Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I cannot help but notice that Members on the coalition government Front Bench have been struggling with the brightness of the light today. I hope that that is because they have seen the light on PSHE.
Lord Greaves
Will the noble Baroness agree that the sun shines on the righteous?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Well, I am sure that we are about to find out the truth of that. I do not want to keep the Committee any longer because I know that we have a great deal of work to do today. However, I want to support my noble friends Lady Gould and Lady Massey. Both have made strong and impassioned contributions—I do not want to rehearse their strong arguments—as have my noble friends Lord Howarth and Lord Layard. I was also interested in the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, who, as ever, spoke wisely on these matters, and in the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley.
We have debated these matters hotly at times; we certainly did so during the wash-up, when I think that things got a bit frayed. It is fair to say that what happened was not vague—the then Conservative Opposition opposed the measures in the Children, Schools and Families Bill to include PSHE following all the consultation and discussions with the faith groups, parents and specialists involved. I therefore hope that, with the confidence that the Conservative Party has in government, it will be able to think again. I hope that this is not a party-political issue, but one on which we can come together for the benefit of children currently going through the education system and more widely for our community. I hope that my noble friends will accept my support for their amendment.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for moving the amendment and giving us the opportunity to have this debate. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that there had been a history of a battle in this House. However, one of the advantages about my being the new boy is that I do not yet have all those scars and am not approaching this issue as a battle. I am seeking to approach it as I do other issues, by listening to the arguments. I have heard a number of forceful and persuasive points made today.
Perhaps I can give my noble friend Lady Walmsley some reassurance. These certainly are important matters and strong views are held on both sides. Perhaps properly they will form part of a much bigger debate that I recognise we need to have as part of the broader curriculum review to which my noble friend Lady Walmsley referred. We will need to discuss all these issues—whether we need to or not, we clearly will do so—as they will be part of the legislation later in the year. There will be a proper opportunity to discuss this issue fully and at length and there will be opportunities for noble Lords to—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Will the Minister give us a clear timetable before Report on how these deliberations will go forward? Who will be consulted and how will the practicalities of the discussions work?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am not sure that I am able to give a very clear timetable. As part of the discussions that we need to have on the curriculum review, we need to decide how the experience and views of Members of this House can be fed in. I am happy to come back to the noble Baroness on that point. We need to work out how to do this. We have heard that there are issues to do with content as well as principle and I recognise that we will return to the matter.
I am also struck, from listening to the debate, how far sex education at school has moved on since I was at school, when I seem to remember that I had a drawing of a hen and an egg and that was it. There has clearly been some progress since then.
On the more specific and narrower point to do with academies, which is what this debate and the amendment are about, the independent schools’ standards regulations require all independent schools, including academies, to have a curriculum that includes personal, social and health education that reflects the school’s aims and ethos. Those regulations require the schools to prepare pupils adequately for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of adult life. That is important and those regulations are in place. We recognise the importance of this area to parents and pupils and believe that that is sufficient for academies to deliver an appropriate PSHE curriculum. We know that many academies already see that area as key to engaging pupils.
Amendment 70 would have the effect, which may or may not have been intended, of removing any right of parental withdrawal from sex and relationship education. I know that there is a range of views on that. The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, expressed one set of views; I know that others will have equally strong views that parents should have the right to withdraw their children. I do not believe that creating a difference between the maintained and the academies sector by removing a right of withdrawal is justified and I am not sure that the noble Lord intended it. In any case, I hope that noble Lords will accept my reassurance that these important issues will be returned to as we think about the curriculum review more generally and that they will feel able not to press their amendments.
“( ) the school, if it was a selective school on conversion, has a roll no larger than it was at conversion date;”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, these are probing amendments with which I hope to learn a great deal from the Minister about the Government’s intentions with regard to selection. We probably all agree that selection is a major issue in any consideration of educational matters, and I am sure the Bill will be no exception. However, the idea of a selective academy is a perversion of Labour’s view of the future of the academy scheme.
As we have already heard, the previous Government used the academy system as a means of helping struggling schools to turn round the life chances of the hardest to teach, which often meant entering an area where a local authority had let down the children it was there to serve. We gave these schools new leadership, outside expertise and relieved them from many of the requirements to co-operate as part of the local family of schools because of the challenges and experiences that those schools had undergone.
I want to learn about what the coalition Government now propose. In effect, they are saying to schools which select a small minority of the top-scoring children at 11, “Take a share of the money that the local area has been allocated to support the most vulnerable, and outbid other local schools for the best teaching staff using that same money”. Is that really what the coalition Government want to say to schools? By definition, the schools with these advantages will be less likely to need support with issues such as special needs. That is what we are looking at.
Amendment 131 seeks to deal with this criticism by insisting on provision for children of all abilities where a selective school becomes an academy. What is more, unamended, the Bill will allow such schools to expand, so we could be talking about a significant expansion of selection. The Minister has indicated that this will not be the case and I should be grateful to hear him say that now. The Prime Minister has made great claims about having changed his party. Change is good and changed it has—I am sure many would say for the better—but, despite those claims, the Conservative Party has been forced—I remain to be convinced otherwise—to introduce this Trojan horse of more selective schools. We know that Conservative MPs want some red meat on selection, but the Government risk showing that they are prepared to bargain away the aspirations of the majority in return for the acquiescence of Back-Benchers in another place. The Minister shakes his head. I look forward to hearing his response and to being reassured and convinced otherwise.
Amendment 59 seeks to remove this aspect of the Bill by preventing academy schools selecting. I admit that it is a blunt instrument—I said at the start that this is a probing amendment at this stage—but it would be, by far and away, the most satisfactory outcome.
Amendments 40A to 40F seek to deal with the second criticism: that the balance between selective and non-selective schools could be disrupted, without any community consultation, by schools converting to academy status and then expanding whether through different age groups or intake.
Lord Bates
Can the noble Baroness confirm that selection was included in the concept of academies introduced by her Government; that you could select 10 per cent on the basis of the specialism of the academy? That was in the Education Acts of 2006 and 2002.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, the noble Lord is referring to the 10 per cent based on aptitude, which is a different paradigm—I am not sure whether that is the right word. These are probing amendments and I want to hear what the coalition Government’s intentions are on selection. I am sure that we will all be interested to know.
As with the discussion on the admissions code earlier in Committee, Amendments 130 and 183 will reassure those who are concerned that schools could convert under existing admissions procedures—which may erode over time—with no statutory safeguard against it. Many people outside the Chamber are asking these questions. The amendments would ensure that, in future, no non-selective school could use academy status to become selective.
Indeed, others have expressed this concern from another perspective. The Guardian newspaper reported the views of the National Grammar Schools Association. It stated in regard to academies:
“There may be other covert dangers and, until everything is made clear in the area of legislation and elsewhere, we strongly recommend extreme caution. If necessary, please seek advice from the NGSA before making decisions that may later threaten your school”.
The head of the NGSA said he was concerned that if a grammar school became an academy, it could then be run by a small group of people who might decide to change the admissions procedure. The article continued:
“‘What is the protection for the parents?’, he asked. ‘Does there have to be a ballot? Does it become an all-ability intake?’”
The National Grammar Schools Association is unclear about the coalition Government’s intentions. I should be extremely grateful if the Minister could set out, with great clarity, their vision for the future of selection in academies.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 43 and 46. I can address them briefly because I agree overwhelmingly with what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, has said. It is recognised that in part of the coalition at least—I hope in the whole of the coalition—there is a quiet passion to ensure that the extension of the academy principle, which is strongly supported all around the House, should not inadvertently become a cause of further problems for the least privileged part of our secondary education system. As the noble Baroness said, all the amendments, including mine, are designed to obtain from the Minister a “battened down” statement, if you like, that will allay these anxieties.
On Amendment 43, and wearing my lawyer’s hat, a characteristic in subsection (1)(6)(c) is that,
“the school provides education for pupils of different abilities”.
A lawyer could make hay with “different abilities”. It could be that a school would satisfy this test if in future it was going to select the top 10 per cent and the second top 10 per cent. They would be of “different abilities”. It could pass the test if it were to select the top 5 per cent and those with tap-dancing abilities. Those would be “different abilities”. I caricature my point to make it, but I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I hope that I can provide the reassurance that my noble friend Lord Phillips and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, asked for.
However, before I try to do so, I would like to pick up on the noble Baroness’s use of the word “perversion”, which I know is a word that has been used before in the context of the development of this policy. “Perversion” is a strong word with a particular weight, and I make the point that I have made before: it was clear from the 2005 White Paper, produced by the Government of whom she was a member, that it was an aspiration that the academies programme would be rolled out far further, and the then Prime Minister was looking forward to the time when all schools would be able to opt out of local authority control. So to caricature our proposals as a perversion is a slightly strong use of language.
I come to the heart of the noble Baroness’s question. The Bill does not allow for any increase in selection by ability in the state-funded sector. That said, we think that the freedoms that academy status can bring should be applied to all groups of schools and not denied to any in particular. We do not believe that they should be restricted to failing maintained schools; instead, we should extend that more broadly.
Amendment 40A seeks to make it a characteristic of an academy that was formerly a selective school that it does not expand following conversion to academy status. As the noble Baroness has set out, Amendments 40B to 40F seek to place a limit so that they cannot expand their role beyond a particular percentage.
The Bill contains provisions that allow selective maintained schools to retain academic selection but it does not allow for new selection. If accepted, the amendment would mean that successful grammar schools and successful partially selective schools would not be able to meet local demand for places if they converted to become academies.
With regard to a cap, as things currently stand, maintained grammar and partially selective schools are allowed to publish expansion proposals under Section 18 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006 and the 2007 prescribed alteration regulations. Proposals are needed only if an expansion of over 25 per cent is planned, so any expansion below this level could be achieved through the normal admissions consultation. Provisions within the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 prevent any new selection from being adopted within maintained schools that were not already selective, and those 60 or so partially selective schools are also prevented from increasing the proportion of selective places.
