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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
That this House takes note of the achievements of free schools and academies.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I am delighted to open today’s debate on the achievements of academies and free schools. We know that a high-quality education system creates opportunity for all and gives every child the best chance to realise their potential, whatever their background. When we get it right, education helps young people develop the knowledge, character and resilience to succeed, no matter what life throws at them. Before I begin my remarks, I remind noble Lords that I was director of New Schools Network, a charity that was dedicated to supporting groups who wanted to set up free schools, a job of which I remain immensely proud.
I want to make clear that the focus on academies and free schools in this debate is not to ignore or undervalue the thousands of excellent maintained schools that do an outstanding job for their pupils. However, in the form of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, there is a dark cloud on the horizon for academies and free schools, hence this debate is an opportunity to remind ourselves of the positive progress made over the past 25 years and the role they have played in that success.
We have seen welcome improvements in our educational outcomes. Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the PISA league tables for maths, from 19th to ninth for reading and from 11th to ninth for science. Across the country, 90% of schools are now rated good or outstanding, compared with 68% in 2010, meaning that over 1 million more pupils are being educated in such schools. In the same period, the number of academies in England increased from 202 schools to 10,640. Reading is the building block of all learning and, thanks to the focus on synthetic phonics championed by Sir Nick Gibb, England now has the best primary school readers in the western world, with PIRLS league tables for reading rating England as the top country.
Of course, we must not be complacent. There remain significant challenges that must be addressed: closing the attainment gap for pupils on free school meals, which had narrowed before Covid; improving attendance; ensuring that SEND pupils get the quality of education they deserve; and dealing with the growing mental health crisis facing our young people, to name just a few. I recognise that not all academies, trusts or free schools have been a success or delivered the high quality of education that we would expect, so it remains imperative for us to continue to interrogate the reasons behind failures and variations in performance and ensure that we act on the lessons they teach us.
That should not diminish our pride in the improvements that have taken place thanks to the hard work of teachers, support staff, pupils and governors. Much of that success has been achieved thanks to the cross-party consensus that we have seen around education over the past 25 years, placing value on the freedom and autonomy of school leaders and teachers so that, as Tony Blair said, the school is in charge of its own destiny—counterbalanced with strong accountability and acting on evidence of what success looks like. Many of these systemic improvements have been driven by the academies programme, which has had cross-party support since it was started in 2000 by the then Labour Government, and which itself built on the city technology colleges introduced in the 1980s.
In their first phase, academies provided a catalyst for new thinking within the system, bringing in external sponsors to take over failing schools. These sponsors came from a wide range of backgrounds and provided teachers with new opportunities to develop educational strategies to raise standards. Indeed, several of my noble friends speaking today are exemplars of the passionate individuals who took advantage of this opportunity to involve themselves directly in improving the life chances of some of our most disadvantaged young people.
The coalition Government’s Academies Act 2010 expanded academy status through the system, allowing more schools to benefit from the freedoms they enjoyed and to have the flexibilities to innovate, raise standards and achieve improved outcomes for their students. The diversity in provision in the school system—led by academies, free schools and UTCs, which I am sure my noble friend Lord Baker will talk more about shortly—has enabled a level of innovation and improvement that was simply not possible under the previous local authority-controlled approach.
Led by forward-thinking heads, entrepreneurial teachers have had greater freedom and opportunity to put into practice their ideas about how to best address the specific needs of their pupils, and we can see the impact that this can have. Between 2018 and 2023, the number of maintained schools rated good or outstanding increased by 4%, whereas the equivalent rating for sponsored academies—those required to academise due to poor performance—saw a 14% improvement.
Additionally, the academisation of education has helped to improve resilience across the system, with increasing numbers of trusts around the country allowing groups of schools to work together in deep and purposeful collaboration. Multi-academy trusts such as Ark, Harris, Star Academies, Mercia Learning Trust and Dixons Academies Trust have all been instrumental in helping turn around underperforming schools through strong leadership, sharing expertise and resources, as well as taking advantage of the free school programme to set up entirely new provision in areas of need and disadvantage.
I would argue that this has led to the positive development of increased collaboration across the entire education system. The latest Confederation of School Trusts national survey indicates that 72% of academy trusts support maintained schools. The free school programme has allowed the independent and state sectors to come together to open outstanding new provision, while the UTC model has embedded employers at the very heart of technical education.
From 2010, the free school programme built further on the original success of academies. The setting up of these new schools aimed to increase choice, improve standards and, in particular, foster innovation. The programme empowered communities, teachers, academy trusts, social entrepreneurs and others to open new state schools and led to the establishment of schools which dared to think the unthinkable. Representing a huge variety of educational philosophies, curriculum approaches, faiths and communities, free schools have, I believe, helped demonstrate the value of having a genuinely diverse and autonomous school system. New schools such as XP School, Marine Academy, Reach Academy Feltham, King’s Leadership Academy and Michaela, all set up under the programme, have injected a new dynamism into the school system, offering innovative ways of delivering a high-quality education—often to some of the most disadvantaged young people in England.
Not only has the free school programme seen new mainstream schools open but new special education and alternative provision schools have added capacity and expertise to the system to help some of our most vulnerable young people. Crucially, free schools have provided parents with greater choice, which in turn has helped raise standards across the system. It is incredible to think that, in a country in which setting up, let alone building, anything new is nearly impossible, over 700 free schools have opened since 2010, creating over 373,000 new school places.
The impact of these schools has outweighed their number. They are more likely to be based in areas of deprivation and where low standards had become entrenched. At their best, free schools have not only made a significant difference to their own pupils’ education but have had an impact far beyond this, helping to raise standards and aspirations across their whole area. The London Academy of Excellence in Newham, for instance, has had a significant impact on the performance of competing sixth forms to the benefit of all local young people.
Today, 25% of free schools are rated as outstanding—the highest type of any state school—and they now outperform other types of state-funded schools at every stage of education. Regrettably, there is some uncertainty over the future of the programme, as the Education Secretary is reviewing approvals previously given to 44 free schools to open. Can the Minister give an update as to when a decision on their fate might be made, to help end this damaging uncertainty currently facing parents and teachers?
This is just a brief overview of the positive change we have seen across our education system over the last quarter of a century. As we look to the future and build on the tangible improvements we have seen in our education system, we should be looking at how all schools can benefit from the freedoms and flexibilities that have been reserved for academies, free schools and UTCs, not take them away. I must admit I am finding it quite depressing to hear of the concern felt across the education sector by those who have been involved in helping to achieve these successes but who are now asking why the foundations of those improvements are being threatened.
What is the problem that the Government are seeking to resolve through the powers in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which removes the very freedoms that have helped schools improve, tackled underperformance and given more children a better chance of a good education? It is incumbent on all of us to look at the evidence and focus policy on strengthening, not weakening, our school system. This includes learning lessons from where academies and free schools have not performed, to ensure that we can continue to drive improvements and best practice across the system.
I hope the Minister reflects on what I am sure will be outstanding contributions to today’s debate and goes back to her departmental colleagues with a renewed purpose to build on the successes of academies, free schools and UTCs, not unpick their foundations.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I start by thanking the Minister, and my noble friend Lord Addington for allowing me to speak now and so be able to catch the last train to Liverpool. I will have to depart a little earlier.
I want to recognise all our schools and teachers. All our children should have the right education for them. Some wonderful things happen in academies, which the noble Baroness mentioned. Some wonderful things also happen in maintained schools, which I do not think the noble Baroness mentioned.
Lord Storey
Oh, did she? I apologise.
We want the best for all our children. Let us be very clear at the beginning: empirically, there appears to be very little difference between the education attainment achieved by local maintained schools and academy schools. Figures from the House of Lords Library suggest that, performance wise, there is very little difference. Interestingly, the Institute of Education recognised that, while multi-academy trusts accounted for some of the highest performing schools, they also had far more lower performing schools.
It is right to be looking now at the situation of academies. We have a new Government, we are having a curriculum review, and we will soon have the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill before us. There are some differences with academies, so let us understand those. First, on qualified teachers, there is a need across the country for expert teachers who follow a transparent curriculum so that parents can be assured that their children are receiving a good education. A legal teaching qualification would ensure a certain standard of teaching. I would not want my children to be taught by an unqualified teacher. Parents should have that right as well.
Let us look at the national curriculum. We call it national but it is not, because it is not taught in Scotland or Northern Ireland, and, as we have heard, academies do not have to teach it. I want a curriculum that is paramount in ensuring that children all receive a certain standard of education. It was never the intention for academies to have freedom around the national curriculum. Imposing these controls would ensure that a base is covered but would not necessarily restrict how far academies can go with their teaching. I hope the curriculum review, when it is published, will recognise that all schools need space to develop particular aspects and units of the curriculum. For example, in Liverpool, I would like schools to be able to develop further teaching on the slave trade. I would like schools to be able to develop creative subjects, which currently they are not always able to deal with.
We should be increasing local authority powers over who can be admitted to academies. Giving them powers to restrict certain actions by academies would enable them to function as a monitoring body to hold the actions of academies accountable to government standards.
I have only to mention off-rolling as an example, where academies have almost ridden a coach and horses through admission policies by deciding that they will not have certain children in their school. When it comes to special educational needs, they say, “Oh, we haven’t got the the facilities; we haven’t got the teachers, so we won’t be admitting those children”. That is totally wrong.
Let us look at salaries. In 2023-24, the median salary for a classroom teacher in an academy was £44,870, while in an LA secondary school, it was £44,677. There is a case for paying more where there are shortage subjects; that is important. It is a scandal—and the last Government should take responsibility for this—that 400 schools in England do not have a qualified physics teacher at sixth-form level. You have only to look at shortages of specialist teachers in other subjects as well. I hope that the new Government, never mind getting to grips with the salary scales for all teachers, will make a push to get those posts filled in shortage subjects but also give an opportunity for teachers to be paid a little bit more to make sure that they are interested in teaching that subject.
