Political reporter
chief political correspondent and education correspondent
Deprived children in England will “pay the price” of the government’s changes to schools, Kemi Badenoch has said as she accused ministers of “an act of vandalism”.
At Prime Minister’s Questions, the Conservative leader argued that the government’s Schools Bill would cut pay for teachers in academies, close down routes into teaching and block failing schools from automatically becoming academies.
Sir Keir Starmer said academies had been introduced by the previous Labour government and were “here to stay”.
He said it was a “disgrace” that Tory MPs opposed the bill, which also aims to protect vulnerable children, set up breakfast clubs and limit uniform costs.
The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is a wide-ranging bill which includes measures to create a register of children who are not in school and allow local authorities to intervene if a child’s home environment is assessed as unsuitable or unsafe.
However, it is the changes to academies’ freedoms which have come under most political scrutiny.
Badenoch used all six of her questions at PMQs to ask about the bill.
She argued that academies – first introduced in the late 2000s – had led to improved performances by children in England, adding “poor children in England now do better than wealthier children in Wales”.
She told MPs the government’s changes were “wrecking a cross-party consensus that lasted for decades”.
“Teachers and parents will be horrified at just how bad this bill is. Even his own MPs may not realise it, but the bill will cut teachers’ pay.”
Sir Keir replied that it was important for schools to have flexibility on pay and that the government had introduced an amendment to the bill “to achieve that aim”.
Currently, academies, which are independent of local authorities, have the power to decide how much to spend on teachers’ salaries.
The original wording of the bill would have changed this but for the last few weeks Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson has repeated the line “there will be a floor, no ceiling” on pay.
On Tuesday evening, the government agreed to amend the wording in the bill. Instead, academies will have to have “due regard” to the national pay agreements.
Following PMQs, a Downing Street spokesman said the amendment to the bill was “a sensible step to clarify our ambition for teachers’ pay and conditions”.
“The amendment makes very clear the government’s intention to set a floor on pay but no ceiling so that all state school teachers can rely on the core pay offer,” he added.
The Confederation of School Trusts welcomed the changes – but said there were still parts of the bill that concerned them, including restrictions on bringing people with specialist subject knowledge (but not a specific formal teaching qualification) into the classroom.
Badenoch told the Commons that the bill implies “doctors are not sufficiently qualified to teach biology, that Olympic medallists can not teach PE”, and asked why the prime minister was closing routes into teaching.
“She knows that’s not right,” Sir Keir replied but added that it “should not be extraordinary” to suggest that teachers in schools should be qualified.
Badenoch also criticised the bill for removing a guarantee that failing schools would automatically be turned into academies.
“It is an attack on excellence. It is an attack on higher standards. It is an attack on aspiration,” she said.
Sir Keir said his government was committed to academies and repeated his attack on Conservative MPs for voting against a bill which included “vital protections for children”.
“The bill benefits children who need the nourishment of a breakfast club, the bill benefits the families that can’t afford uniforms, the bill benefits the children who are currently out of school and nobody knows where they are, the bill benefits the children who could be taken out of school by abusers if this bill doesn’t go through.”
He said the opposition leader should “change her mind” and back the measures.
The subject of academies is one where the Conservatives are united and keen to defend their record, with one shadow cabinet minister telling the : “It’s one of the few clear success stories we have to tell.”
Academy schools were first introduced under Sir Tony Blair and enthusiastically expanded by the Conservatives when they came to power in 2010.
So far only one Labour MP – Siobhain McDonagh – has publicly criticised the bill, however it is privately causing significant anxiety among Labour MPs, generally on the right of the party, who are proud of academies.
These are predominantly MPs who are loyal to the government anyway and would not vote against this legislation, which is expected to become law by spring.