Given that maintained selective schools are currently able to expand up to that point, to prevent them from doing the same thing as academies, as the noble Baroness’s amendments would suggest, would be more restrictive than the current regime within which they operate, and I cannot believe that that was her intention. Consequently, our wish is only to offer similar options on expansion to schools converting to academy status as are currently offered to maintained schools. We are seeking to maintain the status quo in that respect.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
It is important for me to understand how the status quo will be measured. How is selection defined? How will the Minister measure if there has been any change, and how will he monitor that? What is his plan to ensure that this is not a Trojan horse, or a back-door route to increasing selection?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will come on to deal with that, if I may. If it would be helpful, I am happy to set out in writing for the noble Baroness as clearly as I am able what I consider the safeguards to be. I recognise that many people are concerned about this point, and I want to try to nail that down for her.
As would currently be the case with any proposals for expansion of a grammar in the maintained sector, local groups would have to be consulted before any expansion, and that would persist with academies. We will continue to ensure that the proportion of selective places in partially selective academies does not increase.
Amendment 43 would make it a condition of being an academy that it provided for children of all abilities as opposed to children of different abilities, the point that my noble friend Lord Phillips raised.
If we were to accept Amendment 43, I am advised that national testing would be necessary to ensure that academies all had intakes of all abilities across the country and admissions would have to be manipulated to ensure that all abilities were represented. We do not think that that is proportionate; maintained schools are not required to go as far. There will be circumstances where those who apply for admission to a particular academy do not represent all abilities, although they would represent a wide range of different abilities representative of the area.
Amendment 132 would require academies to provide for children of different academic abilities as opposed to children of different abilities. Section 99 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 defines “ability” as
“either general ability or ability in any particular subject or subjects”.
It is clear, in our view, that what is meant by “pupils of different abilities” within Clause 1(6) is the meaning that is already established within legislation: pupils with a range of different general abilities or achievements. This interpretation is supported by the relief from this duty in Clause 5(3) for existing grammar schools wishing to convert to become academies. Such a relief would not be necessary if “ability” did not encompass academic ability.
Amendments 46, 59, 131 and 183 would require any existing maintained grammar school or partially selective school to remove its selective admissions arrangements on conversion to academy status. To deny existing selective schools these freedoms, or to require them fundamentally to change their nature before being granted them, seems to be unreasonable.
Amendment 130 seeks to prevent any non-selective school that converts to become an academy from acquiring selective admission arrangements after conversion. On that point, I reassure noble Lords that Clauses 1(6)(c), 5(3) and 5(4) of the Bill prevent academies from selecting by academic ability, except where a maintained school with pre-existing academic selection converts to become an academy.
I should be clear that the only schools that will be able to select by ability are those listed in Clause 5(4). As the schools defined as “selective” within that clause do not include independent schools, any independent schools joining the academies sector will also not be able to select by academic ability.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand that miasma of anxiety. I am due to meet my colleague shortly, and perhaps that is another issue that we can add to our list of issues to discuss.
As I said, I think it would be helpful if I set this out clearly in writing; as I go through this, I am conscious that some of it is quite technical. I shall write to the noble Baroness and put copies in the Library, and I hope that will help. In the mean time, in light of the explanation and the reassurance that I have sought to give, I hope that noble Lords will feel able not to press their amendments.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his response, and I look forward to receiving a fuller response in writing. I am sure that the letter will also be placed in the Library.
Given the academy provisions that already exist in law, it seems that the only point of bringing forward this Bill is to enable selective academies. I suppose that that is why one might choose to use quite strong terms. Having been a member of a Labour Government who made such a success of academies and having seen the transformation in the education that young people around the country have received, I feel very disappointed that the Government are not only starting with currently outstanding schools but taking the trouble to introduce selection into the academy programme. As I said, however, I look forward to hearing further from the Minister.
The Bill introduces selection, removes consultation and joins the free-school, free-market experiment by introducing a new funding mechanism for academies. I still feel very anxious about what it is trying to do given that, as my noble friend Lord Adonis said at the start of Committee, strong provisions already exist in law. In theory, apart from those provisions, there should not be a great difference—but these are really significant differences. The Minister needs to recognise the strength of feeling about these issues around the country. People have great concern about how we should go forward.
However, I made it clear that these were probing amendments. I look forward to understanding more about the Minister’s intentions. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) the school offers a guarantee of minimum educational standards to pupils and parents (a pupil and parent guarantee) as set out in schedule (Pupil and parent guarantees)”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I shall briefly give the coalition Government another opportunity to think again about the events that took place during the wash-up. The Committee will be well aware of the Labour Government’s commitment to deliver for parents and pupils a guarantee around the quality and style of education delivered to them through our schools around the country, so we now turn to the amendments in relation to the pupil-parent guarantee for academies.
Amendments 60A and 170A would restore the guarantees that we on this side of the Committee aimed to provide for pupils and parents. Those guarantees were, sadly, blocked by the Conservative Party during the negotiations between our two parties on the legislation outstanding before Parliament in the run-up to the last election. Those guarantees would have given pupils and parents assurances of a decent education whatever school they attended, so that every local school would be a good school, delivering minimum standards for all.
We set it out in statute that the guarantees should include: catch-up support in the three Rs for primary school pupils or for those starting secondary school who fall behind, which would have included one-to-one tuition and small group work; online information for parents on their child’s behaviour, progress and attainment; a named personal tutor for every secondary school pupil; guarantees on school behaviour through home-school agreements; the right to learn triple sciences at GCSE; a guarantee of regular sport and exercise; and the opportunity for every primary school pupil to learn a musical instrument—on which, if the Minister wants to see that as my contribution toward Amendment 68, then in the interests of time I am happy if he wants to come back to me on musical tuition in his response here.
This is about giving parents and pupils the information and the awareness of what they can expect from their school system, so that no child should miss out and so that every school should be a good school. Now, we have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the desire to empower parents and to give more power to communities. Of course, we very much want that, so I will be very interested to hear how the noble Lord can build on the work that we did in government to make sure that the best really is on offer for all our children in our schools.
Baroness Walmsley
The noble Baroness invites my noble friend to return to the days of an old new Labour Government; I do not agree with her. Actually, we did not agree with her at the time. We spoke against these pupil-parent guarantees as being motherhood and apple pie without any legal levers at all, so she will not be surprised to learn that we do not support her amendment.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, when my children were at primary school I recall the primary head teacher telling me with great joy one day that there had been a very large package delivered in the school playground. They were not sure where it came from and had asked the police to inspect it. They had indeed blown it up; it was 400 pages of further instructions from the Department for Education. Of course, we agree with many of the aspirations set out in the proposed new schedule but, as the noble Baroness will have heard from behind the Front Bench, we are committed to giving schools more freedoms to get on with the job, with fewer detailed instructions taking less time away from teachers for teaching. What she is suggesting is very much the kind of approach that we want to move away from.
As my noble friend Baroness Walmsley and others have said, writing things down on paper and spending a long time negotiating them does not necessarily make them happen. We therefore share the aspirations but not the method. For most of us on this side of the Committee, part of what was wrong with education policy under the previous Government was the overdetailed instructions and prescriptions to schools, which we all know that teachers grew intensely to dislike. The aim of this Bill and of the Bills which will follow it—a larger Bill is promised for this autumn—is to free teachers to talk with parents and deal with pupils, and not to spend an immense amount of time with pieces of paper and negotiations. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, of course I listened with great interest to the noble Lord’s contribution. The pupil and parent guarantees were actually about empowering parents and pupils so that they can ensure that, in partnership with their schools and their local authority or academy trust, they can get the things that they need for their children. It is about looking at the education service that this country provides from a bottom-up perspective—looking at it from the point of view of the parent and child and of what goes on in the classroom. If we think back to Second Reading, how chastened might the coalition Government perhaps have felt when my noble friend Lady Morris criticised them for focusing so much on structure? Here we have a chance for them, just for a moment, to think about one-to-one tuition, for example. What has happened to one-to-one tuition? We have gone from a situation where the Government were committed to guaranteeing it in statute, with a process through local government—
Baroness Walmsley
Will the noble Baroness be patient until the pupil premium comes along?
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I cannot wait for the opportunity to discuss the pupil premium. There we have a real chance to see how the grand words will unfold into real benefits for pupils in schools. That is what I am interested in and what the pupil guarantee was all about. That is what this focus on structure and structural tinkering leaves wanting, which is what I am concerned about. I am very interested to debate how the pupil premium will work. An awful lot rests on what the pupil premium delivers—not just for disadvantaged pupils in this country, but for the coalition Government. I am happy at this stage to withdraw my amendment and I look forward to the debate continuing.
“( ) An Academy must operate in partnership with its local authority, and the maintained schools in that local authority area, on arrangements for the permanent exclusion of pupils.”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I will focus now on exclusions, which are always a key issue for schools, as we know. I am sure noble Lords will agree that exclusions by the academies proposed in the Bill will be no exception. There are many reasons why academies are more likely, historically, to exclude a greater proportion of their pupils than other maintained schools, especially in the early years of their creation. Often, when we look at the data on academies, it appears that by definition they result in a higher level of exclusions. However, we should not expect that those challenging schools which convert to academies under the old scheme would not have higher exclusion rates than other schools. That is the situation of the past. The figures show that exclusions tend to rise in the early days but fall as academies become more established. This is an example of how successful academies have been. In part this is because we have insisted—and this is key—that academies participate in local behaviour partnerships.
