financial year, 43 per cent was not spent at all.
I believe that there is a case for ring-fenced money to be spent on poorer pupils, as directed by their parents or carers, and so propose the creation of a ‘Parent Premium’ for every child who is eligible for the Pupil Premium: a budget for families to spend on their children’s education.
This could be organised through accounts similar to those the government creates for its tax-free childcare system, to be spent on tuition or other educational activities, or could be combined with other families’ premiums to enable small group tutoring or activities. It will also encourage families to register for free school meals to gain access to the money, thus increasing the quantity of Pupil Premium funding schools receive.
The final group of children most in need of support are those in schools judged ‘inadequate’. When a school is judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted, it is usually transferred to a different so-called responsible body – often an academy trust – to run.
Yet while this process has generally been successful at raising standards in the worst-performing schools, the ultimate decision as to which trust takes on a school lies with the Secretary of State for Education. Families of pupils affected have next to no say, despite caring deeply about their children’s education and have a vested interest in getting the right solutions to poor school performance.
Therefore, I suggest that affected families be given more say in who takes over a school when it is judged to be failing.
This should not be seen as giving parents the power to override the DfE; parents are not generally experts in turning around failing schools and their concerns are time-limited, tied to their child attending it, whereas the Department has to think about wider concerns and the longer term.
I propose instead that when a school is failing, the DfE pulls together a shortlist of academy trusts to which the school could be transferred, with its rationale for why these have been chosen.
Families of those in the school, or likely to attend it within a few years, should be able then to formally express their preference, which the DfE takes into account, and it should explain its final decision to them afterwards.
Taken together, I believe these three reforms would improve the lives of many children who are currently most likely to be failed by the system.
Andrew Lewer is the Conservative MP for Northampton South, and a member of the Education Select Committee.
As many have written on these pages in recent months, the record of success within England’s education system in recent years is one of which the Conservatives can be rightly proud.
As a result of changes introduced since 2010, schools are more orderly, teachers are better trained, the curriculum studied and exams taken are more rigorous, and when it comes to reading, our primary pupils are now among the best in the West. Evidence-informed reforms have raised standards, whilst ministers have increased the core schools’ budget to record levels, both in terms of overall size and per-pupil funding.
But money is not everything. Greater autonomy for headteachers and the involvement of parents in how schools are run has delivered more efficient spending which is better tailored to the specific needs of a school’s community.
This is the principle of choice: give parents more control over which school is best for their child, and schools encouraged to drive up standards and compete, or work together, to the benefit of students.
For decades, parents in England have been able to express a preference as to which state school their child attends, with the vast majority being offered a place at their top choice. Simultaneously, funding is pupil-led, meaning it follows the child, and a school’s funding reflects the number and characteristics of its pupils. Headteachers thus respond more directly to the needs of pupils and concerns of families.
However, a common attack against school choice is that it most benefits middle-class children, whose parents have the time and resources to get more directly involved in their education.
Many working-class pupils have benefitted from education reforms over the last decade. But those at the bottom of the economic pyramid do often have both the least control over their children’s educational experience – and the greatest need for it.
So what can be done to extend the benefits of recent reforms to those who need it most? By extending choice further.
In a new paper, Choices for Children, published this week by the Centre for Policy Studies, I propose three measures targeted at improving family choice for three student groups who experience the worst educational outcomes: ‘looked-after children’ (LACs), children from poorer backgrounds, and those in ‘inadequate’ schools. Let’s look at these in turn.
Children are only taken away from their parents and placed in the care of others in the most extreme of circumstances, so it is almost inevitable that by this point there has been a negative impact on the child’s emotional and academic development.
It is no surprise that looked-after children (LACs) tend to have extremely poor outcomes educationally, economically and otherwise; only 12.1 per cent of ‘children in need’ get 5s or better in both English and Maths GCSE, versus 49.8 per cent of other pupils.
Existing measures to support LACs education include being placed at the top of a waiting list if they need to change schools and local authorities being advised to place them only in schools judged ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’.
Authorities are also told that they should “seek a school or other education setting that is best suited to the child’s needs”, and that this “could be in a maintained school, academy or independent school, and those schools could be selective, non-selective, boarding or day schools.”
There is a transformational opportunity here.
The Royal National Children’s SpringBoard Foundation (RNCSF) runs a scheme which finds fully-funded places in state boarding and independent schools for children in or on the edge of care. Since 2020, 150 such children have benefited, without any money from the Department for Education (DfE) beyond a small grant to cover administrative costs. The fees were funded by philanthropists, the schools themselves, and contributions from a small number of local authorities.
By matching these donations with the money that would have followed the looked-after child to their chosen state school, LACs can access some of the best schools in the country at no additional cost to the taxpayer.
One of the strongest indicators of a child’s likely education performance is household income; pupils from low-income families tend to do worse than the more affluent.
The education system attempts to counter this by adjusting the school funding formula to deliver more money for schools that have more deprived pupils – the ‘Pupil Premium’. As part of the Covid recovery efforts, schools have also been given money as part of the National Tuition Programme (NTP), to provide one-to-one or small group tuition to pupils who need it.
The problem from the children’s point of view is that none of this funding is ring-fenced for the pupils in question. It can be spent by the school in whatever way it sees fit and on whichever pupils it considers need support. There are good reasons for this, but it means that money intended to help poorer pupils isn’t necessarily spent on those pupils.
In the case of the NTP, it often is not spent at all. Across 2020/21 and 2021/22, a third of the money allocated to schools was not spent. In the 2022/23 financial year, 43 per cent was not spent at all.
I believe that there is a case for ring-fenced money to be spent on poorer pupils, as directed by their parents or carers, and so propose the creation of a ‘Parent Premium’ for every child who is eligible for the Pupil Premium: a budget for families to spend on their children’s education.
This could be organised through accounts similar to those the government creates for its tax-free childcare system, to be spent on tuition or other educational activities, or could be combined with other families’ premiums to enable small group tutoring or activities. It will also encourage families to register for free school meals to gain access to the money, thus increasing the quantity of Pupil Premium funding schools receive.
The final group of children most in need of support are those in schools judged ‘inadequate’. When a school is judged ‘inadequate’ by Ofsted, it is usually transferred to a different so-called responsible body – often an academy trust – to run.
Yet while this process has generally been successful at raising standards in the worst-performing schools, the ultimate decision as to which trust takes on a school lies with the Secretary of State for Education. Families of pupils affected have next to no say, despite caring deeply about their children’s education and have a vested interest in getting the right solutions to poor school performance.
Therefore, I suggest that affected families be given more say in who takes over a school when it is judged to be failing.
This should not be seen as giving parents the power to override the DfE; parents are not generally experts in turning around failing schools and their concerns are time-limited, tied to their child attending it, whereas the Department has to think about wider concerns and the longer term.
I propose instead that when a school is failing, the DfE pulls together a shortlist of academy trusts to which the school could be transferred, with its rationale for why these have been chosen.
Families of those in the school, or likely to attend it within a few years, should be able then to formally express their preference, which the DfE takes into account, and it should explain its final decision to them afterwards.
Taken together, I believe these three reforms would improve the lives of many children who are currently most likely to be failed by the system.