Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Barran

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I am optimistic for a hat trick from the Minister. Clause 50 is one of the clauses that leave me most worried about the Bill because it risks directly damaging the education that children receive. Again, that is obviously not what Ministers intend, but it appears to ignore the impact on the school performance of sponsored academies—to be clear, not every single sponsored academy, but I know that the Minister will agree that, overall, the evidence shows a really important impact on the lives of children in those schools.

To be clear, I do not think that anyone on my Benches thinks that autonomy is a magic bullet to solve the problems of any school, whether or not it is failing. The key is how that autonomy is used. Some MATs have used their autonomy to focus on developing really great and deep expertise in turning around struggling schools, supporting staff and transforming outcomes for pupils. Others have focused on developing great curricula. There are lots of other examples; of course, there are also examples of professional generosity in the maintained sector, too.

There are now 2,796 sponsored academies in England —more than 23% of our secondary schools. As we have heard from a number of noble Lords, including my noble friend Lord Sewell earlier, trusts have led to extraordinary turnarounds in some of the most difficult schools in our country; I pay tribute to everyone involved in that critical work. However, Clause 50 changes that. No longer will a failing maintained school automatically join a strong MAT. In her Written Ministerial Statement, published yesterday, the Secretary of State wrote:

“Subject to the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, structural intervention through issuing of academy orders will continue to be the default approach for schools in special measures, because no child should be left in a school that does not have the capacity to improve”.—[Official Report, Commons, 9/9/25; col. 29WS.]


I am genuinely confused by that because I do not feel that that is what the Bill says, as it removes the section in the Academies Act 2010 that facilitated this intervention. I hope that the Minister can explain that and reassure me.

The Government have argued that we should intervene earlier in schools that are struggling. Nobody would disagree with that; we were already doing that in the department when I was in office. Of course, if that works, it is the best outcome for children.

The other argument that the Government have put forward is that directive academy orders are too slow. I think that, if the Minister has time to dig into the detail, she will agree with me that the ones that are slow are really complicated. They may need significant financial help, which the department is struggling to find down the back of any education-shaped sofa; that might be in relation to capital or to revenue. There may be very complex governance issues, or—as in one case that I can remember, which was very slow—there may be crippling PFI contracts in place.

However, even that does not stop immediate help being put in. The Minister will be familiar with a number of cases where that has happened, often with trusts taking significant risk and commitment of resources without any guarantee that they will end up being the sponsor for the school. They do it because it is the right thing to do.

My Amendment 445B aims to address the Government’s concern about delays while still keeping the urgency that is necessary to address the weaknesses in a particular school. It says that, if

“no suitable sponsor is available, the Secretary of State must, within 14 days, publish a plan to secure appropriate governance and leadership of the school and to secure its rapid improvement”.

This would bring about the clarity and transparency that will be crucial in retaining the confidence of parents, pupils and staff. I think that that aligns with the Secretary of State’s Statement yesterday but, if it does not, I hope that the Minister can explain where the gap is.

My Amendment 446A aims to address a problem that is likely to emerge as a result of the Government’s approach—namely, an increase in the number of judicial reviews of academy orders. Schools will want to understand why they are not being given more support or more time to turn around. However valid any individual case might be, the outcome will be a slowing down and reduction in the use of academy orders, leaving pupils in failing schools for longer.

My Amendment 446B aims to reintroduce the automatic academisation of maintained schools that have received from Ofsted a significant improvement judgment, or whatever the latest language is—however the department and the chief inspector judge that to be framed—and where the RISE teams believe that a school is “significantly underperforming”.

The Bill fails to address another problem: the schools that, under the previous Ofsted framework, were repeatedly graded as requiring improvement, some as many as seven times or more. None of us in this Committee would want our child to attend or work in a school that is so stuck in a rut of underperformance. I know that the decision to intervene in the so-called 2RI+ schools—to use the secret language of school intervention—was not universally welcomed, including by my noble friend Lady Spielman, and she and I debated this many times in her previous role. The aim was to send a strong signal about the priority we put on addressing underperformance in a timely and effective way. Sadly, the Secretary of State reversed this approach very early on in her tenure.