The then Department for Children, Schools and Families published revised guidance about behaviour and attendance partnerships for schools on 31 March 2010. The main provisions take account of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which makes it a requirement for all maintained secondary schools and academies to co-operate and form behaviour and attendance partnerships to improve behaviour and tackle persistent absence among pupils. That is the present situation. The partnerships must also report annually on their progress to the children’s trust board, which is in flux at the moment. These provisions will, I believe, come into force on 1 September 2010, unless the Minister is going to advise us of a different situation. By working in partnership on such issues, rather than working in isolation, schools could achieve great benefits—the benefits of shared physical and financial resources and people; the joint commissioning of the provision of shared expertise; and the sharing of knowledge of effective practice between schools. Those schools in behaviour partnerships are asked to work together to seek a reduction in differential rates of permanent exclusion or persistent absence of pupils with SEN, pupils from a particular ethnic minority group or pupils who are eligible for free school meals.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am not sure that I can provide an instant answer on that. Particularly in relation to low-incidence disabilities, whether it is to do with deaf or autistic children or those with other needs, a specialist voluntary organisation will often also be doing its best to monitor the situation. Therefore, when I say “following a complaint”, very often the relevant specialist society will be doing its best to support the pupil and will make sure that the YPLA and the local authority are informed and concerned if the need falls short. However, we are looking to develop partnerships among schools. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, went a good deal wider than this and spoke about young people in care going beyond the education sector to the other local agencies that deal with difficult young people. That is the way in which we have to go forward. On that basis of reassurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, on this occasion and given the hour, I have set aside my 2,000-word speech. I shall think carefully about what the Minister has said. I, too, was concerned by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the idea that we can just leave the matter to trust. We know that, of the academies that exist, a very large number—I do not have the exact number to hand—currently take part in behaviour partnerships and they work. However, it is the ones that do not do so that I am worried about.
I shall read the report of the debate. It has been a good discussion and helpful in clarifying for me the Government’s position. I was concerned to hear the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Wilkins and was interested in the noble Lord’s response. However, again, we come down to the academy agreement. When we are talking about a change from the number of academies being in the hundreds to potentially all schools in the country being academies, we have to think much more ambitiously about how we can make these partnerships work.
Baroness Wilkins
Before my noble friend withdraws her amendment, perhaps I may say that I regret that I am not reassured by the Minister’s words. However, I shall read them carefully and should like to consult my advisers. It is essential that the support services are kept together and maintained as a core service, but at the moment it does not sound as though they will be. I shall reflect on this issue.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I was about to say that I am happy to withdraw my amendment.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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“(a) for at least three years, and(b) terminable by the Secretary of State giving one year’s written notice”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, the amendments in this group are probing amendments to understand why the Government have chosen the period of seven years for the academy agreement, not six years or eight years, to understand what evidence they have chosen to support that choice and to probe the direction that the agreement flows in. If a new academy is formed through an academy order and a funding agreement for seven years is established, how can such an institution, if it wishes, revert to the maintained sector? Is it a one-way street or a two-way street? What are the safeguards to ensure that an institution is not stuck as an academy if it wants to come back? I hope that the Minister will be able to furnish us with the evidence on this matter. I beg to move.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Brougham and Vaux)
If either Amendment 88 or Amendment 89 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendments 90 and 92 for the reason of pre-emption.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I start by thanking my noble friend Lady Sharp. She reminded us, in her clear exposition of the history behind the answer to the question put by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, about the period of seven years and where it came from. The previous Government followed it and we are doing the same.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
In terms of the noble Lord’s approach going forward, I ask what evidence has been used to carry on with that timeframe. There is nothing in the impact assessment about timeframes and I would be interested to know what the evidence is.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My noble friend Lord Wallace says that the evidence is as good as the evidence the previous Government had. The answer to the question is that, over time, the period has shown itself to demonstrate stability for parents and children because it gives them some certainty. However, in terms of the impact assessment, I can give no better answer than the previous Government themselves had.
We think that reducing the period of notice required for termination would create greater uncertainty. We are not aware of evidence that suggests that a shorter notice period would provide a better solution. However—and this comes back to earlier discussions about the difference between the funding agreement and the grant arrangements—there may well be a case where a new school is created for providing a shorter period for the school to prove itself. That is the reason behind the proposed new grant arrangements. In such a case there would be greater flexibility to allow for more regular review of performance, and then once the school had established itself as what is called a free school, it would be possible, if both parties agree, to move on to the more conventional contractual funding agreement.
Furthermore, it is right that the academy itself is sure of this same stability to make long-term plans and that the Secretary of State, when committing to funding, is confident of the proprietors’ commitment to the academies programme. The amendments would add unfair uncertainty to the academies programme. On the question put by my noble friend Lord Phillips through Amendment 92, I am advised that it is already the case, as he says. The Bill gives no prescription about when the notice to terminate may be given.
Amendment 108 seeks to allow the governing body of any school which has applied for an academy order to withdraw the application at any time up to one week before the conversion date. Until the academy arrangements, including the funding agreement, have been signed by both the academy trust and the Secretary of State, the academy trust is free to withdraw its application for an academy order, even if the order has been made in respect of that school, and in theory that could be right up until just before conversion. An order merely permits the school to enter into an agreement with the Secretary of State; it does not require it. The decision by a school to enter into academy arrangements with the Secretary of State should be taken after due consideration. The academy trust will want to be confident of its decision when it signs the funding agreement or grant letter but, as I say, in theory that could be up until the point before conversion.
Lord Hill of Oareford
On the specific point the right reverend Prelate raised in the question he asked earlier, I can tell him that we shall come later to amendments in regard to religious schools and land issues. Perhaps I may write to him to clarify the precise point.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his remarks and for putting on record some very helpful information about moving in and out of academy status.
With regard to the seven-year timeframe, given the debates that we have had so far, the main difference between having an academy agreement and having a direct grant payment is the term. I am trying to understand what the Government see as so important about the seven years. Regarding the term of the grant letter, we were advised that the main difference there was the variation of the term. This is an important issue. If the coalition Government had simply carried on everything that we did when we were in government, we would be looking at a very different education Bill now—we would be looking at PSHE and guarantees around one-to-one tuition.
This is about understanding what the Government see as an appropriate term. If it is a new, experimental school that is being funded through a grant letter, then how long is enough—one month, two, three? Does it have to be a year or five years? At what point does it become a stable, going entity? I would be interested to know that, along with what evidence the Government are going to use. If they do not have evidence now, and I understand that there is an experiment unfolding around the free schools, it would be good to understand what criteria are going to be used to look at how well those new funding grants and the terms around them are performing.
I am grateful to the Minister for putting on record those helpful remarks about the transition to and from academy status, and I will read Hansard to understand the implications fully. For now, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) An application under subsection (1) shall be in such form and shall contain such particulars as may be prescribed in regulations.”
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
Again, this is about teasing out more from the coalition Government about the practicality of how applications should work and the kind of criteria that the Secretary of State will be using to make decisions about whether a school can become an academy. I am sure that these are matters that have all been thought through.
I would be interested to know whether the Government have considered putting much more detail in the Bill. When we had an academies programme that started off with numbers in the tens, the academy funding agreement and the intensive coaching approach that the Department for Children, Schools and Families adopted was very appropriate. Then we moved on to academies in their hundreds and the YPLA was established, and so on from there. We increased transparency around the standard funding agreements and so on.
Is the Minister considering publishing the criteria for decisions around academy applications? Is he also considering putting more in the Bill as we start to think about a whole system that could be made up of academies rather than a small number focusing on school improvement?
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 112, 118, 123, 126 and 187, in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. The key amendment among them is Amendment 123, which has two purposes. In the first place, it asks the Secretary of State to state the criteria for approving an academy order. This is both important and urgent. It is important because, as my noble friend the Minister has made clear, there remains a two-stage process for applications for state-maintained schools converting to academy status. First, they have to apply under the conditions set out in Clause 3 and, if approved, the Secretary of State, under Clause 4, issues an academy order. Once an academy order is issued, the school then has to begin negotiating an academy agreement or a funding agreement with the Secretary of State.
As I mentioned at Second Reading, the impact assessment suggests that only 200 schools a year will achieve academy status during the next three or four years. My noble friend the Minister made it clear that this was merely a guesstimate based on past experience. He has also told us that more than 1,700 schools, many of them judged outstanding by Ofsted, have expressed an interest in becoming academies. Even if you halve that, so that the number of applications received is 850, you have to ask whether all those which receive academy orders go on to negotiate academy agreements. The Secretary of State has indicated that all those judged outstanding by Ofsted will be able to proceed unless they are carrying a significant deficit on funding.
If this is so, the department will have to process many more than 200 schools, with not insignificant costs, not least because each school will receive a welcome present of some £25,000. Will all schools applying which have been judged outstanding automatically—unless they carry a large deficit—receive an academy order allowing them to proceed to negotiating a funding agreement? If not, what other criteria will be used to select those that are allowed to proceed? What about the schools judged good or satisfactory by Ofsted? They are also being encouraged to apply, albeit to a slower timetable. By what criteria will they be judged? Neither the Explanatory Notes nor the guidance to schools wishing to apply makes clear what criteria will be used to judge applicants. Amendment 123 would make the criteria public so that schools thinking of applying might be able to judge whether it is worth their while doing so.
The second aspect of the amendment is that it seeks to make it clear, where a school is under notice from its local authority under Section 30 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 or Sections 15 to 17 of the Education and Inspections Act 1996, that the local authority will cease to maintain the school. When GM status was introduced in the early 1990s, many schools sought it as a way of avoiding closure. How far is this likely to be considered by this Government? We face over the short term a very considerable drop in numbers at some secondary schools, especially those that deal just with the 11-to-16 age group, and closures and amalgamations are still very much on the cards. How far will they be allowed to use an application for academy status as an escape route from reorganisation?
Amendment 112 asks that, where a school is being converted to an academy because it is failing and not serving its community as well as it might, the decision is taken in conjunction with the governing body, and that, just as with other schools, the application is made by the governing body and not imposed on it.
Amendment 118 picks up the second issue raised in Amendment 123. This amendment was proposed to us by my honourable friend the Member for Bath, Mr Don Foster, and relates to school reorganisations. There were some instances where plans for a sixth-form reorganisation had been foiled by a key player opting out to become a grant-maintained school. The suggestion is that before a school opts out in this way an independent view should be sought on how it affects the provision of education within the community as a whole. Who better to provide such an independent view than the schools adjudicator, who has already had to look at the contentious admissions procedures? The proposal, therefore, is that when the conversion to an academy is contentious in a local community because of reorganisations, the schools adjudicator should be asked to look at the situation and the Secretary of State should have regard to his or her advice—not necessarily follow it, but have regard to it.
