Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

23: Clause 3, page 3, line 5, at end insert—
“(4A) Before making an application under this section, the governing body of a school—
(a) must consult the local authority with regard to the appropriate balance of educational provision in the local authority area, and(b) have the school’s intended policies on curriculum, admissions and employment approved by the Secretary of State for Education.”

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

In moving this amendment, I shall also speak to Amendment 33 and win the second prize for the shortest speech. Many issues have been raised about these amendments, both this evening and before, but important as they are, I do not intend to go into detail or spend much time on them.

Amendment 23 is about consultation and schools’ intended policies regarding the curriculum, admissions and employment. Local communities and local stakeholders should be involved in decisions about what type of school should be provided in an area—points which have already been raised and will be raised again. Taken with my next amendment, Amendment 33, a consultation process would allow faith schools time to consider whether they wanted to retain their religious character or become inclusive academies. I wish to have the Secretary of State for Education approve the curriculum, admissions and employment policies because I foresee dangers affecting the rights of children to a broad and balanced curriculum and to admission to particular schools—as discussed earlier—and dangers to the rights of workers to be selected or promoted.

This is partly a faith schools issue, but partly not. I acknowledge the remarks made earlier by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln about some excellent faith schools, but that is not the point. The school curriculum should provide all children with the entitlement to develop to their full potential in UK society. To do that, they will need information, skills, and the development of aspiration. Academies do not have to follow the national curriculum, and those of a religious character will be able to discriminate on religious grounds against pupils and staff.

The notion of free schools fills me with some horror. I have terrible visions of children being taught, or rather indoctrinated, in some fanatical ways, and not just religious, in limited and unsuitable premises. The responsibility for offering a balanced and broad-based curriculum could be neglected or avoided. There are curriculum concerns with regard to, for example, the teaching of creationism. Will the Minister reassure me that all our children will have as their right a balanced curriculum that will fit them for life?

On Amendment 33, the Academies Bill forces state-maintained schools with a religious character to automatically become independent schools with that religious character, permanently removing the possibility for state-funded religious schools to become inclusive academies. That removes choice and freedom from governing bodies, running counter to the spirit of the Bill, which aims to increase school autonomy. This could mean a proliferation of state-funded faith schools that are their own admission authorities and more likely to be unrepresentative of their surrounding areas than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. A report on community cohesion in Blackburn by Professor Ted Cantle describes religious schools as,

“automatically a source of division in the town”.

Opinion polls suggest that the public are aware of these issues, with 64 per cent agreeing that,

“the government should not be funding faith schools of any kind”.

Can the Minister give me any reassurance on these issues? I beg to move.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, we had a good debate in Committee on the importance of consultation, as a result of which we have thought again, and we will come to a group of amendments that deal with that issue. We have accepted that we need to make explicit on the face of the Bill the requirement that schools should consult. Although we recognise the important role that local authorities can play—as the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, knows—we are keen, so far as the consultation with local authorities is concerned, not to be prescriptive.

On the second element of the first amendment, it is certainly the case that the school will have to agree its admissions policy with the Secretary of State, but that would be at the point of entering into the funding agreement, just as has always been the case with academies. As she knows, I share her concerns about creationism, but one of the core aims of the policy is precisely that the Secretary of State should not dictate to academies what they should teach. The whole direction of government policy is to interfere less and trust teachers and head teachers more. It is not easy and a lot of debates that we have had have been around the tension between trusting people and being worried about what happens if you trust people and things go wrong. I fully accept that if you trust people things do go wrong, but that is the direction that we want to try to go in.

On the point that the noble Baroness made on employment, we want academies to have freedom around their employment terms and conditions. We do not want the Secretary of State to micromanage all that from Whitehall. As for faith schools, which we touched on briefly in earlier amendments, the Bill simply seeks to maintain the status quo. We are not seeking to make it easier for there to be an increase in faith schools or to change their character, but we believe that there should be the same chance to become an academy as any other maintained school. We do not think that any faith school seeking to convert should have to go through an additional application simply to stay as they are.

We do not propose to prevent academies from seeking designation after conversion, providing that they meet the relevant tests, just as will be the case for maintained schools. However, any new faith academies, including the free schools, about which I know she has some concerns, will have to balance the needs of children, both with a faith and with none, and admit at least 50 per cent of their intake without reference to faith. I hope that that is of some comfort to the noble Baroness and that it responds to some of the points that she made. I also hope that she will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response. I am somewhat encouraged. I think that we need more discussion on the issues around faith schools. My concern is that the welfare of the child is paramount and that they are entitled to certain things in a curriculum which may be excluded by certain types of school. I am very happy to discuss this with the Minister. In the mean time, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 23 withdrawn.