Lord Hampton (CB)
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for enabling this vital debate. As ever, I declare my interest as a teacher in an academy in Hackney. As the noble Baroness said, this debate is in response to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, on which I shall have much more to say at Second Reading.
I have only ever taught in academies. I trained in a Catholic academy, despite the fact that I am not a Catholic. You will hear some people say how terrible academies are—that they are just fortresses of weird ideas and legalised ritual bullying. Near where we live is one of the original academies, Mossbourne Community Academy, which has a reputation for strictness and superb results. When my son was at primary school in year 6, we thought that he had no need for a strict school—but gradually, through his year, he became more and more frustrated that there were two boys in his class who were causing disruption. The teacher struggled to contain the behaviour, and the learning of the whole class was compromised. Often, the teacher would get so frustrated that he would punish the whole class for something that perhaps only one or two had done.
We were lucky enough to get our son into Mossbourne, where, because the behaviour is so good, he could actually learn his lessons; he could express an opinion and not get laughed at and he could get on with his studying in peace. There is nothing creative about background noise when you are trying to concentrate, whether it is in maths, product design or art. I was so impressed with the school that I joined it a year later, and I have been a teacher there ever since, alongside the other three of our children. There have been accusations of systemic bullying within academies, and specifically within my school, which I do not recognise. It is one of the top-performing non-selective schools in the country for value-added results. Our children are succeeding, and no child succeeds when they are unhappy.
After a similar debate, I took the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, around the school. The noble Earl and the noble Lord have been effusive in their praise of the school ever since.
The previous iteration of the school, Hackney Downs School, when it closed, had a 5% pass rate for either maths or English GCSE. Last year, 85% of our PP students achieved a grade 4 plus in both English and maths GCSE. Hackney is still one of the most deprived boroughs in the country, and 54% of our year 11 cohort last year were pupil premium. Tragically, one of our pupils, Pharrell Garcia, was stabbed and killed at the end of last year.
It is within this gloom that academies such as Mossbourne and the remarkable Carr Manor Community School in Leeds shine brightly in very difficult circumstances. They are a massive success story.
We have a Richard Rogers-designed, wooden-framed, stunning building that offers a varied and interesting curriculum, including courses for future medical and architectural students. My daughter does rowing in year 9, as part of her PE. So why are we trying to destroy this?
The noble Lord, Lord Moylan, described the buses Bill as
“statist and anti-enterprise. It is also mildly nostalgic and backward-looking—a sort of return to the Attlee Government”.—[Official Report, 8/1/25; col. 783.]
I would say: right sentiment, wrong Bill.
Perhaps I may end by quoting what my head teacher, Rebecca Warren, says about these plans: “It’s a disaster for disadvantaged pupils, a condescending lowering of standards that will reverse the strides made in education over the last 20 years and ruin those children who need rigour and aspiration the most. My blood is boiling. I feel a mixture of heartbreak and anger, but with a feeling of terror thrown in”.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Evans of Bowes Park, for securing this debate on the “achievements” of free schools and academies—although that is not the noun that I would use.
Our debate already has focused—and I suspect largely will focus—on exam results. My focus will be broader, for I, and the Green Party collectively, do not think that education should be for exams or focused primarily on future employment but should provide life skills, particularly an interest in and capacity for lifelong learning, and allow for the development of innate interests and talents, the blossoming of body and mind, that provides the foundation for a decent, healthy life for each and every child and young person. Schools should be at the centre of active, lively, flourishing communities and not the cause of massive traffic jams as parents cross the city back and forth to hunt for the “best” school.
The creation and—often forcible—spread of free schools and academies, particularly chains, which account now for more than 80% of secondary schools in England and heading towards half of primaries, has actively worked against schools meeting those goals. They have been set to compete against each other for exam results, to outdo each other with the appearance and actuality of harsh and punitive discipline, particularly in poorer communities, with competition that encourages them to expel, or shuffle out, pupils who do not fit “the brand”.
How might we judge that cross-party consensus of the past 25 years? I have one league table: the Children’s Society offers us a crucial and deeply disturbing tool in its annual study of 15 year-olds across 27 nations, on which the UK ranks bottom. Last year, 25% of UK 15 year-olds reported low life satisfaction, compared with 7% of Dutch children of the same age. Low levels of life satisfaction were at least twice as prevalent among UK 15 year-olds compared with their peers in Finland, Denmark, Romania, Portugal, Croatia and Hungary—that makes my blood boil.
Blame for the unhappiness and the mental health crisis that the Financial Times highlights today with figures on mental health admissions to general medical wards, reflecting what one expert described as
“a population-level increase in mental health conditions”,
is often put on the rise of social media or on concern about the future linked to the climate emergency and nature crisis. Those are factors, but they have smartphones and the climate crisis in those comparable countries too.
What about physical health? Of children aged between 11 and 15, 19% are obese, and less than half of our children and young people are meeting the recommendation of 60 minutes of daily physical activity—and 30% did less than 30 minutes a day. We also all know that education about life skills, such as first aid, cooking and nutrition, food growing, financial literacy and indeed the enjoyment of reading for pleasure, which your Lordships’ House discussed earlier today, is sadly lacking. The FT’s Christmas campaign was directed at providing financial education.
Even worse, what about those who are forced out because they do not fit in? Figures for the autumn term 2023-24 are horrifying, showing nearly 350,000 suspensions—a rate of 413 suspensions per 10,000 pupils. The rate of expulsions is up too, with 4,200 children permanently excluded in one term, up from 3,100 the previous year. Those are the formal figures: from travelling around the country, I hear many reports of informal exclusions. Parents, often of children with special educational needs, are being encouraged—strongly suggested—to take the home-schooling route, much against their will.
Then there is attendance. There is a focus on the 150,000 “severely absent” children missing 50% or more of school sessions in the last year. That has tended to look at individuals and their families, but why is school not an attractive, welcoming, nurturing place but one to be dodged at almost all costs, particularly for vulnerable pupils?
My words are not intended in any way to be a criticism of some 500,000 teachers and other school professionals, the vast majority of whom I know, from regular school visits, do their best to provide a rounded education and a healthy, caring environment, all too often in opposition to government policies and institutional structures imposed on them, and in the face of grossly inadequate funding. I acknowledge that there are many other aspects of British society that impact badly on young people’s lives, but many of the young people I talk to tell me that school is something that harmed them—that they survived. If they did indeed struggle through the experience, they endured it, waiting to escape. That is not what school should be. Yet the academisation and expansion of free schools, competing against each other, delivering large profits to private providers of goods and services and high pay to fat cat bosses, is, together with a central ideology of valuing exam factories, fundamentally failing our young people.
Lord Harris of Peckham (Con)
My Lords, I am very disappointed with this new Bill. When, 34 years ago, Margaret Thatcher and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, came to see me to open a CTC school, I did not know much about them. I went to see the school and thought I could not do any worse. In five years, that school was twice the most improved school in the country, going from nine to 54, and 54 to 92. It was great. Then Tony Blair created academies and, with the help of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and Michael Gove, we opened about 30 more academies. Today, we have 55 academies, with 45,000 children. One in 40 children in London goes to our academies, and we have free schools as well. Those schools were all failing when we took them. Today, 73% of our schools are outstanding, against a national average of 14%. Academies are working.
We first took on schools in the primary sector about 12 years ago. We found it very important because, from looking at the records, if a child gets a good education at primary level they are likely to do better later in life. We have 22 primary schools, 18 of which are now outstanding and two are good. These are giving children a better education and a better chance in life to go on to secondary education. I must tell you about two schools. One was a primary school in Croydon. It was in special measures for 10. We took it over three and a half years ago and within two and a half years it was outstanding, with 70% of the same children in it. The inspector said, “This is one of the most improved schools I have ever seen so quickly”. We have to make sure that we give every child in this country the best education possible. With the academy group and other schools working together, we can do it. Because a child gets only one chance of getting a great education, we have to make sure that we give it to them.
I will tell you about another school, Downhills. Everybody in the Labour Party was against us, I am sorry to say, including David Lammy, who led a petition against us. He also let children come into one of our stores in Tottenham—60 children stood in that shop with banners, “Don’t let Harris have this school”. It was terrible. I went there with my wife and we were threatened that, if we went back again, something would happen to us. We put signs up outside but they took them down. They actually put concrete signs there, which cost us money to get rid of. Now that school is outstanding and oversubscribed. The Telegraph this weekend said how good it was—I promise you, none of that information came from us. The parents want their children to go to those schools, and we have to make sure that every child in this country gets the best education possible.
We have three schools in Tottenham. The two I talked about are outstanding primaries and we have a large, 1,500-pupil secondary school, sixth form and primary, which has also become outstanding. Tottenham is one of the hardest places in this country for schools and everyone who goes to one of our schools there has an outstanding education.
Interestingly, 61% of our disadvantaged sixth-form students went to university last year, and 15% of them went to a Russell group university. What a great thing that we are getting disadvantaged children into universities. The school just over the road, with which we had a lot of problems, has 600 students. It was the seventh-best school in the country, beating schools such as Eton. These are free schools—40% of the children who go to that school are on free school meals. It is the teachers and people there who make them work. They come and work Saturdays. They want to get on in life and be motivated. We have to make sure we continue that.
We need a small number of unqualified staff at our schools—for sport, music, dancing and science. We want to keep them. They are good. You are not going to get a 55 or 60 year-old man who does sport or dancing teacher qualified. We have won lots of competitions for dancing and singing—and “The Voice” and “Britain’s Got Talent”, which people have won. It is very hard to keep science teachers, and we have to make sure that we do.
Failing schools are letting people down. We have to make sure we do not let our children down. We want more academies. We want better schools for everybody. Together, we can make it work.
Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)
My Lords, how inspiring it is to follow my noble friend Lord Harris. His enthusiasm for the work of his life shines out and encourages us all. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on her sparkling and enthusiastic opening to this debate.