I ask the Minister to reconsider whether this clause should stand part of the Bill, particularly given the Secretary of State’s comments yesterday. Where is the evidence that the department’s proposed approach will be more effective? Children in failing schools need urgent action, as the Secretary of State herself has said. Sometimes the leadership of that school does not want to become part of a trust, but, ultimately, we need to be clear that the interest of the pupils must always come first. I beg to move the amendment in my name.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 447 and 447ZB, which appear in my name. I must begin by apologising to the Committee and the Minister for failing to introduce my amendments in the group before the break. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, for picking up the slack. My only explanation is that it has been a long 24 hours.

This Bill, as currently drafted, sits in an awkward position. On the long-term disastrous policy of academisation—too often forced academisation and rarely resisted successfully by local and school communities —the Bill makes half a U-turn. It ends the presumption that all new schools must be an academy and removes the duty to force schools into multi-academy trusts. As the National Education Union has said, this a welcome shift in policy. But this is not a full U-turn but a half U-turn. It leaves far too many schools stuck, pointed awkwardly at 90 degrees across the flow of history, like a vehicle on a traffic island with fast-moving lorries approaching from both directions.

The Bill does not provide the option for schools and their communities that are unhappy in their current situation to leave multi-academy trusts and join the local authority system or other groups that are better suited to their needs. Making that provision would provide the chance of escape and allow schools to get out of the iron grip of dangerous and failed ideology into the empowered position of local choice and decision-making—the kind of devolution that the Government say they are in favour of.

This is an area of policy that the Green Party, as on so many others, has been leading ever since it resisted from the start the disastrous push to free schools and academies that has fragmented our systems and seen enormous sums flowing into fat cat executive pay—something we may come to in the next group—and big supply profits hoovered up by multinational companies on the contractor bandwagon. These two amendments take two possible approaches to dealing with this and starting to untangle the mess.

Currently, schools in multi-academy trusts lack separate legal entities. Leaving it to the MAT board to decide which powers, if any, it chooses to delegate to each academy is a profoundly unequal relationship. Amendment 447 does not seek to directly prescribe how to get out of this undeniably complex situation; rather, it would create a new clause in the Bill directing the Secretary of State to set out, within 12 months of the Act passing, a report with proposals for converting academy chains, individual academies and free schools into maintained schools under local authority control.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Barran

Tuesday 17th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Since we are forming a set for Amendment 117, I will stand up now, having attached my name to it, and will focus chiefly on that amendment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has stolen my starting line with her final line: nothing about us without us. I first used that phrase in a debate on rather similar amendments to the Health and Social Care Bill. I think that your Lordships’ House and the country are increasingly coming to realise that we have to listen to children far more.

In this context, I will cite an interesting case from the past week, where a 14 year-old who had been tricked by his parents into going to Ghana took his parents to court. The Court of Appeal ruled that he should have the right to come back to Britain, as he wanted to do. That is an interesting court case that shows how, generally, our legal system is starting to listen more and more to children. It is important that our legislation does so and that that is in the Bill.

This raises issues that I will come back to on a later group, but the basic point about the regional care co-operatives is that they will take decision-making further away from local authorities. People have been studying this, and the care review evidence group, for example, said that

“care will need to be taken that these structural reforms do not dilute local accountability mechanisms”.

Making sure that children are actually heard in the making of regulations is in some way a counterbalance to the risk that quite a lot of experts have identified in taking this approach.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 116A, 117A and 119ZA in my name. As we have heard, the proposals to create regional care co-operatives came from the independent review into children’s social care. In principle, we support them. However, we are aware that a number of regions are already using informal co-operation agreements, so I question whether we need more legislation to make this happen. Maybe the Minister can comment on this when she sums up. The Secretary of State is taking the power to direct areas to create one of three models of co-operation, but it is important that we understand how this will work in practice, because, presumably, if areas are not adopting this approach voluntarily, there would be significant barriers and potentially good reasons for doing so. Can the Minister clarify those few points when she closes?