Lord Hill of Oareford
No, my Lords; I was coming to that. There are some exceptional circumstances where that would not necessarily happen. There may, for instance, be cases where further information or action is required, including where a school is subject to existing reorganisation proposals—such as those referred to in Amendment 123—and where, as my noble friend has said, the school has a deficit or its performance has changed significantly. The Secretary of State has that power and would want to review each case on its merits. There will need to be flexibility in the Secretary of State’s consideration of these factors to make sure that he can make the most appropriate decision in each individual case. Information on those exceptional circumstances is, I believe, available on the department’s website.
In a similar vein, Amendment 126 would require the Secretary of State to make an order through secondary legislation specifying the mandatory contents of an academy order. While each order will inevitably contain certain standard elements, each will be different and specific to each school depending on the circumstances of each case. I think that we touched on this briefly last week. The parliamentary Delegated Powers Committee report on this Bill, dated 17 June, concluded that it would not be necessary for Parliament to scrutinise academy orders, while the expectation is that the academy orders will be brief. Therefore, it is not our view that we need to set out in an order what those orders will contain.
Amendment 118 seeks to require the Secretary of State to seek the advice of the schools adjudicator before agreeing the conversion of a school from maintained to academy status. The local authority normally would decide proposals for changes to existing maintained school provision, including closures, alterations and new schools. Where the local authority itself is the proposer of a new school, the schools adjudicator may be called upon to decide the competition. The decision on academies has, however, always been the Secretary of State’s. Given that the process for converting to academy status will not result in a net change in provision available to parents and pupils in the area, we do not believe that involving the schools adjudicator would be necessary. It might, indeed, introduce another unnecessary layer of bureaucracy.
On the point raised by my noble friend Lady Sharp on Amendment 187, the Secretary of State does not intend to delegate to the Young People’s Learning Agency any decisions about, or the making of, academy orders. I can confirm that he has no intention of delegating this function, which goes hand in hand with the decision to enter into academy arrangements themselves and which he cannot delegate to the YPLA. Academy orders are made in respect of maintained schools; therefore it is not appropriate to delegate it to the YPLA, which is responsible for certain roles—funding, challenging and supporting academies—once they are up and running, but not before.
Finally, Amendment 112 would remove the power of the Secretary of State to make an academy order for a school that is eligible for intervention. Generally speaking, schools are eligible for intervention where standards are too low or there are concerns about performance standards. It is crucial that schools that are failing their pupils can be given the opportunity to convert to academy status and to do so quickly to improve their pupils’ chances. There is evidence that schools obtaining academy status can make improvements to raise standards for all their pupils. It is right to make sure that those schools have that opportunity, too. Removing that option would not be in the best interests of pupils. I hope this has provided some more information and factual answers on several of the points that have been raised. With that, I hope that the noble Baroness will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, given that the hour is so late and the complexity and importance of the information that the Minister has just shared with us, I will want to read Hansard and think about it. One of my concerns relates slightly to the FOI amendment that is coming later. I am concerned about transparency. The coalition Government have said time and again that there is a strong commitment to transparency. We are dependent on a host of information being posted on the department’s website but, given the number of websites being culled at the moment, I am slightly anxious about it. So I want to think about what the Minister has said this evening. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Greaves. I listened to his comments with care and he made some extremely interesting points about oversight. I agree that one has to keep that under review as the situation develops. It goes to the heart of the question about the future role of local authorities, which we have touched on previously in Committee. I recognise that the coalition Government have not yet come up with a complete or satisfactory answer on what it should be, other than saying that we are clear that local authorities should have a strong strategic role.
The issue of it being a revolving picture is related fundamentally to my noble friend’s Amendment 160B. Perhaps I may answer his question directly by reference to Baldrick in “Blackadder”: I do not have a cunning plan around how many schools are likely to convert. I know that my noble friend may find that hard to believe, but it is true that our approach to the legislation is to say to schools that they have the opportunity: it is a choice rather than a compulsion. We do not have a clear view of the landscape in five years’ time because the shape of that landscape will be determined by the response to this permissive legislation.
We see this as being an opportunity that we want to give to schools rather than requiring them, or a local authority acting on their behalf, to convert or plan for conversion. Linked with that is the desire to be able to seek academy status quickly. It may indeed be that over time local authorities will develop a new role more akin to commissioning. I think that was the thought behind my noble friend’s amendment and the 2005 White Paper laid out thoughts on how the role of local authorities might develop. As the department and the Government more generally reflect on the proper role of local authorities and how to work with them—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I have been listening carefully to the Minister. If the Government do not have a vision for the role of local authorities going forward, would it not be a better idea to take this legislation at a more reflective pace so that people can engage with the coalition Government more proactively and in a considered way? Why are we rushing this? If the noble Lord does not have a picture or an answer, why are we here at 11 pm instead of having more time to think more carefully about the matter and have a proper debate? I do not understand what the rush is.
Lord Hill of Oareford
This relates to a debate I had earlier with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, who asked: why the rush? Our answer to that question is that we know there are schools which appear to be keen to convert and to take advantage of academy freedoms. Our instinct is that, given that information and given the choice between going slow and cracking on with it, and providing answers about the strategic role of local authorities going forward, as I fully accept we must, we incline to the latter view.
I fully recognise the experience of my noble friend Lord Greaves in the proper role of local authorities. I hope that he will contribute to our deliberations on these matters. He said that these amendments are meant to illustrate a point rather than being particularly prescriptive in their intent. I have listened to what he said and will continue to reflect on it. I hope that in the light of that he may feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Viscount Eccles
I stand corrected. That secondary legislation was drafted by the previous Government and I must confess that I had some hope that the coalition Government would see that there had been an error and not implement it. An extremely strong argument has to be made in order to appoint any charitable regulator other than the Charity Commission. In default of that argument, the Charity Commission should be the charitable regulator.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I have got slightly confused about the groupings. I think that I have a clause stand part in here. Anyway, I shall make a brief contribution to this debate.
The contribution from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, on the question of charitable status and the automatic exemption proposed in the Bill was so key that I am not sure that I want to add much more. When I read the Bill, it gave me great cause for concern. I sat through much of the proceedings on the Charities Bill as a new Peer and learnt how thoroughly this House can interrogate a piece of legislation. I came to understand the importance of presumption and the role of the regulator in safeguarding the values that the charity brand, if that is the right phrase, has for members of the public. This is a fundamental step to take.
The Department for Children, Schools and Families considered this measure for its last Bill but rejected it on the basis of advice that we received, so we were listening carefully. There were lots of good reasons why academies might want to become charities, but in the end there were not enough good reasons to suggest that all the careful deliberation that this House and the other place went through to achieve that settlement should be thrown out. To carry on the Monty Python link, I would say that this clause is a dead parrot, as it really is dead as a concept. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response, but I have heard some convincing arguments today for why Clause 8 should not remain in the Bill.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I tabled this amendment to ensure that academy support staff are not excluded from the School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which was set up under the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. The establishment of this negotiating body was supported on all sides of the House. There are concerns that, because academies have freedom to negotiate separate pay and conditions, their staff will be excluded from the negotiating body.
Many people will recognise that changes in educational practice over the past 10 years mean that support staff now play a very important part in schools. Over the years, we have treated them extremely badly. The negotiating body is the first move on the part of any Government in creating a proper career structure and providing proper negotiating machinery for support staff, who have been paid extremely badly. We are seeking assurances from the Government that academy staff can be included within this negotiating body. I beg to move.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, there are over 200,000 more support staff in our schools thanks to the investment put into school improvement under the previous Government. More than 123,000 of these staff are classroom teaching assistants, who support teachers in identifying and helping children who need extra support.
The previous Government established the School Support Staff Negotiating Body to ensure fair pay and conditions for hundreds of thousands of people whose jobs on the front line help to give every child the best start in life. This was part of a partnership that we built between government, employers, unions and staff, known as the Social Partnership.
A forum for real dialogue between government, the trade unions and school staff is something which I consider to be extremely important and which I am sure all of us in this Chamber can look back on with pride. Whatever else the coalition Government may disagree with us about, I hope that—in going forward with the previous Government’s approach—they do not forget that it is by working with, and not against, staff that you can drive change and raise standards in our schools. I hope that we can hear some very constructive language and views from the government Benches.
It is true that under the previous Government academies were not covered by the national pay and conditions structures, although they were invited to be involved in the school support staff negotiation process. As I understand it, the amendments in this group are not intended to represent reneging on that position. If academies are to become the norm for secondary schools in this country—if the majority of schools adopt academy status, as I understand is the Government’s view—these amendments are looking for an understanding that, rather than being a tool for driving improvement in a number of areas, it is right and proper that there should be a framework for collective bargaining, particularly for these important staff members who have made such a difference in our schools.
Giving a few schools in challenging areas the freedom to vary the terms and conditions is one thing, as it may help them to break down entrenched disadvantage and to attract new staff to schools where morale may have been low and staff turnover very high. However, by giving such freedoms first to the strongest schools may undermine the aims of the academy scheme and, therefore, the rationale for the approach to the rights of workers in the sector to collective bargaining. The rationale simply will not stand up. I hope that the Minister can respond with supportive language to these ideas. I look forward to hearing his views.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I always try to be as helpful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, as I can. I certainly echo what she and my noble friend said about the importance of support staff and the contribution that they make. On this occasion, I fear that I shall not be able to be as supportive as she perhaps would like and as my noble friend might like in substantive terms.
Our view is that the freedom over staff pay and conditions, which has been extended to academies in relation to teaching staff, is an important freedom and it is one of the reasons why schools have wanted academy status. Our view is that if it is good enough for teachers, it is good enough for support staff. I suspect, although I do not know because it was before my time, that at the beginning, when academies were given greater discretion over pay, there may well have been concerns that it would lead to staff at academy schools in some way being done down because they were not part of national agreements. Over time, those fears have not been realised.