Surrounded as I am by noble Lords on this side, I wonder whether I dare confess—but I am going to—that, when academies were first introduced by the Blair Government, I had some misgivings. However, it is true that the spirit of the academy movement—a loosening of local authority control—was already present in the creation of grant-maintained schools, specialist grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges under previous Conservative Governments.
In my professional life before politics, I had been the chief inspector of schools in a local authority. I strongly believed that the most important public service there is, namely education—also known as the future of our children——should be democratically accountable through elected bodies. But, from being in a job that meant I was in schools and colleges a lot of the time, I also knew that the excellence or otherwise of any institution, including schools, depended on the quality of the head. It was also obvious that the best heads ran the best schools because they were innovative, creative and determined to make their schools serve pupils, parents and their neighbourhoods.
However, I began to note that those heads were frequently frustrated by their inability to pursue change inside the local authority system. They needed more flexibility in recruitment and to be able to vary teachers’ pay to attract the best. They needed the opportunity to vary the curriculum to reflect the needs of their pupils and generally unleash creativity within their institutions.
When the academies movement got under way, it did indeed attract those creative and innovative heads and teachers, whose achievements have created a system in which nearly 50% of all our schools are now academies. The results—particularly when compared with those in Scotland and Wales, which pursued a different path—are more than encouraging. Since 2000 the UK has moved from 21st to seventh in the international league tables in maths, and from 11th to ninth in science. One of the most impressive achievements is the result of the requirement for failing local authority schools to become academies, thus giving those schools more support and fresh hope for children, often in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, for the future. As Tony Blair said at the 2005 Labour Party conference,
“the beneficiaries are not fat cats. They are some of the poorest families in the poorest parts of Britain”.
My noble friend Lord Harris has given graphic illustrations of that.
While I obviously understand the wish of a new Government to innovate, I do not know and cannot understand why they would want to limit the current powers of academies to vary the curriculum to meet the needs of the pupils in their schools. Academies, like local authority schools, are inspected by Ofsted, and any irregularities that affect pupils, disadvantaged or otherwise, would surely be picked up and dealt with. Regular Ofsted inspections should also meet the Government’s concerns about qualified teacher status and the relaxing of requirements for that status in academies.
I greatly respect the Minister. I have in my mind that last week she apologised for sometimes being grumpy. I hope I am not going to bring out a display of grumpiness from her, but I hope she will allow me to ask the obvious question: exactly what problem with academies does the new Bill seek to solve? I had always believed that academies were an area of cross-party agreement, so my hope is that this debate and the passage of the new education Bill will continue in a good spirit. Good educational standards can only benefit our children, who will bear the burden of the future.
Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest in that I am the life president of the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, which promotes university technical colleges.
The Minister will be glad to know that I support many things in the Bill: money for under-fives, breakfast clubs and special educational needs. I also support the registration of home education, which is a tautology—it is more “home” than “education”. But I am not so keen on the Government’s thinking about the new curriculum. There are glimpses of what they would like to do in Clauses 40, 41 and 45. They would like maintained schools to merge with free schools and academies in order to have a broad and balanced curriculum. That will not in itself produce economic growth. Over the past few years I have learned that if you are to have economic growth you need difference, variety, choice and competition, and those are not in the Bill.
What is needed most in education today is an injection into ordinary comprehensives of strong technical and practical education. If the new schools that Ministers want to create have just a broad and balanced curriculum, there will be no space at all in the teaching week for high-quality technical and practical education. You cannot do it; you have to spend much more time than that.
That is why, over 15 years ago, Ron Dearing and I devised a new type of technical school, a university technical college. It is different because it is for 14 to 18 year-olds and has a very practical curriculum determined by local employers. It is also so different because 14 year-olds in their first term will spend two days a week either in workshops, in computer or product design, visiting local companies or having work experience there. That cannot be fitted into an obligation to do a full national curriculum. We of course teach English, maths and science to a high level. We get very good marks in T-levels and A-levels, and we are very proud of that.
University technical colleges are never called free schools. We are specialist schools, and we have quite remarkable results. We are so popular that we had to turn away 5,000 children last September, and we will be turning away even more this year. In Ofsted we get over 82% good and outstanding. Every year, 23% of our students who leave at 18 become apprentices, compared with only 4% at an ordinary school; 50% go to university to do STEM subjects, which is 75% better than any other state school; and the rest get local jobs. We are actually promoting economic recovery by 96% of our students going into work or higher education. That is quite a unique contribution and one that should not be sacrificed.
When we started, we focused on engineering, advanced manufacturing and computing. Now it is much more sophisticated. We now have lessons in cybersecurity with GCHQ and lessons in virtual reality, run by games companies, which involve wearing helmets on your head. With automotive companies we have CADCAM, because children have to be able to design on a screen and operate 3D printers. Most children should leave school at 18 knowing how to work a 3D printer, an essential part of all activities in Britain today.
As a result, we help economic recovery more than any other educational institution in the country. We also have a very low unemployment rate of about 4%; the national average is 13.6%. The one thing that the Government are going to have to deal with over the next 14 years is the problem of rising youth unemployment.
If the measure goes through, I hope we recognise that specialist schools such as UTCs should be exempt from the obligations to provide a broad and balanced curriculum. We do English, maths and science, but we also need time for the practical and technical work that local employers lead.
Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a social mobility commissioner, but I am of course speaking in a personal capacity. My focus in that role is promoting the importance of common standards and the family to social mobility, and I do that because there are others on the commission far more equipped to examine education policy, as there are here in the Chamber today. I congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park, not just on her compelling introduction to this debate but on the wealth of experience in this policy area that she brings to the topic.
My main reason for promoting the role of the family, though, is that credit for what I have achieved as an adult must go to my parents for the attitude and standards they instilled in me. Sadly, it was not my schooling at a comprehensive in the late 1970s and early 1980s. My school was shiny and new with lots of facilities, but it lacked discipline, ambition and school uniform. We were considered modern, but I recall that when I collected my CSE exam results, the back of the slip said that the average grade for the area was 5. I am not sure what the equivalent of grade 5 CSE is in today’s GCSE, but a grade 1 CSE, the highest level, was an O-level grade C equivalent.
I tend to think that I got on in life despite my education, not because of it, but that does not mean that I do not believe in the importance of quality education. Indeed, it has been inspiring so far this afternoon to listen to some noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and my noble friend Lord Harris. A quality education would have made my life much easier, I believe, but my experience has reinforced to me the importance of standards. It does not matter how academically able a child is, or whether they are better suited to technical or vocational learning; they will not succeed unless the adults responsible for them, whether at home or in school, set standards and uphold them. That is what I have seen when I have visited many academy schools.
For the last 14 or 15 years, I have visited a different school in Nottinghamshire at least once a year as part of the charity Speakers for Schools. What has struck me since I started doing this is that, I think without exception, every school in Nottinghamshire that has bid for me to speak to their students has been an academy or a failing school which another academy has taken over, and the same head whose original school where I have spoken has asked me to attend. All these academies are different, but the teachers I have met and their commitment to standards has been consistent.
Out of curiosity, last year I applied online, like anyone can, to visit Katharine Birbalsingh’s Michaela school—I am surprised that I am the first Member of your Lordships’ House speaking today to mention it. Oh my God, I was completely blown away. Every single person I encountered, from the security guard on the gate—who is necessary because of the threats Katharine has been subject to—to every teacher and all their happy and healthy children I met, was impressive. When you go and visit, and see it with your own eyes, it is not surprising why that school is so successful—that very much chimes with what the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, said.
I want every child in this country to get the opportunity to learn like that. That the Secretary of State for Education cannot bring herself to congratulate Michaela is bad enough, but the fact that Bridget Phillipson, Keir Starmer and this Government want to dismantle the structure which makes such a school possible, and all the schools that I have had the pleasure to visit in recent years, is, to my mind, nothing short of criminal. That the Government are doing so while at the same time saying that growth is their top priority and setting out ambitions for the UK to be at the forefront of AI and all other forms of new technology makes absolutely no sense.
Take it from someone with direct experience of the upheaval in our education system in the 1970s: the Government may believe that dismantling the current education structure will increase equality and opportunity, but what they risk is lowering standards for everyone. I urge them to think again.
Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate, and I note my interest in the register.
I am pleased to speak today, but of course hanging over us is the Damoclean sword of the schools Bill. Why does it matter? In 2010, approximately 5% of all state schools were failing or in special measures. By 2024, that figure had reduced to 1%—an 80% reduction over a period when academic standards became more rigorous. This heavy lifting fell largely to the academies programme. If a school was judged failing, it was automatically academised. The deal was simple, everybody understood it and it worked. Under this new Bill, that vital intervention is to be eviscerated. A major part of this Labour Government’s constituency will be the losers: children from less well-off families in areas of deprivation, because that is where failing schools are concentrated.
I know this because, over the last 12 years, the academy trust that I founded has taken on at least 10 of these kinds of schools and improved them, in some cases dramatically. The families and children that we met were at their wits’ end, often with no alternative route to state education. In some cases, these schools have been failing for decades. We took on one failing school in Great Yarmouth. It had never been rated “Good” or better since the creation of Ofsted in 1993; it is now rated “Good”. Why break something that works?
On free schools, a similar story exists. They have been an astonishing success in the vast majority of cases. Over 800 have been built, and where they did not work, we closed them or moved them to new management. Everyone knew the rules. In my trust, we have opened three free schools in Norfolk. Now, each one is outstanding. There are many trusts more successful than ours. We have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris. Take a look at the Star Academies Trust, which opened 23 schools: 17 have been inspected by Ofsted; 15 rated “Outstanding” and two “Good”. Last year, seven of those free schools were ranked in the top 50 schools in England for Progress 8, but this programme is now to be closed.
Why destroy a programme that has been painstakingly built by Governments of both political parties? In my time as academies and free schools Minister, I relied on the interventions that had been devised by noble Lords opposite—the noble Lords, Lord Blunkett, Lord Adonis and Lord Knight—and underpinning it were two watchwords which should prevail throughout all government-funded entities: transparency and accountability.
