Adult Education: Part-time Attendance

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I congratulate the noble Lord and the committee on their report. As I said, we want to encourage people to undertake part-time study if that is what they want to do, and of course we are working with employers and colleges to try to ensure that we have a flexible system that everyone can take advantage of.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, two of the main providers of higher education for part-time students are the Open University and Birkbeck College, both of which do exceptionally well. Have the Government carried out any consultation with them about the impact of the new fees regime on applications for such courses?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I also congratulate those two organisations on their work—in fact, I met both of them recently. The Government are certainly listening to their concerns. Part of the reason we are consulting on the introduction of maintenance loans is because we want to make sure that we get the details right and ensure that those who want to take advantage of this support can do so.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Sutherland of Houndwood

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

The noble Baroness will be pleased to know that that is not what I am saying. I have been an advocate of full inspection for academies ever since the last Bill was introduced, and I still take that position. That is the way in which academies should be judged; have no doubt about that. I do not think it likely that we will deal with that in this Bill but the noble Baroness asked me what my position was, and that is it.

What I am saying is that the Bill deals with coasting schools in the maintained sector and, if that is so, there is a bit of a problem if we are going to deal with the issue by simply recreating that. I simply record my reservations. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, was right to say that as it stands the clause may not achieve all that it sets out to, and if it comes back again I would be very interested to have a look at it. Still, I have these reservations and wanted to put them on record.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, this new clause would allow a local authority to establish a committee to review and scrutinise the provision of education in coasting schools, where such schools make up more than 10% of schools in the local area.

First, I shall touch on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the accountability of academies. Our view is in fact that the accountability structure for academies is stronger because it reflects their status as both charitable companies and public bodies. This means that when it comes to matters of good governance and financial management, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, noted, are very important, they not only have statutory responsibilities under company law but explicit accountabilities to Parliament. Because of this dual layer of accountabilities, academies have a stronger financial framework and are held up to greater scrutiny than most other types of schools.