There is no reason to believe why the same should not happen as regards school support staff. Academies could use their greater freedom to treat them well and perhaps to treat them better. We believe that those freedoms have been vital to academies’ success. They allow them to make changes to the school, to drive up standards and to employ the best staff. It is one of the core freedoms. On this occasion, I certainly feel that academies ought to be able to have those freedoms in relation to school support staff.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I am very interested in the noble Lord’s view on this. Does he think there is a material difference between what a community might have to say about a primary school and about a secondary school? Is there a difference between those institutions in terms of the community engagement and collective responsibility?
Lord Greaves
I think there is a real difference between primary schools and secondary schools for other reasons, but the relationship between a school and the community in which it is situated varies hugely between schools. Some schools cut themselves off from the community, unfortunately, a tendency that has increased in recent years because of the pressures put on the schools, but other schools look outwards. I do not think there is necessarily a difference between a primary school and a secondary school, although primary schools—by their very nature, because they take in very young children and bring mothers in and so on—are often more closely involved in the community than some secondary schools. However, I do not think there is necessarily a direct relationship between that, and I know secondary schools that are heavily involved in the community.
The parish council in a village, the town council in a town and the district council can all legitimately have a say. I am not saying that they should have a right of veto; I am saying that these are community institutions and if a community is to have a proper debate, no matter how quickly, everyone in that community has a right to it.
There are two principles of general consultation. They help with the difficulties, which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, identified, of being too prescriptive about whom you consult or of trying to be prescriptive but vague at the same time and perhaps leaving things open to legal challenge. First, you must publish what you are proposing for general discussion so that anyone can pick up information about it and take part in the discussion, and you must publish the responses. That is proposed new subsection (1A) in my amendment. Secondly, once you have the responses, whether from parents, teachers, the parish council or just a group of interested people, you must obviously consider them and decide whether you want to allow them to influence your decision. If, after the consultation, you decide to send your application to the Secretary of State, you send a summary of the responses or the responses themselves to the Secretary of State alongside your application so that someone who is looking at the application can consider them at the same time. Those are the two principles of genuine public consultation and debate.
The argument against such a consultation might be that it will delay the process, but so long as you have a pretty strict timetable and people are fairly rigorous and efficient with it, it does not have to delay the process very much. I think there is also a worry on the part of the Government that if there is too much general public debate about a particular proposal, it will encourage people to decide not to go for it. They might say that it is a bit controversial and hang back a bit. However, given the scale of the interest which the Government assure us there is in these things, whether it is a free school or a conversion—they say that 1,800 schools at least have now asked for more details—the Government and the department cannot possibly deal with that very quickly and will have to go ahead with far fewer, so I do not think that the argument about putting people off carries any weight whatever.
I support the coalition Government, but everything that people have said and everything that they have published so far—in the original agreement and in the coalition document Our Programme for Government—talks about more public involvement, more consultation and more involvement of citizens. We are slowly learning what the big society means, but if it does not mean genuine consultation on something that is as important to a local community as the future of its school, what on earth does it mean? Something needs to be in the Bill about consultation, and it needs to involve not just particular interest groups in the school but the wider community.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We turn now to the issue of free schools. As I said a moment ago, I am very grateful to the Minister for making the Statement repeating the Answer given to the Urgent Question asked in the other place, and for taking such a comprehensive set of questions. However, the Statement has generated more questions than answers. I am sure that as we go on in Committee we will learn a lot more.
Even the disinterested passer-by cannot help but notice that free schools are a flagship policy of the coalition Government—or at least of the Conservative part of the coalition Government. The Prime Minister and the Secretary of State were clearly delighted to be photographed during the election campaign with parents celebrating their promise of a new school on demand. It was great campaigning, I am sure that noble Lords will agree. A whole page of the Conservative manifesto was devoted to a case study of the Swedish education system, the model for the Government’s free school proposals. Actually, when I looked at it, most of the page was taken up by photographs—very nice too—but at least nominally there was a page on the subject.
The Chancellor cited the reform as key to the Government’s plans to close the deficit, as it would see free schools use money more efficiently. The Secretary of State says that he has seen the future in Sweden and it works. The Government seem to want a great deal of attention focused on this policy, but considerably less scrutiny about the practicalities of it. We may be changing that today.
Nowhere, however, in the pronouncements of the Secretary of State in connection with the Swedish-style free school reform, of which we have heard so much, has the Academies Bill been mentioned—until today. The Bill was announced under the headline, “Legislation to give more schools opportunity to become academies”. The Department for Education website carries a document outlining the purpose of the Bill. It states:
“The Academies Bill will enable more schools to become Academies and give them the freedoms and flexibilities they need to continue to drive up standards”.
The document makes no mention whatever of new providers entering the school system. The Explanatory Notes to Clause 1 state:
“This clause replaces similar existing provisions in section 482 of the EA 1996. It enables the Secretary of State to make ‘Academy arrangements’ with another person, to establish and run an Academy. That person will be funded by the Secretary of State further to either a contractual agreement (an ‘Academy agreement’) or, by new subsection (2)(b), through grant funding under section 14 of the Education Act 2002”.
There is no mention of new providers here either, merely an oblique reference to previous legislation and “other persons”.
Lord Bates
Following on from the previous speaker, I should like further clarification on the rules concerning the new schools. It is desirable that the Bill should encompass all three types of new schools. This would, first, allow the best schools to become better by freeing them up; secondly, tackle the failing schools through the academy orders in Clause 4; and, thirdly, make provision for the new schools so that they, too, can become academies. It would be tidy if those three elements could be within the Bill.
We do not need to be too anxious about the burden that this will place upon the Government. Taking things in context, the brief on the Bill pack prepared by the House of Commons includes two or three helpful sections on new schools. It states that currently 19 per cent of the 3,200 secondary schools are judged to be outstanding and will qualify for the fast track. So that is potentially 600 schools out of 20,000. At the other end, depending on how you define inadequate Ofsted reports for longer than a year, there are about 100 failing schools. So, added together, that makes approximately 700 schools out of 20,000.
In the document Raising the Bar; Narrowing the Gap, which was the discussion Green Paper of the Government when they were in opposition, it was anticipated that the total number of new schools—roughly about 300 to 400—would be equivalent to about 220,000 places. I mention this for two reasons. First, all of the proposed changes might touch upon, potentially, 5 per cent of the total cohort of schools within the country. Therefore, the sense that this will send shockwaves through the entire system is unfounded and it is perhaps unfair to concern people about that. Secondly, the catchment areas of the new schools—
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
When the noble Lord refers to “new schools”, does he mean free schools?
Lord Bates
The terminology is getting to us all. I do mean that. I come from an inner city urban area on Tyneside and it happened quite regularly that, where you had a failing school in a suburban area, dissatisfied parents who could afford to, or opted to, would take over an old large Victorian terraced house and its grounds—we have all seen them—and set up a new independent fee-paying school. The parents who could afford to opt out of the system would then pay fees for their children to go to that school. This movement still exists and is happening within the private sector. I cannot understand how anyone who has a passion for narrowing the gap and giving greater opportunity could possibly object to it. We should do all of these things in inner city areas and make them free and available to everyone. That would be entirely laudable.
I wish to make two other brief points, the first of which relates to catchment areas. If there is going to be a greater number of schools, broadening catchment areas would be a good thing. When the city technology colleges were established, they covered not only one entire local education authority area but often encompassed two or three. In other words, if the parents were prepared to undertake the duty of getting their child to school and it was not going to damage the child’s education, it was deemed acceptable for the child to attend there. Where there is greater choice the catchment areas need to be broadened. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, rightly made the point that narrow catchment areas could have too severe an effect on neighbouring schools.
The final point on which I seek clarification from the Minister concerns the properties that could be used. There are many buildings in inner city areas—including, many educational buildings—under the control of local authorities. Indeed, where they have a surplus of places they are paying additional money for them. Does my noble friend agree that local authorities should look at their existing stock of prepared educational establishments, embrace this change and, where there is a surplus, hand over existing buildings to a new school provider? That would give the authority an additional income and would mean that the provider was not forced into premises that might not be suitable.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, it has been wide-ranging debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, pointed out, we have in some ways already got on to some of the issues that we will discuss in later groups of amendments. We can pursue them in greater detail then. Given how wide-ranging the debate has been, it would perhaps be helpful if I briefly restated the amendments and their purpose.
Amendments 2 and 3 would mean that academy arrangements could be made only with the governing body of an existing school rather than any other group. They are linked in this group to Amendment 24, which would mean that, for future academies, the academy proprietor would have to ensure that its governing body was not controlled by a majority of parents of pupils at the academy—which was the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne.
Amendment 13 seeks to ensure that the SEN annex of an academy agreement, which sets out the school’s detailed obligations in relation to pupils with SEN, would apply also to the arrangements for academy financial assistance. Amendment 33 seeks to prescribe in the Bill that the academy agreement includes details of the roles, composition and continuance of the governing body. Amendment 76 seeks to ensure that academy funding agreements include additional provisions on SEN, including a requirement to comply with special educational needs legislation and regulations as if it were a maintained school.
Perhaps I may start with Amendments 2 and 3. The Government want to make it easier for teachers, charities, educational groups and groups of parents to start new academies. As the 2005 White Paper stated:
“We believe parents should have greater power to drive the new system: it should be easier for them to replace the leadership or set up new schools where they are dissatisfied with existing schools”.
We debated that earlier. I do not feel that I need to go through much of it again.