I give one small example. In local authority-run schools, it is almost impossible to understand what is going on financially, but an academy trust has to file an externally audited set of accounts every year within four months of the year ending. You will not find that in a local authority school. They do not even have audits every year. The best I could find when I was a Minister was every three years, and even I could not get copies of the reports, let alone the public. Transparency ensures that an academy’s resources are focused on where it matters, which is education.
The Bill will banish teachers who have not completed the nine-month teacher training programme, but there is an acute shortage of teachers. I believe that 13,000 teachers will fall foul of this rule. Where are the replacements coming from? The private schools tax is promised to deliver 6,000, but we will believe that when we see it. In the meantime, it will just make the job of improving schools far, far harder. Another government invention was Teach First. These wonderful people got only six weeks’ training and yet are some of the best in the system.
Overall, the Bill sends a strong signal to under-performing schools that they can dodge hard-edged accountability. Even though they fail their pupils, they can get away with it—and it will be the most disadvantaged communities who pay the price. Because there will be an opt-out for automatic academisation, schools will fight it.
There are some extraordinary clauses in the Bill, giving the Secretary of State the right to intervene on school uniform policy. There are 23,000 schools; that is crazy. There is a much simpler way: change the mandate of the members to include a responsibility to ensure that the cost of the school uniform for a pupil-premium child does not exceed, say, £25. In one fell swoop, we would deal with the problem. Members have powers essentially as proxies for shareholders—for example, they appoint auditors and can fire the directors.
These checks and balances were put in place by Labour. The improvements that I drove into the system were largely down to the Labour Government of the Blair era. Yet today, we managed to have four members of the Labour Party on the Benches opposite for this debate. If we care about the education of disadvantaged children, this programme should be strengthened, not weakened.
Baroness Finn (Con)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to speak in this debate on academies and free schools and the transformation they have brought to England’s education system. I thank my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate and for her tireless work in championing educational excellence. She, along with many of my noble friends here today, was instrumental in a movement that shattered complacency, exposed failure and put pupils, not bureaucracies, at the heart of education. My noble friend was not only a director of the New Schools Network but the co-author of the 2009 Policy Exchange report which called for the rapid expansion of the academies programme.
For too long, schools in England were trapped in a system that served itself rather than the children in it. Parents had no choice; good teachers had no freedom; failing schools went unchallenged. That has changed over the last 25 years. The coalition Government expanded Labour’s academy programme, introduced free schools and gave schools the autonomy to raise standards, innovate and succeed. The results speak for themselves. England now has the best primary school readers in the western world. In maths, reading and science, we have soared up the international rankings, while Scotland and Wales, where autonomy was rejected, have fallen behind. In maths, England rose from 21st to seventh in the global PISA rankings; Wales stagnated at 27th. In reading, England climbed from 19th to ninth; Wales stayed at 28th. In science, England moved from 11th to ninth; Wales plummeted from 21st to 29th.
The success of free schools is even clearer. They are more likely to be oversubscribed, more likely to be located in the most deprived areas and more likely to send their students to top universities. Stellar free schools such as the London Academy of Excellence in Newham and Michaela in Brent are engines of aspiration and social mobility. None of this happened by accident. It happened because of vision, courage and persistence, because of the leadership of Michael Gove, the pioneering work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the determination of my noble friends Lord Hill, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew, who refused to accept that only the state could set up schools and fought off bitter opposition. It happened because of my noble friend Lord Baker, whose city technology colleges paved the way for the academies that followed. It happened because of my noble friend Lord Harris, who has done so much personally and directly to improve the lives of children in this country. Many honourable members in the other place, such as Dame Siobhain McDonagh, are among those who rightly champion the transformative impact of the Harris academies.
Yet this Government now seek to dismantle everything they have inherited. The schools Bill is a counterrevolution, a retreat into failure. It abolishes academies’ freedoms over teacher pay, forcing high-performing schools to pay their best teachers the same as their worst. It removes academies’ discretion over recruitment, making it harder to bring talented teachers into the profession. It scraps the requirement for failing schools to become academies, turning back to the failed system of local authority control. It abolishes freedom over the curriculum and seeks to dumb down the academic rigour injected by Michael Gove and Sir Nick Gibb by replacing it with one that reflects the issues and diversities of our society.
This is not reform but regression. The assault on excellence exemplified by the axing of the Latin excellence programme for state schools will narrow the horizons for working class children across the country. Many of the pupils who have benefited most have been the poorest in our society. For those who believe that schools need more centralisation and co-ordination, it is important to remember that helping hands from the Government, rather than leaving the running of schools to those who have a track record of excellence, can rapidly become strangulation. The tragedy is that, as a result of such a strangulation, it will be the most disadvantaged children who lose out.
Lord Young of Cookham (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Evans for initiating this debate, which has already produced some high-quality speeches. The contribution of my noble friend Lord Harris was one of the most compelling and persuasive that I have heard for a very long time. The Secretary of State should not just read it but watch it.
I looked at the list of speakers for this debate, saw the number of highly qualified noble Lords and paused before adding my name because, in 50 years in this building, I do not think I have ever spoken in an education debate. However, I have always taken an interest in education, as a local MP, as the parent of children who attended state schools and now once again as a governor in a multi-academy trust, as in the register. Much has changed since I was first a governor, in the 1960s. We had short meetings then, dominated by a head and a forceful lady from the Inner London Education Authority. We had slightly longer meetings in the 1980s when I was again a governor, because the fertile mind of my noble friend Lord Baker had introduced a fresh initiative, LMS—local management of schools—which we were getting our minds around. Now, as a trust member, I have taken a renewed interest in governance. I make no complaints that the entry requirements are now slightly higher. I had to have a DBS check and do online safety requirements for certificates on equality and diversity awareness, safeguarding and prevention, and NCSC security. I make no complaints about that at all.
However, some of the challenges facing the trust that I am on are the same as those for maintained schools. The 2.8% pay offer, not accepted by the unions, is currently unfunded, as indeed is the national insurance increase. Teacher recruitment and retention is a problem for all schools, but particularly for schools that are supporting children from more deprived backgrounds, as many multi-academy trusts are. They often have a higher number of children with SEND, needing more staff to support them, without clarity about how that will be funded. I welcome the steps taken by my noble friend Lady Barran when in government to rationalise the assessment of SEND and reduce delays. That needs to be built on.
Some of the other challenges for the trust are different. I will mention just one. The trust I have joined, which has an outstanding chair and CEO, is expanding, with local schools wanting to join. However, the time it takes to go through the process of adding schools leads to unnecessary uncertainty and a diversion of effort. Taking on a single academy is less difficult, but taking on a maintained school can take up to 12 months, with the property services division of the local authority often responsible for delay. Anything that the regional directors at the DfE can do to minimise delays for trusts that want to expand would be enormously welcome.
I have seen the benefits of academies where a school in special measures joins the trust. The trust then has much more direct control over that school than an LEA would have, and it can share resources with that school for a time, turning it around. I have seen the rapid improvement that is needed with a school, with a focus, for example, on issues such as non-attendance, and with teachers and pupils from stronger schools helping out with weaker schools. The trust with which I am involved is geographically concentrated. That means we can help a small number of schools in a much more focused way than the broader-based LEA could.
I listened with some dismay to the speeches of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle. I have found no evidence of the bad practices that they mentioned at the schools in my group.
My final point has not been mentioned so far. The success of the academy movement has meant that some LEAs have been left with but a handful of primary schools. That means they have been even less able to support the schools remaining in their control. This reinforces the imperative for academy rollout to be completed, rather than delayed as the Government are suggesting at the moment.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I first join the congratulations to my noble friend Lady Evans, who has great experience in this area, on securing this debate. There are a number of speakers here who are far more knowledgeable than me on this sector. In particular, I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, on their excellent speeches.
By way of disclosure, I was until recently a trustee at AIM Academies Trust, covering three schools in north London, such as the London Academy of 1,500 students and 200 staff, led by the excellent Paddy McGrath and sponsored by the philanthropist Peter Shalson.
I am also a member of the Leigh Academies Trust, one of the country’s largest and most established multi-academy trusts, based in Strood, Medway, in Kent. The trust was formed in 2008, with its origins as one of the UK’s original 15 CTCs, as the Leigh Technology Academy—a programme championed by my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking and, in the interest of full disclosure, in effect started by my uncle, Sir Geoffrey Leigh. Today, it encompasses more than 20,000 students between the ages of two months and 19 years, in 32 primary schools, secondary schools and special academies.
These two organisations have transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands of students for the better. The advantages of the model are clear, as primary and secondary education is integrated and substantial resources shared among many schools to run highly efficient and successful organisations. I am proud and honoured to be associated with them.
Academies and free schools in England are a great success. Just look at the world league tables or even measure us against Wales and Scotland. As the Secretary of State herself said in the other palace two weeks ago:
“Academies, introduced by the last Labour Government and expanded by the Conservative party, have been instrumental in raising standards in our school system. They have delivered brilliant results, particularly for the most disadvantaged children”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/25; col. 857.]
The aforementioned London Academy replaced the failing Edgware School. In 2023, it was among the 55 highest-performing schools in the country. This has been achieved through the flexibilities it has been afforded. Over 50% of the students are eligible for the pupil premium and the admission policy prioritises students eligible for free school meals. AIM North London, historically one of the lowest-performing schools in the country, was, as recently as December 2023, graded good by Ofsted for the first time in its entire history. Historically, it was bottom of the league table and it serves one of the most deprived areas in north London.
Why is all this success now under threat? Labour claims to want to promote aspiration, but all it is doing is destroying something that works so well. There are some well-documented attacks planned by this Government, which we need to resist—for example, enforcing teacher qualification regulations, which is clearly yet another policy this Government are undertaking to appease their union bosses. There is a significant recruitment crisis in teaching, as workplaces outside the sector offer much better deals for people who want such employment. As my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking said, sometimes unqualified teachers are essential for sports, music and other areas. Why stop that? It just might be a ploy for the Government to meet their manifesto pledge of 6,500 new teachers by the end of this Parliament.
