Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Garden of Frognal Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, echoed the point that I made on Amendment 8 about how we keep academy agreements up to date. If I remember rightly, he said that for existing academies the only way to do this is to terminate the agreement and renegotiate it. Will my noble friend undertake to give notice of termination to all existing academies so that the arrangement that he has arrived at for special educational needs can be incorporated into their agreements? I imagine that most of them will choose to renegotiate ahead of time and not go through the catharsis of termination. That would seem to be the procedure that we ought to go through in order to bring all academies into line with what the Government now believe should be the line.

I also ask for his assurance that with this Bill it is the Government's intention that the model agreement should allow for the obligations on academies to update in line with those placed on maintained schools generally, and that we will not have to go through this procedure of issuing a notice of termination every time we change the SEN rules, the admissions rules or anything else that academies are supposed to follow.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11 in the name of the Minister and also flag up that we have complementary amendments coming up in the same group as Amendment 22. We have had a query from TreeHouse, which deals with autistic children, asking for assurances on the funding for non-maintained special schools. Under these arrangements, the funding will go directly to academies and not via local councils. Currently, local councils top-slice 7 to 10 per cent from the dedicated schools budget, which includes placements for children at non-maintained schools. Will the Minister reassure us about these arrangements?

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, will the Minister clarify the position of parents in relation to first-tier tribunals, SEN and disabilities? The annexe about SEN that goes with the agreement and that was circulated to us makes it clear that parents and pupils at academies have the same rights of access to first-tier tribunals, SEN and disabilities, formerly SENDIST. Most academies must comply with an order from the tribunal. Is there a notion of judicial review if there is still not compliance with the order from the tribunal?