Nick Gibb jeered at union conference as he defends plans to take all English schools out of local government control

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The schools minister Nick Gibb drew laughter, jeers and heckles from teachers as he stated the case for the government’s academisation plans.

The Bognor MP failed to win over members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) union when he took part in a question-and-answer session at their conference in Liverpool on Monday.

Government plans to remove 17,000 English primaries from state control and make them privately run within six years have prompted concern among education professionals. Plans to turn all secondary schools into academies had been announced previously.

Asked to defend the government’s education white paper, which has been widely criticised by teachers, unions and Tory local councillors, Gibb said: “I’m spending time talking to colleagues who have expressed a concern.

“But the whole academies programme is about having a profession-led system, so that the profession is in charge and not local authority officials. That’s the system we’re moving to. If you talk to headteachers who become heads of academies, they have flourished.”

One audience member shouted “rubbish” while a handful of others jeered and some laughed at the minister’s suggestions.

The academisation plans, announced in the budget last month, prompted protests from unions who said they were concerned about removing schools from local authority control.

Members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) have already voted to ballot for strike action after rejecting the government’s academies plan. Delegates at the NUT’s annual conference in Brighton on 26 March voted overwhelmingly against privatisation.

Despite the vitriol, the NUT’s collective defiance may yet fall on deaf ears in Whitehall after Nicky Morgan ruled out any U-turn over academisation.

The education secretary told the NASUWT conference in Birmingham last month that there would be “no pulling back” and “no reverse gear” on the government’s education reforms.

Support for academisation has been hard to find among teaching staff, who have staged marches around the country in protest at the plans.

Labour said the scheme would face a £1.1bn funding shortfall, but the government said this was “completely untrue”.

Speaking in Liverpool, Gibb said: “They’re not right, they haven’t taken into account money made available in the spending review. Labour, when they did their calculations, did not look at that.

“We want there to be more autonomy in the schools academy system. People will make mistakes from time to time but we have a much more rigorous scrutiny over academies than maintained schools. The scrutiny is much greater than it’s ever been. Transparency is the greatest disinfectant.”

Asked if he accepted there was a recruitment crisis, based on research by the ATL that found four in five teachers had thought about leaving the profession, Gibb said: “I think it’s a big challenge.”

He said: “I talk to headteachers all the time, and they tell me how difficult it is to recruit maths teachers and foreign languages teachers. But I don’t think we should be talking down the teaching profession. It’s a great profession to be in and that’s the message I convey.”