I was going to talk about statutory pay, but I understand that the Secretary of State has made a most welcome U-turn on that. Let us park it and see what happens. Retaining staff is essential for academies, where special situations often arise. I gather that Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, has welcomed the new Bill, because he thinks a uniform pay framework improves fairness and teacher mobility. He is wrong. Uniformity does not always lead to fairness. There are different challenges in different regions of the UK, and pay is not the only driver. Teachers want to be in successful schools led by strong leaders and employing the very best at the top, and this often ripples down the system. If a comparison is needed, just look at the disaster at the state-run, union-dominated Wanstead High School—not an academy.
The requirement to adopt the national curriculum for all is classic socialism, and I think the wonderful aforementioned Katharine Birbalsingh of Michaela school is quite right: it is, in fact, a Marxist system. The Confederation of School Trusts has rightly pointed out that we need greater flexibility in our school system, not greater prescription and control.
Finally, I hope the Minister reflects on all she has heard today and agrees to modify the proposed Bill, which has been sprung on us without any consultation, to ensure we do not recklessly destroy a great English success story.
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I too am grateful to my noble friend Lady Evans for securing today’s debate and getting an opportunity to talk about the good news of English schools in the midst of such bad global news. I was one of the Schools Ministers in DfE in the midst of the terrible global news of the pandemic. I hope the Minister will bring forward further changes to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, building on the changes announced by the Prime Minister today.
I think it is a sign of good government and putting children first that you change your mind, and it was that spirit and focus on children that led Michael Gove to take on the idea from Andrew Adonis—the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—and others and turbocharge the academies programme. By the time I joined in February 2020, that turbocharged programme had created more than 2,400 charitable trusts running schools in a contractual relationship with the Secretary of State, and most children in England by that time were in an academy or free school. By statute, failed schools were no longer allowed to languish in local authorities, which were at best reluctant to admit failure, at the expense of the children. It was not a conspiracy—just human nature and local authorities having other priorities.
The academies’ freedom to work across local authority boundaries enabled the creation of different faith schools within the free school system. There are now numerous Sikh, Hindu and Muslim schools with wider catchment areas. Sir Hamid Patel of Star Academies served Muslim and other communities with excellence and integrity, and there were new Church of England secondary schools such as Fulham Boys School. It was a sadness, though, that no black-led Church denomination managed to establish a successful school, despite these denominations having a long history of Saturday schools. That freedom to work across local authority boundaries also assisted the creation of the specialist schools, the UTCs and the specialist maths sixth-form colleges.
No one promised that there would not be failed trusts, but school and trust failure is revealed swiftly, and that is a much-needed achievement. Children do not have another chance. Getting in quickly is imperative, so I join with other noble Lords: I am concerned about the discretion being added to an academy order when a school has failed.
Sorting out DAOs remained a priority even in a pandemic: those disadvantaged children, already in a failed school, were then faced with a pandemic, so it had to be. Of course the system still has weaknesses. I think I used to describe single-academy trusts as often in splendid, outstanding isolation: they were often some of the best academic schools but with woeful levels of free school meal pupils, and many were grammar schools. I really had hoped that, instead of focusing on the academies, this new Government would sort this. It is possible to sort the low admission of free school meal pupils.
Just over a month into my service, the Prime Minister closed all schools, except for vulnerable children and children of key workers. For someone for whom school was a place of safety, I knew what this could and did mean. Local authority priorities became children’s social care, public health, refuse collection, children’s social care, adult social care and children’s social care—I hope noble Lords get my drift. Inadvertently, the academy system came into its own. In the pandemic there were areas where the local authority encouraged trusts to “do schools”—hubs were set up, best practice was shared across the schools and the local authority got on with children’s social care. The best MATs did all the back-office functions and schools just did discipline, safeguarding and education. That was invaluable in a pandemic.
What of the Department for Education? Due to that contract with the Secretary of State, there were teams of civil servants called, I think, regional directors. The DfE was operational. It was not just policy and delivery. Those teams knew English schools, the leaders, the local authority and the trust that in one instance had lost its finance director, who had died in the February before the pandemic. They knew how to plug that gap. Without REACT teams, I cannot imagine how schools and local authorities would have coped.
It may seem a strange time to send this postcard from DfE sanctuary buildings, but I wish to encourage His Majesty’s Government to utilise, embolden and encourage these academy trusts. When you are planning the biggest local government reorganisation for decades, why is the mood music for the local authority now more on schools? Even if that is your overall direction of travel, why not wait? The eye of many a local authority will be off the ball during such a reorganisation —it has to be. The people running local authorities are only human. I hope that some will be humble enough to call on their academy trust to “do schools” and focus, in the midst of reorganisation, on children’s social care.
Lord Moynihan of Chelsea (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lady Berridge. I thank my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate. I refer to my interests in the register—in particular, my chairmanship of Parents and Teachers for Excellence.
As my noble friend Lady Shephard asked, what problem are the Government trying to solve here? We all agree that everything important in this country starts with the imperative to give all our children a great education. The extraordinary improvement in national educational outcomes over the past 20-odd years is one of the few bright spots in our recent national history—apart from Brexit, of course. It started under Labour with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, recognising that one size does not fit all. Improvement in school results did not take hold until Michael Gove, then in the other place, took up these views and drove them through with the help of a co-operative Department for Education.
Bit by bit the successes came, resulting in changes to educational outcomes that now mean that many additional hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of adults are able to navigate society as literate, numerate citizens—many more than would have been the case if our previous educational results had still prevailed when over one in five failed to reach that standard.
As Policy Exchange has recently shown, and as other noble Lords have referred to, England’s performance in global PISA rankings has improved from 27th to 11th in maths, and from 25th to 13th in reading. Those two metrics are crucial, not all the many hundreds of other things that people want to be taught in schools.
How did this happen? It happened because of free schools that showed the path to academic excellence in so many ways, whether for Michaela, which many have mentioned, West London Free School or so many others, such as the ones my noble friend Lord Harris so eloquently referred to. Because of academisation, which gave freedom to schools to craft their own way to educate their own pupils, 17 of the top 20 English secondary schools, and 42 of the top 50, are academies or free schools. Poorly performing schools have been required to become academies and, in general, show rapid improvement as a result.
So I repeat: what are the Government up to here? Are they in the grip of doctrinaire fantasies? The facts are there to tell them what gives a child a good education: phonics, Shanghai maths, a knowledge-rich education and, of course, structured discipline. These are found in academies and free schools, and not so much in government-run maintained schools. Or is it that the Government are in hock to the unions, whose focus seems to have been more on conditions and pay for their members than on educational outcomes? If so, I respectfully point out that many academy chains pay their teachers above the pay scale.
The changes proposed by the Government bid fair to reverse many years of improvement in pupil results, and thus improvements in the lives of millions of this country’s future adults and in our economy and national life. These proposed changes would be tragic and arguably vindictive. I urge the Minister to persuade the Government to think again.
Lord Bates (Con)
My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lady Evans for securing this debate and for the way in which she introduced it, with her passion, enthusiasm and expertise. We benefited from some outstanding speeches, not least from my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. At its best, education, they remind us, is a partnership between inspiring teachers, supportive parents and enthusiastic, well-behaved students. It is about promoting expectations, excellence, encouragement, enthusiasm, ethos and effort. Yet, as we have heard, those leadership qualities are under threat in our academies and free schools.
We have been here before. I was in the audience in 1986 when my noble friend Lord Baker announced the plan for city technology colleges. With fear and trembling, I went up to him and asked whether we could have one of these schools in my hometown of Gateshead, one of the most deprived communities in the country. He was very kind and encouraging. He said, “Yes, of course, but you’re going to have to find me a sponsor first”. That led me to the door of Peter Vardy, a remarkable and inspirational business leader who not only agreed to provide the necessary funding but added so much more. He set the standards of excellence and the ethos and built a great team, of which I was privileged to be a member for a time as vice-chairman. Emmanuel City Technology College opened its doors in September 1990 and was an instant success with pupils, parents and teachers. It was massively oversubscribed. It was not popular, however, with the teaching and local government unions, which felt threatened by its success.
In 1997, the unions persuaded the new Labour Government that CTCs should be closed, not because they were failing students but because their success was threatening them. However, before the policy was implemented, Tony Blair’s education adviser decided that he wanted to visit Emmanuel to see it for himself. That adviser was Andrew Adonis, now the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I quote from his account of that visit in his excellent book Education, Education, Education, published in 2012. I will start on page 55. He wrote:
“I decided … to visit more City Technology Colleges and get … the details of what made them tick … The seminal moment was at Emmanuel College, Gateshead, sponsored by … Peter Vardy. Tony Blair on my mobile just as I was leaving an inspirational session with a group of sixth-formers telling me about their life stories, the brilliance of their school and their ambitions to get on. When I told Tony where I was, he said: ‘Of course I know the CTC and Peter Vardy ... Even out in Sedgefield’”—
his constituency—
“‘they want to go to his school’”.
The noble Lord continues on page 56.
“Why were the CTC so successful? Over … my visits, I came to see it in simple terms. It was governance, independence, leadership, ethos and standards. The CTCs had all five and they were mutually reinforcing ... The sponsors were not ‘here today, gone tomorrow’, like all too many local education chief education officers. They were making long-term commitments”,
like my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, continues:
“Strong headteachers were appointed and supported by these sponsors, instilling an ethos of success, discipline and high standards in every aspect of the CTC’s work”.
His conclusion and advice to Tony Blair and David Blunkett—now the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett—was that they should not be closing down successful CTCs; rather, they should be closing down failing local authority schools and replacing them with academies based on the CTC model.
Thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the college was saved. Thanks to Peter Vardy and the Emmanuel Schools Foundation team, it prospered and expanded. Emmanuel College became one of the best schools in the country and maintained its outstanding grade in Ofsted inspections for the entire 20-year period in which that rating was given. Less than two miles away, my former school, Joseph Swan, which is run by the local authority, was judged as inadequate by Ofsted. In 2019, Emmanuel was asked to take it over, and it is now turning it around, increasing the life chances of disadvantaged young people in the process.
My point is that academic success should not be envied; it should be emulated. You do not help the poorest-performing students by undermining the performance of the best. The aim is to level up, not to level down—to learn from the best to inspire the rest. No education policy can succeed if it is quick to punish success yet patient and slow to tolerate failure.
I therefore urge the Minister and officials to acquire a copy of the book by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and include it in the Secretary of State’s weekend box with a Post-it note on chapter 7, which is entitled “Why academies succeeded”. It is available on Amazon, hardly used, for £3.54, which represents extraordinarily good value to the taxpayer, as indeed do academies and free schools.
Baroness Laing of Elderslie (Con)
My Lords, this has been a most interesting and constructive debate. It has been a great pleasure to hear the reminiscences and advice of many people who truly are experts in the education world. Actually, I have just made a bit of a misnomer: this has not been a debate at all, because in a debate you have two sides putting forward two premises and, probably, disagreeing with one another. My heart goes out to the Minister, who has heard only one side of the debate today, but I wonder whether that is because there is really only one side to it and there is very little support for the Government’s position. I know the Minister will put forward the other side, and we will listen carefully, but we cannot help but notice that there is no enthusiasm on the Government Benches to criticise free schools and the freedom in education policy that has brought up standards over the last 30 years.
Over these last three decades, I have had the privilege of observing the variety of schools in the constituency that I had the honour to represent. I have watched schools ebb and flow. I have watched them become successful and watched them deplete, and I have come to the conclusion that there are three aspects that really matter in education policy. Schools need freedom, leadership and confidence, and each of those flows from the others.
I have watched particular schools that were failing— I will not name them because it would not be fair, but I could—become part of an academy trust. They therefore came under the direction of an inspirational educator— I can think of three particular head teachers who I put in that category—who was able to use their talents not for only one school but for a whole group of schools, and to allow one school to learn from another. That is what raised standards. It is not ideology that raises standards and gives all children equality of opportunity around this country; it is the practicality of putting them in a school that is free to organise itself in the best way that reflects the local community. A school that has leadership leads to inspiration in the teaching force and therefore in the children. That is what leads to confidence—confidence in the teachers, confidence of the teachers and confidence in the children, which allows them to go on to make great successes of their lives.
So I was very sad to see the publication of the new Government’s education policy. Why? Why would they take away that freedom? We saw this happen when the Blair Government came in in 1997. Schools were benefiting from the reforms brought in by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in the 1988 education Act and, out of a misplaced ideological adherence to some form of making everyone the same, the then Labour Government abolished those schools. But they then realised their mistake and tried to bring them back again—which, to be fair, they did in later years.
Over these years, we have been used to saying that what we are trying to achieve is equality of opportunity but, sadly, what we see now is equality versus opportunity. You do not raise standards by making everyone the same; that only lowers standards. This Government, by adhering to an idea of equality, are aiming to take away opportunity. Our children need the freedom to prosper, to benefit from inspirational leadership, to build confidence and therefore to give every child in every community in this country the opportunity they all deserve.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Future Academies, a multi-academy trust with 10 schools in London and Hertfordshire, 7,000 pupils and a SCITT teacher-training facility. I support the child protection elements in the Bill and commend the Government for bringing them forward so swiftly, but I do not support the academy and free school elements.
I am a child of Labour. I owe my place in your Lordships’ House to the Labour Party as my wife and I, via the charity we established, were appointed in 2008 by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as sponsors of a failing school, Pimlico, just down the river. That drew me further and further into education. Since then, Future has made it its mission to take on failing schools and has set up a new outstanding primary school. We also have a particular emphasis on a very strong extracurricular programme—extra sport, music, drama, trips and residentials—and a very strong careers offer.
All our schools are now rated good or outstanding except one, which is acknowledged by Ofsted to be rapidly working its way towards “good” and one we took on only a few weeks ago. Our most recent success, Phoenix Academy in Hammersmith—in special measures when we took it over—has a 50% pupil premium cohort, largely drawn from the White City estate. It recently received “outstanding” from Ofsted in all grades and is now in the top 2% of schools by progress in the country.
All of this is thanks to our superb staff. Working in a MAT, our most effective school leaders can paint on a broader canvas, rather than just running one school, as was the case under the previous highly fragmented school system. We are also able to employ very well-qualified people in the centre on finance, HR, IT and estates. Our outstanding SCITT trains teachers in our pedagogy and knowledge-rich curriculum, and we can offer our staff excellent career development opportunities to work in different schools. Indeed, they often say that one of the best aspects of working in a MAT is having strong career development opportunities, which they could not have when they worked in a single school. Our heads often say that, when they ran one school, they used to lose all their best staff because they could not offer them those opportunities. We also have a curriculum centre that provides teacher resources and greatly assists our teachers’ workload.
Across the country, there are many MATs using their freedoms to dramatically improve the life chances of their children. The Labour Party should be rightly proud of this, as it started the programme. My grandmother used to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I look forward to the Minister giving us her evidence-based reasons why the Government seek to change the system. I am also concerned about the weak and optional nature of the intervention powers envisaged, which seem a licence for endless JRs. I say that as someone who was JR’d up to the Court of Appeal—and that was after the objectors broke into my office. Surely, we do not want to go back to those days.
The sector is in shock, confusion and worry about the proposed changes coming, as they do, without any consultation, ahead of both a new Ofsted framework and a curriculum and assessment review. This is leaving a total lack of clarity concerning accountability and intervention, described by one school leader to me as leaving them trying to put the tail on the donkey. I urge the Government to think again.
Lastly, Future Academies runs the Government’s Latin excellence programme, under which we have brought Latin to 40 schools not previously offering it and 8,000 pupils. Unhappily, the Government plan to curtail this programme next month, half way through the school year, leaving those schools stranded. Many schools will not be able to offer Latin going forward and pupils may not be able to complete their GCSEs. I have written to the Minister about this. I understand that a meeting with the Secretary of State is being organised and this may involve a number of high-profile figures who are very concerned about the matter. I would be grateful if the Minister could facilitate this meeting with the relevant school leaders from Future Academies as a matter of urgency.
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
My Lords, I have always tried to be positive, proactive and collegiate in any contribution I have made in this House. When I heard what the Government were proposing in relation to academies, much of which we have heard about today, words failed me. The only words I could muster were the ones I will share now: “barking mad”.
However, I have to thank His Majesty’s Government and the Minister for some changes already and some indications that things will not be as disastrous as we think. I would encourage the Minister to keep listening, keep thinking and keep her mind open. We should only be giving up the best to get the better, and not letting go of what we have heard.
I ask the Minister to consider, whenever these changes come into place, a set of metrics, performance indicators and measures against, so we can look at them and see exactly how things have levelled up and not levelled down, as people fear. Will the Government design those? Will they put them into the Bill? Can we have reports regularly that have been independently verified, so we have absolutely no doubt about what is happening?
Please do not jeopardise the chances of young people by stopping it for some and hoping it will come better for others. Given what we have heard today, don’t you dare spoil the work that the noble Lords, Lord Harris, Lord Agnew, Lord Hampton, Lord Nash and Lord Fink, have done. Our children—my Ollie—as I know the Minister knows, are precious. I am not going to stand by and let this be wrecked.
Lord Berkeley (Lab)
My Lords, I do not often speak about education. I think this is probably the first time I have ever done so. I was tempted to intervene for two reasons. First, we have heard some very powerful arguments today in favour of the status quo. Secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Hampton—he is almost my noble friend—teaches at a school in Hackney where my grandson has the honour of being a pupil and being taught by the noble Lord. The feedback I get from my grandson—they are usually pretty honest, children of 15 or 16—is that it is the most wonderful school you could possibly ever want to go to because “They make me work”.
My granddaughter is at school in Hackney, but not at Mossbourne; she is having a good time there and learning a lot. What we learned from my discussions with the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, and the school is that what it delivers, apart from the ambition, which the noble Lord, Lord Baker, mentioned, and quality and hard work, is an enormous variety of things that the students might want to choose from. They range from workshops, training in industry, medicine, architecture and the Duke of Edinburgh. They do rowing at Hackney, which must be difficult at the river there—well, there is none—as well as music and everything like that. The school offers them a variety of things and makes sure that they jolly well do them.
I live in Cornwall now, and I find that you cannot get local tradesmen to do welding or carpentry, because the schools do not teach that. We have to get to a situation where different types of schools offer different facilities, and it is up to the parents or guardians or whoever to choose, with the students, where they would like to work hard to get a place. If they have to work hard to get a place, that is quite a good start for the rest of life.
I am thrilled with what Mossbourne is doing. I am not going to go on about it, because my noble friend has spoken very highly of it, but I hope that parental pressure and support from other offspring and everything else will help the Government decide what to do in future. I do not see the need for massive change; the key is to improve the bad ones, and there are plenty of them. They need money, resources and committed teachers, and lots of them, but the key is to get the right output variety that will suit the students, where they live and what their capabilities are, so they can do a decent job and enjoy it.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this has been something of a trip down memory lane, because I think just about every single Education Minister of the previous Conservative Government who is in this House has spoken in this debate. I had my run-ins with all of them, and occasionally came round to alliance with all of them—at least on one or two occasions. I would hope that they keep an open mind about the Bill that is coming up, because I do not see it being quite the destroyer that they are talking about; it is just talking about a limitation of expansion. What they are saying seems a little more in the vein of a moment when academisation would be for every school. The Conservative Government then looked around and said, “Wait a minute”, under pressure from a variety of, often, Conservative local authorities saying, “Our local maintained schools are pretty good”. Indeed, they are, according to the stats.
