Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Bousted and Lord Storey

Thursday 18th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, where did it all go wrong? I can look back to those halcyon days where, in primary schools, there were two lessons of PE a week timetabled, and PE covered a whole range of activities, from gym work to games and swimming—children regularly left school being able to swim 20 metres —and after-school sports competitions. In secondary schools, sport was thriving. As we have heard, that was beneficial for the well-being of children and young people and important for their health, with regards to obesity, and for teamwork, working together and understanding each other.

This is not something that can be laid just at the hands of the present Government. In fact, the present Government, in a former iteration, did a great deal of work on sport. People will think that I am a member of his fan club, but the Blair Government brought in some of the most radical proposals on sport that this country has ever seen. Whether it was a mixture of Covid, the recession or whatever, it all suddenly—

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

I am sorry, but I have to interject here to say that the narrowing of the curriculum and the teacher supply crisis was a direct result of austerity, teacher pay falling by 12% in real terms and chronic underfunding of schools, all of which were initiated during the coalition and continued until 2024.

Children absolutely deserve a rich and balanced curriculum, but that becomes much more difficult if they are not being taught by teachers qualified in the subject area but by unqualified teachers. The teacher supply crisis started and became acute during the previous Government. When we have this debate, we cannot ignore the practical consequences of chronic underfunding, chronic undermining of the profession and, from the start of the coalition, a policy of attacking teachers and leaders as being responsible for falling school standards.

There was also a deliberate narrowing of the curriculum through the EBacc to a range of academic subjects, which has meant a precipitous decline in arts and drama and a shorting of the experience that children get in physical education.

I am sorry, but I must put all that on the record. My friend the noble Lord is rightly asking these questions but he is coming up with a different set of conclusions.

Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Baroness Bousted and Lord Storey

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bousted (Lab)]

My Lords, I do not want to prolong the debate, but I have to answer the charge that it is simply the academies that are improving standards in education, and maintained schools are not. Research in the area does not show that to be the case. Since 2017, I think, the Education Policy Institute has had a yearly look at the performance of academies and state schools. Last week I looked at the one for this year and, although I cannot remember the exact figures, the general conclusion was the same that it has been every year: there are some very good academy chains and there are some poor academy chains; there are some very good maintained schools, and some are doing less well. When you look at the results in the round, there is no premium, overall, for the academy sector.

The noble Lord may shake his head, but I will happily write to him with the research. I do not want to prolong things, but I just could not sit here and take that remark again. I thought we had discussed it over dinner; now I am saying it in the Committee so that it is on the record. It is simply untrue to say that all the improvement is in one sector of schools and that there is no improvement in maintained schools. That simply is not the case; the evidence and the research simply do not support that.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I shall briefly talk generally about all these amendments, which I and my party are not supporting. I ought to declare an interest as a governor of the King’s Academy, Liverpool. I was there at the beginning, when academies were started for a particular reason by the then Labour Government in very deprived communities and were then seized on by the coalition Government, including by David Laws from my party. We would sit through endless meetings, where there were always attacks on the maintained sector, about how wonderful the academies were. I never, during those early days—or even recently—heard the noble Lord, Lord Nash, who is not in his place, or the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, who is not in his place, say, “This academy is doing a really good job but, guess what? This maintained school is doing a really good job”. I never heard any criticism of any other academy. People can nod their heads, but if you look at the record, that was the case.

I remember us pushing, for example, that we should inspect multi-academies. Oh no, we could not do that. I remember trying to suggest that we have an external look at the finances of multi-academy trusts—“Oh no, you can’t do that”. Thank goodness, we have moved on considerably since those days, and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, because, during her time as Education Minister, she went to visit maintained schools, and her language and the language of her party has changed considerably. I very much appreciate that. If there is a breach—I am not sure how serious or how weak the breaches are—the Secretary of State should be looking at it and making the final decision. It should not be just left to the academy or the multi-academy trusts themselves.

One recalls that “Panorama” documentary about how proprietors of academies—it was a limited number, thank goodness—were ensuring that some of the work for their academies was going to companies that they owned and that were their own companies. So a repair or construction company would get the work from that academy. It would not go out for tender. There was a big scandal on “Panorama” about it. If that is wrong, action needs to be taken. I do not know what these breaches are, or how serious or wide they are, but it should not be just left to the academy to sort out. It should be sorted out by the Secretary of State and by her Minister in the House of Lords.