The Local Government Association has stated its support for the narrower requirements of a regional care co-operative, as being used by the pathfinder areas —namely, on

“strategic planning and placements for children with more complex needs”.

However, the Bill states in proposed new Section 22J(3)(c) that regional care co-operatives will be responsible for commissioning

“the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority”.

There is a real worry about mission creep and confusion over responsibilities, which I have tried to address through my Amendment 119ZA, as has my noble friend Lady Cash through her Amendment 117B.

Will the Minister comment on the concern expressed by organisations such as Barnardo’s that this model will squeeze out some of the smaller providers, increasing even further the dependence on independent providers in the private sector, many of whom, as we know, have a combination of very high profitability and high debts?

Can the Minister confirm the start date for the pathfinders, and when there will be publicly available evidence from them, either via the evaluation or from any other data? Does the department have an idea that it can publicly share of the likely size of each of the areas? The two pilot sites, Greater Manchester and the south-east, are both very large, with about 3 million people within them. Is that the size the Government expect to be typical?

Amendment 116A would remove a power equivalent to a Henry VIII power from the Bill. Clause 10(2) defines strategic accommodation functions as

“(a) assessing current and future requirements for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority,


(b) developing and publishing strategies for meeting those requirements,


(c) commissioning the provision of accommodation for children being looked after by the local authority,


(d) recruiting prospective local authority foster parents and supporting local authority foster parents,


(e) developing, or facilitating the development of, new provision for the accommodation of children being looked after by the local authority, and


(f) any other functions relating to a local authority’s duties under section 22A, 22C or 22G that are specified in regulations made by the Secretary of State”.


New Section 22J(3)(f) gives the Secretary of State a power akin to a Henry VIII power to add to the above list of strategic accommodation functions by regulations. In justifying the power, the department goes on to say:

“The Department has sought to achieve the right balance between confining the scope of the delegated powers through primary provisions and leaving necessary matters of detail to regulations. This is the first time the Secretary of State has sought to bring local authorities together to collaborate in the delivery of their strategic accommodation functions. Regional co-operation arrangements (known as Regional Care Co-operatives) … are currently being tested via pathfinders … in two local authority regions. When the pathfinders are evaluated, the Secretary of State may need to prescribe additional functions. There may also be a need for additional functions to be specified in the future depending on the needs of a particular area and to keep pace with the changing children’s social care placements market. The power has been limited to one which enables additional functions to be added to the list in the future. It does not enable the Secretary of State to amend or remove any of the functions already listed in the clause and so it is not a Henry VIII power”.


My amendment is a probing amendment, as this feels like another example of the Government introducing legislation before they are quite ready. Why not wait until the pathfinders are evaluated to be clear what additional strategic functions might be needed? Maybe the Minister can inform the House if the department is aware of any gaps in the current strategic powers that have been identified in areas using this approach already. It would be good to understand whether the Government have in mind any particular powers that might be needed, or whether this is a belt and braces, “just in case” kind of power, without having anything particular in mind.

My Amendment 117A seeks to ensure that Ofsted inspects regional care co-operatives. It is obviously important that we have an independent assessment of their effectiveness and impact and whether they are achieving the Government’s goals—and, perhaps even more importantly, the needs of children. There may be other ways of achieving this and, if so, it would be helpful to understand what those are.

More specifically, my amendment aims to bring a spotlight on the use of unregistered provision. My understanding of the regional care co-operative approach is that it will anticipate and commission capacity in a more effective, and cost-effective, way. One outcome of this would be a drop in or complete removal of the use of unregistered provision, something I know local authorities are keen to see, as are noble many Lords across the House.