So let us just take a deep breath. I hope that the Minister will be able to assure this House that we are not going to get rid of successful schools. Academisation has had one or two problems. I give you two words: “off rolling”. If you look at the general amount of attention paid to this before the pandemic, with papers published in the House of Commons, you can see what was happening with a group of children. You had a situation where any child who would not pass an exam and was a potential liability was shunted to the side. I remember the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, standing in the Moses Room and saying, “This is something we must crack down on”. He got my eternal respect for that—he is a man who displayed great integrity at that Dispatch Box.
Let us just take a deep breath. There is also the fact that we have a system with lots of children not in education. We can put it all down to the pandemic, but the actual thrust was there beforehand. I know that the previous Government tried—Henry VIII powers and the House of Lords do not go well together; I hope the current Government remember that. I also hope that they take on this fact and make sure that we have a registration of what is going on outside. At the moment, there is a subclass of child who is not getting an education; we do not know what is happening to them.
On special educational needs, I draw the House’s attention to my declared interests, although to this audience I think it might be a little bit of a waste of time. We have a situation that does not work for special educational needs—unless you happen to be a lawyer being paid to get people through the appeals process. It is a definition of failure if ever there were one.
We need to make sure that in the Bill that is coming up—basically, this is the warm-up bout before the Second Reading, or something like that—we get something that is better. I hope that parliamentary pressure, and the considerable wisdom such as has been spoken in this debate, is brought to bear on the right targets. The noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, ran up the standard for good parliamentary monitoring, and I hope that we can all match her, because we want to make this work a little better. There have been things about the current academy system that work, but there are things that clearly have not worked that well. There are people who have been left behind—people who are a liability to the status of a school. If we have the great hand that says, “Yes, you have failed; you will do another process”, there is clearly a cost to that. I hope that we can look at that when we go through the Bill.
Academies have their good points and their bad. They are not perfect. They may have improved in certain places, but there are people who have been left behind. There may be a child who has special educational needs and who will not pass their exams, but why are they not welcome? Why will they not be taken on? That is the situation: the great growth of people who are being home-educated. Can we make sure that we look at this when we go through the Bill? Without that, we will be throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Let us make sure that we look at the whole situation. I hope that the Government do not damage what successes there have been. They have been hard won and we have paid a high price for them, but I hope we can get through.
I look forward to what the Minister will say. I remember, a few months ago when the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, was about to speak on another aspect of education—I think it was the limitations of Progress 8, and everybody had been against it—I said that I wished her well in her speech but did not envy the task. I think the Minister is in the same position today.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, we all expected a very high-quality debate this afternoon, and we certainly had the deep experience of many years reflected in your Lordships’ speeches. I thank my noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park for securing the debate and for her work in this field. As my noble friend said, we have had some transformational successes over the past 25 years, some brilliant innovations and, of course, some things that did not work, which either have been or should be learnt from and addressed—I would argue that the vast majority have been.
As we have heard, this debate is taking place against the backdrop of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which was considered in Committee in the other place today. I am not going to dwell on that Bill today—the Minister smiles—as there will be time for that when it comes to this place. However, I wanted to share with the Minister some genuine reflections that I hope she and her ministerial colleagues might consider, with an aim of looking to the challenges of the future in our schools system.
I shall start with the variation in results across our schools, both maintained and academies. In the same local authority, SATs results at the end of primary vary between individual schools by at least 20 percentage points in pretty much every local authority area, and in the most extreme cases by 40 percentage points. Some of this can be explained by differences in deprivation, but even adjusting for this there are huge differences in any given area. We know what we need to drive this down and narrow the gap, but I think that the job for the DfE is to try to unlock more of that best practice in our schools.
We tried to do some of this work when I was in government, and I know that my predecessors did the same. At the risk of losing the good will of the House, I will quote from the work we did on high-quality trust descriptions—I think officials in the Box may be running for the door at this point. When I joined the department, I asked colleagues what our definition of a good trust was. There was a long pause and the answer came, “This is not a Soviet model, Minister”. Of course it is not a Soviet model, but we should be clear what we think good looks like, so we worked with a number of the most successful trusts in the country and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and built on that best practice that delivers for disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs.
So, here goes. I appreciate that prose crafted by a committee is rarely elegant, but I will try to be brief. The first principle is that trusts should focus on a high-quality and inclusive education. They should create a culture in all schools that is motivating and ambitious for all, including disadvantaged children and children with SEND, so students can achieve their full potential. The second is a focus on school improvement, not just in cases of intervention but in all schools. The third relates to the workforce. The highest-performing trusts create a high-performing working culture for all their staff that promotes collaboration, aspiration and support, uses the flexibilities of the trust structure to create opportunities for staff, recognises the critical value of high-quality teaching and champions the profession.
We then went on to finance, looking at the effective use of resources, and finally, governance and leadership, where the trust’s strategy should be grounded in the needs of its schools, the communities they serve and the wider educational system. I was struck when I reread those—I used to know them off by heart—by how important a strong culture is in delivering great outcomes for our children. That is true in a maintained school and in our trust schools. So, since this is a schools debate, the first exam question for the Government is how they can encourage strong, positive cultures in our schools. Because, if we get that right, as trusts such as those we have heard about this afternoon have done at scale and in our most deprived communities, everything else follows. I really urge the Minister to press the schools she speaks to, to talk about what makes or breaks their culture.
The second exam question is how we build resilient schools for the future. All of us have met individual head teachers who are extraordinary and, luckily, those head teachers continue to exist. But we need resilience; we need to be confident that we have the capacity across the system to maintain the highest standards for every child, even when those head teachers retire. My noble friend Lord Nash was the first person who said to me that we really underestimate the potential benefits for the workforce if a trust is able to offer its staff a more conventional career path than is typically the case.
We need resilience in turnaround capacity, which, with a couple of specific exceptions, sits almost entirely in the trust sector. We also need resilience in future leadership, which is why we created the trust CEO leadership programme, which I think saw literally the single highest return on money that any Government could spend to drive good standards in our trusts. I hope the Minister can reassure me that it will be continued.
The third and final question that needs careful thought is that of choice for parents. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, was too modest to say that Mossbourne Academy is 11 times oversubscribed. Parents are voting with their feet. We need choice for parents about the school that is best for their child, because we are not having a Soviet model in this country, and choice for teachers about where they want to teach. I understand very well the fiscal pressures if a school is not full, but there is a real risk that the Government’s narrative of consistency removes that choice and that inadvertently we do end up with a Soviet model that will be good for no one—not for children, not for staff and not for parents.
There is so much more that I could cover, including my concerns about the pressure that the Government risk placing on our schools with the combination of changes to Ofsted and to the curriculum, and now the changes proposed in the Bill. Honestly, if I was in the Minister’s shoes, time spent reflecting on what we have learned from academies and free schools and what the best maintained schools and trusts do in practice—and how to encourage a culture that drives those outcomes—would be time well spent. Academies and free schools do not have a monopoly on good ideas, but they have had the flexibility to implement them and room to innovate. I urge the Minister, along with other noble Lords, to think on how we can offer those flexibilities to every school, not just trusts and academies.
A school leader said to me this week that tone matters and that the tone he was hearing did not trust the sector, or our school and trust leaders, but rather focused on consistency. It genuinely does not help that such hostile comments about academies were made by the Prime Minister and across the Cabinet during the Labour election campaign. I know the Government say they want to keep schools innovating, but that is not what they are hearing. All schools need to hear that they are trusted to have the flexibility to do the right thing for the children in their care. If we want to recruit teachers and allow our schools to flourish, we have to focus on that. As the brilliant head teacher of Harris Westminster wrote recently on X, in a long thread that I commend to your Lordships about conditions for teachers, “Let’s talk less about making it easy and more about making it meaningful. That is why teachers go to work in the morning”.
Yesterday I was with the wonderful Denton Community College just outside Manchester, which has recently become part of the Northern Education Trust. The pupils are living proof of the difference that a great trust can make to a school and its community. I am really worried that, as many noble Lords have said, we will lose the progress that we have seen in recent years. My simple message to the Minister is: let us build on what is working, spread the freedoms that have driven such improvements in performance for our children across all our schools and think again about the Bill.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, on securing this important debate and thank noble Lords for the excellent contributions we have heard from across your Lordships’ House, drawing on a wide and long experience in education. Several noble Lords have suggested that I will find it difficult or unpleasant to respond to this debate, or that I may even become grumpy about my requirement to do so. Far from it—there is nothing I like to do more than to recognise and champion the achievements of great schools and trusts, as we have been doing this afternoon.
Many of your Lordships have referred to the reforms the Government are introducing through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. I am looking forward to debating the specifics of the Bill when it reaches us from the other place, not least because it will give us the opportunity to set right some of the misconceptions that I have heard during this afternoon’s debate. I am confident that we will get further with this Bill than the 2022 Schools Bill, in which the first clause contained so many restrictions on academies that they nearly ran out of the alphabet for the subsections, and the Government Benches, let alone the education system, could not reach a consensus. So let us move away from some of the more extreme comments that have been made about this Bill and on to a serious and informed consideration of what we can all do to ensure the highest standards in schools that will enable all children to achieve and thrive.
Let me be clear on this Government’s mission, which is to drive high and rising standards in all schools. Over the past few decades, before the pandemic, attainment improved in some areas. There is also a wide consensus on evidence-based approaches that have been proven effective, which some noble Lords referenced, including phonics, a knowledge-rich approach to the curriculum and ordered classrooms where children learn and thrive, as was identified by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. We are committed to building on what has worked, including the excellence and innovation from our best schools and trusts.
I agreed with almost all of the speech made by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which was very measured. I do not think there is much difference between us, even if there is with some of the other comments in the debate. Part of that is because, before addressing further points made by noble Lords, I would like to be crystal clear that multi-academy trusts and free schools are partners and often leaders in delivering our mission. As many noble Lords have said, trusts and free schools have contributed, and continue to contribute, much to the richness of our school system. Labour is the proud parent of the academy movement, and I was there at, and soon after, the birth.