I should make it clear to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan—I think that my noble friend Lord Greaves also raised the point—that a free school could be regulated either through a funding agreement or a grant under Section 14 of the 2002 Act. In both cases, similar requirements will be placed on free schools as are placed on academies which convert from a maintained school. The only difference would be more flexibility in relation to the length of the funding period, a point that I made in our earlier debate on the Urgent Question. The more flexible arrangement would be used mainly in cases where new providers did not have a previous track record.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
It would be helpful if the Minister set out in greater detail in writing what he has just said. We received a letter from the Secretary of State today—I am scrambling around to find it among my papers—stating not only what he has just said but also that academies funded through grant would have the conditions of their grant outlined in a letter. It states that the provisions would be in line with those in the funding agreement, as the Minister has just said. However, there is anxiety that, for issues around SEN, vulnerable children and all the areas set out in the funding agreement, the provisions might well be “in line with” but not the same. The Minister has just made a strong statement. It would be helpful to have that more clearly set out. My noble friend Lord Adonis said that the Secretary of State can already fund schools in this manner under the 2002 Act. If that is the case, and all the instruments exist, why do we need this additional route? If all the instruments exist, are we not just confusing matters? Around the Chamber, we are starting to understand the importance of the academy agreement. If we introduce another way of doing things, will it not confuse things further? Perhaps a letter would be helpful.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am very happy of course to write further and set out what the noble Baroness seeks, because it is absolutely our intention that the two forms of funding should be on a completely equal footing. I recognise that many Members of this Committee want as much reassurance as they can have on that. If I can help in making it clearer, I will be delighted to do so.
Amendment 13, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, seeks to ensure that the SEN annex of an academy agreement, which sets out the school’s detailed obligations in relation to pupils with SEN, would apply also to the arrangements for academy financial assistance. In a way, that is a variant of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan. The amendment is unnecessary, because academies whose arrangements take the form of an academy agreement and those whose arrangements are for financial assistance will both be under the same obligations in relation to special educational needs. I shall pick up again on special educational needs in connection with Amendment 76, although I know that a later group of amendments has been tabled on SEN.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for giving way. Will he also think in his deliberations about both routes for academy designation—through an agreement and through the grant letter?
Lord Hill of Oareford
One is approaching this from first principles, and first principles are first principles. I give an undertaking to come back at Report with proposals as to how one could put the principle of parity into effect.
Lord Lucas
I thank my noble friend for his reply and look forward to the model agreement, or the bits of it that we will get. Yes, charities do evolve, generally, a self-sustaining model for their governing body, but those that do not, die. Schools that do not either die, as many have this year, or the bursar very quickly puts other arrangements in place. It does not seem that those triggers are there for a straightforward maintained school with no sponsor. I shall return to this matter again in another context but, before the passing of the Bill, we need to know how we can stop schools getting into a real mess and how we can pick it up early and do something about it.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We have had a very helpful and full debate, and I thank the Minister for replying so comprehensively and in such a helpful way. To return to my earlier remarks, and picking up on the point that my noble friend Lord Adonis made, I think that it would be helpful—now that we know that free schools will be academies, and being in favour of reducing the alphabetti spaghetti, or soup, as the House was earlier—if the proposal forms for the free schools were called proposal forms for academies. We should get that clarity and consistency, so that those outside, who have not had the benefit of listening to the deliberations that we have had, can be clear about the relationship between new schools, free schools and academies. That would be very helpful.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
I hesitate to prolong this debate, but after all that has been said on this group of amendments, is it not sensible to have the phrase “free school” somewhere reflected in the Bill? The Government themselves refer to these new academy schools as “free schools”. I should have thought that, in trying to make the legislation as helpful as possible to the poor devils who have to implement it hereafter, that would be a useful thing for the Government to contemplate—and I should be grateful if he would.
Free Schools Policy
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Answer to this Urgent Question from the other place. I have a number of questions to ask him, but before I do, I want to make the point that this Urgent Question followed a press release issued by the Minister’s department on Friday about the process for progressing the coalition Government’s free schools policy. Just a moment ago, we were in Committee looking at the Academies Bill, and it would be very helpful for the House if we could understand how the Government’s different policies and priorities fit together so that when we are scrutinising the legislation we have a full picture of what the Government are trying to achieve. It was therefore a bit of a disappointment that the Secretary of State for Education chose to announce the process for progressing the free schools policy in a press release on Friday when we could have heard more about it in this House. However, the Minister has repeated the Statement to the House, which I very much appreciate.
We have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the challenging economic times that we are in. We on these Benches recognise that and the real challenge of having to make cuts in the near future. How will these new free schools be paid for? The Guardian suggested, possibly on Friday, that funding from the previous Government’s proposals to widen access to free school meals will be used to pay for the new free schools policy. Will the Minister explain what assessment has been made of surplus places? Surplus places might not be a very cost-effective way of funding school places. Indeed, creating surplus places through the development of a free schools policy could be quite an inefficient way of using what will be scarce resources.
I believe that the coalition Government are keen to broaden the number of providers that deliver education through the free schools model, and I am interested to know whether the coalition Government envisage new providers coming into education being able to make a profit from using public funds to develop free schools, or whether, under some enterprise model, any surplus that was generated through the use of public funds would be ploughed back into public benefit.
I was quite interested on Friday to see a little box on the form on the website that has enough space for 200 words that are designed to show what parental demand there is for a new free school. For the benefit of those who are interested in taking forward an idea such as this, will the Minister say what he is looking for in those 200 words that will give a really good picture of parental demand? Will there be published criteria? I know that the Secretary of State will have to look at each of these applications, and I understand that there have been many expressions of interest. When the Secretary of State looks at these 200 words, over breakfast on Sunday morning perhaps, what will he be looking for to assess parental demand?
There is also a space on the form to set out the premises that have been identified or to say what the premises would be like. The Minister mentioned planning requirements when he repeated the Statement, and I am interested to know how any legislation on this will work. Again, what is required in the box about premises? Will the new free school have disabled access, for example, or will a car park, office block or corner shop work just as well?
How will local authorities be involved? The Secretary of State for Education said very clearly in a letter that he sent to directors of children’s services that there would be a role for local authorities in that local authorities are central to the Government’s plans to improve education. It would be very helpful to understand what that vision is in relation to free schools.
It is also interesting that the coalition Government have made strong statements about a commitment to fairness in approach. How will the admissions code, which I think is all about fairness for children’s educational opportunities, work in the free school setting? How will vulnerable children and those with special educational needs, about whom this House cares very much, be catered for? I am aware that I have asked a lot of questions, but it is important that this House hears from the Minister the vision and the practicalities of how it will work.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I will try to answer all the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin. On her first point, no disrespect to this House was intended. The view was taken that this was an announcement about practicalities. The principle of the policy had previously been announced and had been long trailed. Over many years it was in the Conservative Party manifesto and it features in the coalition agreement. As the noble Baroness knows—we will be discussing it in Committee over the next three days—free schools will be set up as academies under the Academies Bill. They will have the same framework, rights and responsibilities as the academies that we have just been discussing in our first group of amendments in Committee. The view was taken that this was a practical implementation and a first step of policy rather than a new policy announcement.
On the point fairly made by the noble Baroness about the challenging economic times, perhaps I may reassure her about the modest funding for what is, in effect, a series of pilots that we will look at over the next year to see how this policy works out. The £50 million will not come from free school meals pilot money. As the Statement in the other place made clear, the department is basically recreating a programme which the noble Baroness may know—the standards and diversity fund. The money has come from the harnessing technology grant. Therefore, as the Statement made clear, it has come from money that was put aside for IT, not from free school meals.
As regards the noble Baroness’s question about profit, the school or trust must be non-profit making. As now under existing legislation, a school can subcontract to a provider of a service, which, if a commercial operation is providing that service, will charge what it needs in order to make a profit and a living. As now, the school cannot make a profit. There is nothing here which will enable free schools to be profit-making schools.
As the noble Baroness will understand, parental demand, and the Secretary of State’s breakfast, is work in progress. We have made clear that a demonstration of parental demand might be, for example, a petition. An interested party can make the application and then work with an official in the department who will work up the detailed application. As part of that process, some of the noble Baroness’s fair questions on how these things will be demonstrated will be worked through.
On premises, revised planning guidance will be issued by CLG in due course, which should free up and remove a lot of the bureaucratic systems that currently make the establishment of a school for anyone extremely difficult to countenance. The noble Baroness’s point about precisely what the requirements will be needs to be worked through.
On the role of local authorities, I have somewhere another letter—we in the department are busy writing letters at the moment—written by the Secretary of State to local authorities specifically on the free schools announcement, which is subsequent to the previous letter to which the noble Baroness referred. It makes clear that part of the process under which he will judge the criteria for whether an application to be a free school should be able to go forward will include consultation with the local authority.
The admissions code for free schools will work just as the code for academies because the free schools will be set up under the academies legislation. All the safeguards and requirements that were put in place for academies will apply to free schools. That remark also applies to the noble Baroness’s final and extremely important point about vulnerable children. All the safeguards, particularly with regard to vulnerable children and SEN issues, which will be discussed at greater length as we go forward with the Academies Bill, will be in place.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
We begin today the first scrutiny in Committee of the first Bill from the new coalition Government. The Government have tried to present the Academies Bill now before us as non-controversial, as an extension of Labour policy on academies, and so as something that should be easy for reasonable people on this side of the House to support. It is to be a decentralising measure, devolving more power to local people to run their schools and making a contribution to improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools, with all the benefits to children’s life chances and to our wider society that that implies. This Bill is also being presented as a contribution to the big society—the idea which the Conservatives promoted a little in the general election. I suspect that we will hear less about that as we go forward, but nevertheless it is a very interesting idea.
I believe that the Bill is nothing of the sort. We on this side recognise it for what it may well turn out to be—highly centralising, potentially damaging to children’s education, damaging to communities, and a device more to establish free schools by the back door. The Bill does not seek to improve our education system. Instead, it may well be shown that it seeks to make fundamental and damaging changes to it. The Government would not increase the number of Labour-designed academies, designed when we were in government; rather they seek to create a new class of school with a motive which is entirely different from the laudable aims behind the Labour academies. The schools that they would create are not necessarily appropriate to bear the name “academy”. That is why we seek to deny that name to these schools. They should be called what they will be: direct maintained schools.
Ministers have spent so many years attacking local government that they have forgotten something about which their own Conservative-controlled Local Government Association has reminded them:
“Councils don’t run schools and haven’t done for many years”.
That is a quotation from an LGA Bill briefing. Schools run themselves, which is how it should be, but councils do have a range of statutory duties to protect the welfare of children in their area, including a duty to promote,
“the fulfilment by every child concerned of his educational potential”.
