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Schools in Winchester

The title of this Adjournment debate is “Schools in Winchester”; it has therefore been drawn fairly wide, and deliberately so. Supporting schools in my constituency, which for the record is Winchester and Chandler’s Ford during this debate, is a key focus for me. Winchester is my home; it is the place where my wife and I choose to live and bring up our children, Emily and William. They both attend local state schools, in primary right now, with my daughter about to make the transition to “big school”, as it is called, in September.

Like every MP, I get into my schools regularly—I was in one just on Friday—and this means that I see the system as a parent and as a local representative. Here is what people say where I come from:

“The schools in Winchester are excellent .”

“House prices are driven up by the quality of the schools here.”

“You can’t go wrong whichever school you go to.”

There is a lot of truth in each of those statements.

Across Hampshire for year R admissions, 92% of parents are offered their top choice of school. In the county, 91% of children attend schools that are rated good or outstanding—that was 69% when the Government came to office in 2010—and 68% of pupils in the county reached the expected standard in reading, writing and maths at key stage 2, compared with 65% across the country as a whole. In my Winchester constituency, we are ahead of the national average in the year 1 phonics check, in outcomes in reading, writing and maths at the end of primary and in the key progress 8 calculation, which takes primary school outcomes and measures them against a child’s GCSE outcomes five years later.

In my constituency, every school bar one is Ofsted rated good or outstanding, and that applied to every school until quite recently. Yes, there is a plan to turn around Stanmore Primary School, which requires improvement right now, but it is a lovely school with a huge amount going for it, and I hope it knows that we in Winchester are right behind it and supporting it under the new leadership to come. As well as some 30 primary or junior schools in the constituency, we have three secondary schools in the city: Westgate and Henry Beaufort, which are ranked good, and King’s, which is excellent. We have two secondaries down in Chandler’s Ford: Toynbee, which is good and very much the rising star, and the excellent-ranked Thornden Academy, which is one of the top-ranked schools in the whole country. Finally, we have the Perins Academy over in Alresford. Perins is worthy of further mention because it heads up the Perins multi-academy trust, or MAT, which I know the Minister will be pleased to hear, primarily created to bring under its wing the previously failing Sun Hill Junior School in the town.

We also have some strong leaders in Winchester’s schools. They are committed individuals who are always professional and who always engage sensibly and helpfully with me, for which I am grateful. On leadership, I just want to pause and pay special tribute to a lady called Fey Wood from Oliver’s Battery Primary School in Winchester.

She retires later this month after a long career in teaching and a recent cancer battle, which she has come through with her trademark toughness and a lot of love from the city. When she came to the school in 2015, just 12 pupils applied to join the reception year. This year, there will be 34 who want to go to the school. I wish Fey a very happy and healthy retirement and thank her for everything she has done for the children and parents of Oliver’s Battery during her five years with us.

So we have got it all going on, as they say, and I cannot claim, as a constituency MP, that my mailbag is consistently full of complaints from parents about the quality of the education their children are receiving or from teachers about the policies of Her Majesty’s Government. The Minister will be pleased to hear that. I first became the MP for Winchester nine years ago, and in the early years of the 2010 Parliament we had major capacity problems, especially in the city of Winchester. The baby boom that strangely coincided with the financial crash of 2008 had rather predictably by 2012 led to demand outstripping supply for us. If I am honest, Hampshire was very slow to plan for this, but in the face of a pretty concerted campaign by me and local parents, its response was first class.

One of my proudest achievements so far as Winchester’s MP was to deliver a £10 million investment plan that brought 420 new primary places across the city online for September 2014 and included expansions at Saint Peter’s—the Catholic school in Winchester—All Saints, St Bede and Weeke, plus the creation of Hampshire’s first all-through school at the Westgate, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) visited when she was Secretary of State.

So when it comes to schools in Winchester, capacity is in a good place now. Like many areas, we have major housing development taking place, including the new Kings Barton community, which will host the new Barton Farm Academy, sponsored by the excellent University of Winchester. I am thrilled to be a trustee of that school-to-be. We were on site last month for the ground-breaking ceremony for what will be a 420-place academy when full. Pupils will benefit from the university’s value-driven ethos, evidence-based learning and teaching and a passionate commitment to social justice. It is also an eco-school, and we are already incredibly proud of it.

7 pm

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 9(3)).

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—(Mike Freer .)