Since then, there have been some remarkable examples of existing schools being transformed and new free schools flourishing. The federation founded by the noble Lord, Lord Harris, is just one example of how the academies movement has made a real difference, and I commend him for the passion that he has shown today and for the work he has done to transform schools and the lives of children within them. Before Christmas, I was able to visit the Arrow Vale school, an academy in my former constituency of Redditch—a school where I started my teaching career—that had gone through tough times and is now part of a strong academy trust and is outstanding. Similarly, many free schools have achieved strong attainment, progress and Ofsted results.
Far from one of the charges that has been made, I am pleased that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State will be meeting with Katharine Birbalsingh to talk about the success of the Michaela school. The noble Lord, Lord Baker, knows how impressed I was by the UTC in Aston, when I was able to visit. We want this to continue; academies and free schools are here to stay. We want high-quality trusts to grow— in fact, we need only look at recent statistics, which show that this Government are currently supporting 781 conversions, a higher number than at any point since 2018.
The noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly argues that it is not the time to rest on our laurels and say that the job is done. Our system is not working well enough: a third of children leave primary school without fundamental reading, writing and maths skills. Dis-advantaged children are too often being failed and children with special educational needs and disabilities are left without the support they need to excel at school. Since the pandemic, average attainment is down, the gap for disadvantaged children has opened up and we have an absence crisis, with more than one in five children missing a day of school each fortnight, fuelled by fewer and fewer children feeling they belong at school. This needs to change.
High and rising standards must be the right of every child, delivered, as noble Lords have said, through excellent teaching and leadership, a high-quality curriculum and a system that removes the barriers to learning that hold too many children back, all underpinned by strong and clear accountability.
As many noble Lords have said, part of the success of high-quality trusts and free schools has been the flexibility to innovate, to change long-standing practices and to try something new—but these have been available only to academies. When the academies movement began, much of this innovation was experimental, even disruptive by design. But now, 20-plus years later, 60% of our schoolchildren are enrolled in academies, most in multi-academy trusts. We need to build a school system that builds on those successes—a system with a floor but no ceiling, enabling healthy competition for all schools, for the new disruptors and for the new innovators, so that we can promote and support innovation.
This is why we have introduced the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill: to give every family the certainty that they will be able to access a good local school for their child where they can achieve and thrive, regardless of where they live. It is also why, through our wider reforms, we are designing a school system that supports and challenges all schools to deliver high standards for every child.
The national curriculum will benefit all children, based on high standards and shared knowledge. This will be a starting point for the innovation I mentioned, which will allow brilliant teachers to inspire their pupils. We will restore the principles established by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, who, when the national curriculum was introduced 35 years ago, expected almost every state school, including grant-maintained schools, to deliver it—and I do not believe the noble Lord, Lord Baker, has ever been accused of being a proponent of classic socialism.
This national curriculum will be delivered by expert teachers, with all new teachers with or working towards qualified teacher status on a journey that allows them to grow, develop and transfer their qualifications as they move between schools. We hear the passionate and informed comments of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and others, about the range of people working within our schools. I would like to reassure the noble Lord that the requirement for qualified teacher status will not apply to any teacher who was recruited and commenced employment with a school or trust prior to the implementation of this measure. We want to work with trusts, such as Harris, to ensure that we are not undermining the excellent staff who are doing some of the specific and particular roles he talked about. We will work more on ensuring that this is the case.
We will deliver a minimum core pay offer for all teachers, while also enabling all state schools to create an attractive pay and conditions offer that attracts and retains the staff our children need. We will create a floor but no ceiling there as well. We know the challenges that schools face regarding recruitment and retention, as the noble Lord, Lord Young, outlined, and we want the innovation, excellence and flexibility that we have seen in the academy system to be available to all schools.
Pay and conditions are a crucial component of ensuring that teaching becomes a more attractive place for graduates and those seeking to combine work and family life. That is why my colleague the Schools Minister announced earlier this week that we have heard feedback from the sector that what this means for teachers’ pay and conditions could be clearer. That is why we are tabling an amendment to clarify the clauses on pay and conditions, which will set a floor on pay for all teachers in state schools. Academies will have to have due regard to the rest of the terms and conditions in the STPCD, but we will remit the School Teachers’ Review Body to build more flexibility, so that there is no ceiling on pay and conditions and so that all schools can benefit from flexibilities in that core role of recruiting and retaining the very best people into our teaching profession.
We have also heard noble Lords rightly identify the work that has been done across the system as schools collaborate, work with others and take control of those that are failing in order to drive improvement in our system. As I suggested earlier, we need to go further in terms of that improvement, and we are doing so to make that improvement better and faster, because we know that too many pupils are in schools which have not improved or improved enough in their current structure.
I am afraid that the noble Baroness, Lady Finn, is wrong: we are not scrapping sponsored conversion. We will continue to move schools that do not have the capacity to improve to strong trusts. However, under the previous Government, schools did not always get the support to improve when they needed it. Between September 2022 and September 2025, 40% of all schools in a category of concern took over a year to convert into sponsored academies, and 10% took more than two years. The previous Government attempted to address this problem by funding turnaround trusts, but the model was ineffective and those trusts took on only very small numbers of schools. We need more tools to ensure that improvement.
We are strengthening the tools that we have to give support and tackle failure with our new RISE teams. For schools which require more intensive support, we will draw on strong multi-academy trusts and other sources of capacity in the maintained sector to deploy those new RISE teams, which are led by experienced and successful senior school leaders who know how to improve schools and who have done it. They will work alongside struggling schools, including those stuck in a long-standing cycle of underperformance, to share their knowledge and bring the best of school improvement capacity to bear. They will have funds to help the schools implement the improvements they need. The names of the first tranche of these advisers will be announced shortly, but I can inform noble Lords that many of them come from the academies system that we are rightly celebrating today. We are confident that RISE will be effective, but we will not shy away from changing a school’s governance if there is no improvement.
The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly raised the issue of those vulnerable children who are let down by our system. We need schools to collaborate in the wider community to ensure that the system delivers for every child across an area. That is why we are introducing new duties for schools and local authorities to co-operate on admissions and place planning to ensure that decisions reflect the needs of the community, especially in the placement of vulnerable children, and why we are providing in the Bill for local authorities to be able to direct that a pupil out of school who has a nominated school properly allocated to them is duly admitted. They already have that power with respect to local authority-maintained schools, and it does not make sense for local authorities to continue to need to ask the Secretary of State to make such a direction for academies; every day lost in a child’s education is one that they cannot get back. But that power will rightly come with appropriate protections to guard against misuse, which will include a clear and transparent route for academy trusts to appeal to the independent schools adjudicator where they disagree with a local authority direction notice.
Just as we are committed to growing strong trusts, we will continue to open pipeline free schools where they meet local need for places and offer value for money. But although we celebrate the good schools that have been created through the free schools programme, substantial funding has been allocated to new free schools, which has often created surplus capacity. This can result in poor value for money and can divert resources from much-needed work to improve the condition of existing schools and colleges. An NAO report in 2017 found that half the 113,500 places planned up to 2021 would create spare capacity. That is why my right honourable friend announced a review into mainstream free schools last October. We have engaged closely with trusts and other key partners to gather the latest evidence, and we will also take into account whether projects would provide a distinctive curriculum, for example at post-16 level, and any impact on existing local providers.
In thanking noble Lords for this debate, I also recognise that many noble Lords have paid tribute to the achievements of high-quality academies and free schools over many years. I am and the Government are happy to join them in that and want to build on that success.
This Government will build on what works and fix what does not, so that the system works for all children—levelling up, not down—with a core offer for all parents, with no ceiling on what staff and pupils can achieve and with higher and broader expectations for children. We are taking action to ensure that parents, wherever they live, will have a good school for their child and be confident, as all of us would wish, that they will achieve and thrive.
Baroness Barran (Con)
I listened very carefully to the Minister’s remarks and welcome many of them. We all violently agree on having the highest possible aspiration for our children; the question is how we get there. I will give one example of where we do not agree, after listening to other noble Lords with so much experience across the House in delivering education for our children. When we talk about flexibility, the Minister gives the example of giving the STRB more scope to offer flexibility. That is a centralisation of flexibility. Everything that we have heard is about centralising, whereas everything that we look at which is working is about trusting leaders in our schools and in our trusts to make those decisions about the flexibilities that they need for their children. I urge the Minister to listen not to me but to those behind me and across the House.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I do not believe that the noble Baroness is arguing for the end of the STRB. The STRB is responsible for setting that framework for pay and conditions and can be instructed in its remit to consider how to remove some of the inflexibilities that exist currently for academies but not for other schools. That is the intention of these proposals.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her closing comments and all noble Lords who have contributed today. It has been a really good debate. There has been a clear passion across all Benches. We are violently agreeing that we want every young person to have the best possible education that they can and to have access to high quality education. We all agree that there is absolutely no room for complacency whatsoever and that we must always be looking to improve and to take our education system forward.
Today is the first time we have been able to have a conversation since the introduction of the Bill, the contents of which, as the Minister has heard, have taken many by surprise. We have been able to air some issues and real concerns. We will go into much more detail as we start to talk about the Bill, which might undermine some of the things that she has talked about and which we all clearly agree with across the House.
I point again to the experience of the speakers. The noble Lord, Lord Hampton, is a teacher and we heard from people who have set up chains, such as my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash. We heard from a governor, my noble friend Lord Young; the ex-Ministers my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Berridge; and a previous inspector, my noble friend Lady Shephard. We all want the same thing; we all want to deliver a better education. There are just some concerns that we would like to discuss further with the Minister as we go through the Bill. But I thank all noble Lords for giving their time on a Thursday for what I think has been a largely uplifting and great debate in which we heard the passion that we all have to improve young people’s lives. I thank everyone once again.