Councils make sure that there are enough school places for all the children who need them, and their top priority is to make sure that the same high standards of education are offered to all students, whether they are taught in a community school or an academy. Councils make sure that the admissions process operates fairly so that every child gets a chance to go to a good local school. They oversee the distribution of funding in conjunction with local schools in a cost-effective way. They provide support for children with special educational needs, something I know that the Committee is concerned about, and they are the champions of children in care.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, as I wrote myself a note to do so. The general point is related to the notion that all schools can apply for academy status, not just the outstanding ones. I can see the logic of the noble Baroness’s argument: that if a school is already highly performing, the ability to make the kinds of improvement that the original wave of academies have made may be slightly more reduced. Given the intention that in time all schools, not just those in the outstanding category, will be able to apply explains more broadly why there is the opportunity for that uplift. I will need to write to the noble Baroness on her specific question about the maths and how officials came up with that figure.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
I thank the Minister for his helpful reply. I am happy to withdraw my amendment at the appropriate moment. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for his comment, “Brave try”. As a Minister, being called brave was something I always used to worry about, but as an Opposition Front-Bencher, perhaps I will not mind that so much.
This debate has been helpful and interesting. I am interested in the point about academies as defined in the Bill being exactly the same as academies defined in previous legislation. Thinking about why we need the Bill focuses on the questions: what is the difference and what is the real motivation behind the Bill? Like the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester, I want to be convinced, and hope that I will be as we go through Committee. I know that an awful lot of thought has gone into a wide range of amendments.
I have one question, which I hope I will learn more about in our debates today. If academy status will be exactly the same legally, I need to understand what Clause 1(2)(b) is all about. When we come to the Statement on free schools, I might understand that a bit more. Like all noble Lords, I do not see the benefit of increasing the number of letters in our alphabet soup. I am very interested in the comments that noble Lords have made. I have just learnt that outstanding schools will not be expected to have a sponsor, but those that come after will. That is a very interesting point.
I was also very interested in the point made by my noble friend Lady Morris about the focus of government policy. That highlights the challenge that we have when scrutinising legislation. We are looking at the Bill, but surrounding the Bill is government policy and how the Government promote their priorities. I am concerned that the Government continue to focus on poorly performing schools and coasting schools. I am very much comforted by the Minister's reassurances on that, but we will come back to the question of what the additional arrangements for academy financial assistance actually mean and whether that is a significant change in the legal instruments surrounding the legal definition of academies. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children: Vulnerable Children
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I have two questions for the Minister. First, this House worked very hard on the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. Will the Minister commit to implement that Act in full? It is about promoting stability for some of our most vulnerable children. Secondly, will the Minister honour the previous Government’s commitment, to which he has just referred, to roll out family intervention projects? We know that by investing in family intervention projects we project vulnerable children, and the results are tremendous.
Lord Hill of Oareford
In terms of the commitments that I can give, I have to make the broad point to which my noble friend Lord McNally alluded that unfortunately we inherit a financial situation in which, as the former Chief Secretary, Mr Liam Byrne, pointed out that there is “no money left”. So it is simply not possible for me to give any undertaking at all about commitments going forward on funding. However, I can certainly say that in looking at issues of public expenditure, clearly the priority that the Government will bring to bear is to protect wherever possible the most vulnerable in society. The decisions that we have already started to take with regard to Sure Start and the funding to protect it are proof of that point. We shall continue to do that, but it is simply not possible to give firm financial undertakings for the future. This Government are confronted with the same situation with which a Labour Government would have been confronted, if they had got in: there is no money left, we have spent it all, and we will have to make cuts to sort out the deficit.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction. Although it was his maiden speech plus three days, I welcome him again. Just to be absolutely clear, it is a delight to respond to the Minister at Second Reading.
Labour’s academies programme supported some of the most deprived communities and children in our country. The academies programme was targeted at schools which were failing their pupils and communities by not raising aspirations enough. When a school underwent a change to an academy, we usually insisted on a change of leadership and always on an injection of outside expertise from a sponsor. Sponsors that were not existing successful education providers or charities had to make a significant financial contribution. We were extremely grateful to those that did. We normally provided extra support in the form of additional resources to improve facilities and to drive up standards. It was a really significant programme of school improvement. We are very proud of the contribution of my noble friend Lord Adonis.
This was about transforming failing schools, strengthening school leadership and creating hunger for success for some of our most deprived children. As the Government recognised, GCSE results in academies have risen faster than in their predecessor schools and faster than the national average. Some academies have not succeeded: that is true. We understand the challenge that many schools face. However, several academies, as the Minister pointed out, have been established in deeply deprived communities and have become some of the best-performing schools in our country. They deliver GCSE results on a par with—and sometimes better than—schools in much more affluent areas, showing that it is possible that the negative link between aspiration and deprivation can be broken. This is what the Labour academies programme was about.
The Bill represents a new approach. It simply does not compare with the Labour academies programme and does not provide all the support that we used to give to deprived schools. We are very proud of what the programme has achieved. The programme at which we are looking does not represent a continuation of Labour’s programme. Labour is proud of the achievements of the pioneering academies. As the Minister rightly pointed out, when we were in government we committed to doubling the number of academies to 400. In so doing, we committed to create real benefits for the most disadvantaged children. However, I note that in the impact assessment for this Bill, the Government have struggled to demonstrate real benefit resulting from their policy of rolling out a scheme which was designed to transform failing schools to the highest performing schools in this country. There is a real issue there.
I believe very strongly that there is a good argument, as the Minister stressed—and we should make no mistake about this—for successful schools to be given more autonomy and flexibility, provided that it is clearly on the basis of fair admissions and funding, and a recognition of, and commitment to, their wider social improvement responsibilities. When in government, we understood that to excel schools need to be interconnected with their communities and supported by their local authorities. It seems to me that unless robust safeguards are in place, there will be serious implications for local communities, local children’s services and, indeed, for the schools which are left behind. There are real issues about which the Minister needs to think carefully, as I know he will.
The Minister must answer the question: will creating so many academies in already successful schools create a two-tier system? He tells us that it will not, but we need to know what the safeguards are to ensure that that is not the case. Funding for schools is allocated to local authorities on a formula, taking into account local costs, needs and deprivation. Some funding is retained by the local authority to pay for services centrally provided by it to those schools and their pupils. This includes such things as school travel, school meals, special needs, statementing, pupil referral units for children excluded from school, school library services, jointly provided sports, music facilities or teaching as well as advisory support for teachers and schools. These are very important services.
The new academies will, in a similar way to the existing academies, receive all their per-pupil funding as well as their share of the local authority central funds. As the need for these services varies, and already outstanding schools are often less likely to need particular kinds of support than other schools, this could create funding shortfalls in support of the remaining local authority schools. A real issue needs to be thought through there. The per-pupil amount received by academy schools would, as a result of this, be greater than that for neighbouring schools. As the budget for centrally provided services will fall as a result, these other schools will lose important support. We need to understand where the Government are going with that. Under the existing academy scheme, this creates a transfer of extra funds to those schools most in need of extra support. However, under the new scheme, where most new academies will already be outstanding schools, resources will be shifted to those schools which are already performing well. This is the two-tier threat to which Dame Margaret Eaton referred when she voiced her concerns about a possible two-tier system and disadvantaged children losing out. At no point does the coalition explain the impact that this may have on other schools in the area. There must also be clarity on the impact on nursery education, and on care for three and four year-olds, because this is causing a great deal of concern outside your Lordships' House.
As with funding, we need clarity on the admissions code. Local authorities are the admissions authorities for all schools except academies. There is a great deal to be said about academy agreements, which I do not have time to go into here. Greatly increasing the number of academies will have implications for admissions planning. The Government must be clear about how they will respond to this. There are implications particularly for children in care who currently have priority. Will that be maintained with a much greater number of academies? There are implications, too, for disabled children and those with special needs. How will they be catered for by the new model? For example, parents of children with autism are already reporting problems with the admissions arrangements for current academies. How will this translate across the system? In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats were particularly concerned about fair admissions and said that they would replace academies entirely with sponsor-managed schools accountable to local authorities and not to Whitehall. I would be interested to know the Liberal Democrat view. I know that they want to position themselves separately, as well as being part of the coalition.
Our academy programme was one part of a national approach designed to ensure that every school in this country was a good school. This approach led to a significant fall in the number of schools failing to achieve the 30 per cent benchmark that we set of five good GCSE results. That number has gone from thousands in 1997 to hundreds now. It is a significant improvement, and I am glad that the Minister acknowledges the achievement. The Government have also said that schools under Ofsted special measures for a year or more will be converted to academy status if they do not improve. This represents fewer schools than those that were covered by Labour's National Challenge programme, in which schools were supported and challenged to improve or faced intervention, including the possibility of conversion to an academy or a national challenge trust. If this is the extent of the coalition’s school improvement programme—I am sure the noble Lord will tell me that a lot more is going on—we should know. We should know in much greater detail how the new academies will be expected to fulfil their responsibilities to partners in their community and to promote school improvement.
I agreed with my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley when she said that it is the quality of teaching that makes the most difference to children from poor backgrounds and disadvantaged areas. I am glad that the Minister, too, liked that contribution. Like my noble friend, I look forward to hearing much more from the coalition Government about the policies that will help with that. When in government, our aim was to make teaching a masters-level profession, with time off to train and a new teaching masters qualification. We enshrined in our Children, Schools and Families Bill a licence to teach that incorporated both time off for continuous professional development and an ongoing assessment of teacher training and development; but sadly, the Conservatives objected to that in wash-up.
This is not part of what I would see as a progressive education policy. I recognise that the Bill is permissive and not coercive; but, as ever, it will be what is not in it that will give greatest cause for concern. It has not enshrined the aspirations that we had in government for a progressive academies programme; and it does not represent a good place to start the coalition Government’s programme. If the teaching unions, Matrix Chambers, early-years specialists, local government leaders and parents’ groups are to be believed, the Bill will need an awful lot of attention in your Lordships’ House. We shall need to work really hard to get it into the kind of shape that it needs to be in before we can comfortably send it down to the other end. With my noble friends Lady Royall and Lady Crawley and our Back-Benchers, I look forward very much to working with the Government to get the Bill into a much better shape.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin Excerpts(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Morgan of Drefelin
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on a tremendous maiden speech and welcoming him to this House. As he recognised, he joins a small but elite club of Peers who have made their maiden speeches from the Dispatch Box, such as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to whom he very kindly and generously paid tribute. As a former chief political secretary to John Major, the noble Lord has some soul mates here—perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton, a great educationalist, and the noble Lord, Lord McNally, who only a few moments ago was firmly planted on the noble Lord’s own Front Bench. I would love to be a fly on the wall when these three get together to share a cup of tea, as is the tradition in your Lordships' House. But, truly, I welcome the noble Lord to our House. He brings with him a distinguished career in politics and business. He was educated at Highgate School and Trinity College, where he read history. As we have heard, he knows his way around Whitehall, having acted as an adviser to three government departments—employment, trade and industry and health—before joining No. 10, where he was political secretary. The noble Lord wrote an account of life at No. 10 at the time of the 1992 election entitled, Too Close to Call. Noble Lords should beware as there may be another one in the pipeline entitled, Coalitions and How They Fall.
It is a great honour to be a Member of your Lordships' House and a huge responsibility. I know that the noble Lord fully appreciates that responsibility. He has committed to listen to this House, which I welcome. In spite of the apparent age of its Members, this House cares very much about young people. We care particularly about vulnerable young people, children with special needs, children with no families of their own, young offenders and young people with no jobs. As the noble Lord is well aware, there is a great deal of wisdom in this House. I am glad to hear that he plans to make great use of it.
I, too, look forward to the maiden speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Hall of Birkenhead and Lord Kakkar, and of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. My noble friend Lady Thornton will address health and culture and I will focus on education. I will touch on welfare but my noble friend Lord McKenzie, who has much more expertise on this issue than I, will also focus on it.
I stress that Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition have grave concerns about the coalition Government’s welfare proposals. Given all the Government’s talk about fairness and social mobility, it is breathtaking that one of the first things that the Tory-Lib Dem Government have announced is massive cuts to youth jobs programmes. Labour believes that it is vital to help young people into work, especially as we are facing such challenging economic times. It is extremely worrying that already we are seeing the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats breaking pre-election promises to keep up support for Labour's future jobs fund. Future jobs fund jobs are real jobs, paying at least the minimum wage and lasting at least six months. The Labour Government promised funding for 200,000 jobs through the future jobs fund. More than 118,000 of these jobs have been confirmed for individual organisations, with 80,000 more pledged and bids and plans under way.
In previous recessions under the Conservatives, youth unemployment continued to rise for years after the end of the recession, but it had already begun to fall under the Labour Government after this recession as a result of extra support, including the future jobs fund. When Labour left office, there were around 40 per cent fewer young people signing on than under the Conservatives in the recession of the 1990s, and well over half of young people on JSA are coming off within three months. This is something that the Government must support.
I agree with the Minister that driving up educational standards in schools is a goal that we can all share. While children and families may no longer be in the title of his department, I hope that the Minister will also commit himself to working to give every child the best start in life, and to break down all the barriers to the progress, safety and well-being of all children in this country. Where the coalition Government get it right and act to open up opportunities to do more and to drive up standards for all, they will have our support.
The most pressing question in our debate today is that of education funding, and the impact on schools and children's services of the Government’s rush to cut the deficit. During the election campaign, it was clear that there were two different approaches. I admit that the children and teachers of our country have rather more to thank the Liberal Democrats for than they probably realise. Let us be clear that for the past two years, the Conservatives were unable, in opposition, to pledge to match Labour's commitment on education spending for 2010-11, let alone for future years. Only the NHS and international development were protected from the cuts planned for an incoming Conservative Government. I am reliably informed that it was only the intervention of the right honourable David Laws, in the days after the general election, which saved the day and secured ring-fencing for schools spending in 2010-11. However, with the shortest government honeymoon in history already over, and the right honourable David Laws no longer at the Treasury, will the Liberal Democrats continue to have the same impact on education spending that they promised? I hope that they will work hard for that.
In office, the Labour Party achieved a great deal. The noble Lord was very generous about our achievement with academies, and I am sure that the Government will recognise this as they go forward. We doubled spending per pupil; recruited 42,000 more of the best teachers; launched the biggest school building programme since the Victorian era; and achieved the highest standards and best results ever in this country, with more young people going on to college, university or apprenticeships than ever before. It is a record of which we can be extremely proud. Even in the current tough financial climate, when we need to get the deficit down steadily, we made a commitment last December with the Treasury to raise spending above inflation for schools, Sure Start and 16 to 19 education, not just for one year but for three years to 2013. That was our commitment to education.
While we were in government, we were clear about our commitment to education, but so far the coalition has been rather silent on what will happen to schools funding next year and the year after, let alone how it will pay for the proposed pupil premium and its new academies and free schools. This is a real challenge for the coalition.
The key question for today is where the money is coming from. I do not see how the coalition can pay for its announcements of more free schools and more academies without cutting deep into the budgets of all other schools to pay for them. Even the settlement negotiated by my right honourable friend Ed Balls called for tough efficiency savings totalling more than £1 billion over the next three years simply to prevent the cuts to front-line services—and that was without thousands of new extra schools and academies and the many thousands of extra, surplus places that that will require. On top of that, the Government have to find money for the new pupil premium that they have promised.
Where will the money come from to pay for the policies set out in the gracious Speech? Already parents, teachers and pupils are being told that their long-awaited new school building may not come about. We are in the dark about the future of school-building projects around the country, many of which have had months of work done and thousands of pounds spent on them.
We have all heard the coalition Government’s commitment to find £670 million of cuts from the Department for Education to help to reduce the deficit this year while protecting the front line only in 2010-11. Even here, there is no detail of where the money will come from. We made it clear that difficult decisions would have to be taken and set out in painstaking detail the first instalment of where those savings would be found, but we were given the impression by the incoming Government that they believed that the DCSF, as was, was teeming with so much waste that funding £670 million of cuts in the department would be painless. We need to know what those cuts will be, but the Government have still made no announcements to Parliament; they have just released a few select details to the Press Association, suggesting that school transport and one-to-one tuition may be for the chop.
The Government have also given no clue about how the £1.2 billion of planned local government cuts will impact on children’s services this year. What about social work reform? What about early intervention? What about safeguarding our children?
We need to know where these cuts will fall that are designed to reduce the deficit and pay for the pupil premium, the new free schools and the new academies over the next three years. Will the Government scrap the extension of free school meals? Will they scale back on one-to-one tuition and the Every Child a Reader programme? Will they cut education maintenance allowance? What about the budgets for disabled children, children in care, youth services, school sport and school music? Will the coalition scale back on the offer of 15 hours of free nursery education for two year-olds? We need answers and we need them soon.
We know that, on education policy, the Government have been divided right from the start. In April, Sarah Teather, the new Minister of State at the Department for Education, described the free schools policy as “a shambles”. She went on to say:
“Unless you give local authorities that power to plan and unless you actually make sure that there is money available … it’s just a gimmick”.
It is not just the new Minster of State who needs to be persuaded that the new schools policy is not an uncosted shambles. It will be no surprise to noble Lords to know that we on this side of the House have serious reservations about this Government’s education policy. It is reported that the Secretary of State for Education has written to 2,600 outstanding schools inviting them to become what he calls academies. They are to be told that they will get extra money from the funds that are currently spent paying for special needs, school food and transport and shared facilities such as music lessons, libraries and sports facilities. There is a good argument for successful schools being given more managerial autonomy and flexibility, provided that that is on the basis of fair admissions, fair funding and a recognition of their wider school improvement responsibilities. However, at no point does the coalition explain the impact that this may have on the other local schools. Where our academy policy gave extra resources and flexibility to the lowest-performing schools, the new Government are proposing to give extra money to favoured schools by taking money away from the rest. Where our academies went ahead with the agreement of parents as well as local authorities, the new Government propose to abolish any obligation on schools to consult anyone at all—parents, local authorities or anyone else. Where we brought in new external sponsors including universities to raise aspirations, the new Government are abolishing the requirement to have a sponsor at all. Our academies were non-selective schools in the poorest communities. The new Government will, I suspect, end up with academies disproportionately in more affluent areas. For the first time, there will be selective academies.
This is not a progressive education policy for the 21st century. It will not break the link between poverty and deprivation but will entrench that unfairness even further, with extra resources and support going not to those who need them most but to those who are already ahead. My real fear, however, is that this will result not just in chaos and confusion, but in deep unfairness and a return to a two-tier education policy as the Government’s chaotic free-market experiment unfolds.
I am not the only concerned person. Chair of the Local Government Association, Dame Margaret Eaton—soon to join the government Benches, I believe—has put on record her concern, saying:
“Safeguards will be needed to ensure a two-tier education system is not allowed to develop”.
These concerns are widespread in local government and across the school system. We will return to these issues in greater detail in the coming weeks. Will schools that do not become academies pay financially for those that do? Will the admissions code apply to those new academies and be properly enforced? Will academies co-operate, as now, on behaviour policy, or will the Secretary of State allow higher performing schools to exclude pupils as a first resort? How, without any role for local authorities, Ofsted or children’s trusts, will the Secretary of State step in if things go wrong in what will potentially be a massively centralised education system? Can we now be reassured that disadvantaged children will not lose out disproportionately by the resources from wider children’s education services being transferred away from local authorities as high-performing schools opt out and take the money with them?
These are important questions, but I make it clear that we will be a constructive Opposition. We will probe, question and challenge, but I hope that we will also agree from time to time. As I said at the start, I welcome the Minister to his position and congratulate him on his maiden speech. There are so many questions yet to be answered, but the new coalition government education policy really has some way to go. Most importantly, how will it be paid for? I, with my opposition Front-Bench colleagues, very much look forward to debating with the Minister in the future.