Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I, too, would like to pay very warm tribute to the importance of governing bodies. Exactly as the noble Baroness said, they have had more and more responsibilities thrust on them by legislation in the past 20 years or so. I am, however, nervous of any restriction as to the exact composition of a governing body—as to who should be on it, how many, what proportion, and so on. My experience is based not on the governing body of a school, but I was reflecting as I was listening to the argument that I had for many years the privilege of chairing the council of Roehampton University, previously the Roehampton Institute. We made a positive decision, and I think a democratic decision, that we would advertise the vacancies for governors. We were astonished by the wealth of interest from highly expert people from the community. Of course people will not offer to be on a governing body if they live 50 miles away, so it was very much a local thing. It was really inspiring to find people who popped up from the community of whom we would never have heard saying that they wanted to be interviewed for membership of the governing body.

Much as I agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of parents and governing bodies—I cannot speak too highly of every governing body with which I have been involved—I beg her not to press an amendment that would restrict the composition of governing bodies by dictating it in this way.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I agree strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, because my experience is exactly the same. Governing bodies are incredibly important and we all recognise the need for good training and for a wide range of people to be involved. However, as soon as we get into imposing restrictions and saying that we need this or that category of person, as we have done before, we often end up with people who do not want to do it at all. We need to get a range of people who are genuinely and totally committed to the school. In my experience the best governors have often been not the current parents but parents whose children have been through the school and who have decided to maintain their commitment to the school. They have a real feel of what the school has delivered for their children.

Speaking as a current governor I can say that the person who best embodies the community in the school in which I am involved is the local vicar. He does not have a label as anything but he is the most valuable community governor. As it happens it is not a Church of England school, but he absolutely represents the local community, particularly when there have been problems. The local community looks to him, although he would not necessarily fit into one of the categories. Restrictions are not a good route to go down and we should have learnt that from the past.

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I do not think that the amendments call for restrictions. They are the opposite; they say that parents are a special group of people who should therefore be given places as of right. That does not restrict anyone else in any way. It is absolutely true that some of the best governors are people who have become interested in and involved in the school over a period. Indeed, some of the best governors are people who may now be grandparents of children in the school who first got involved as parents and, when their children had gone through the school and they were not qualified to be parent governors any more, it was natural for the school to find a way to get them back on the governing body as an appointee, a co-optee, or whatever. That is absolutely correct, and no one is arguing against it.

Schools really need people who are prepared to give up considerable time, energy and commitment to the school, whatever their present position in the community. The purpose behind the amendments is that parents of children in the school at the time are a special group, for obvious reasons, and that their presence on the governing body in a reasonable proportion ought to be set out and entrenched. That in no way contravenes anything that the noble Baronesses, Lady Perry and Lady Morgan, said about the importance of getting other people involved, or of parents continuing after they have been parents of children at the school.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Long, long ago, when I first became one of Her Majesty’s inspectors, my lovely mentor used to say to me, “We always look for the growth points”. In the least successful school, there are always such growth points. Ofsted, sadly, has turned far more into a body that looks for the negative points—the things that are not going well—and for reasons to fail a school, rather than a body that encourages, develops, helps, listens and all the things that my noble friend has suggested.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I have a certain sympathy with this amendment, although there are question marks about how it is phrased. I have most sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has just described. We have got into a muddle with the role of Ofsted, of SIPs, of the YPLA—or before that, of the department—and where support starts and ends and inspection starts and ends. Rather too many people are going into schools, particularly schools in trouble, without being clear about who is doing what.

I totally agree that Ofsted—or any inspection regime, in a sense—must have a lot more focus and not inspect the myriad things that it is inspecting at the moment. My personal experience is that you end up getting into a panic about whether the files are in order rather than rigorously checking and really improving education in the school. That cannot be right and has to be looked at.

However, we have to be clear that Ofsted, or whatever inspection regime there is in the future, must be accountable to the community and to parents in particular. I therefore differ from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that I would not want to go back to the somewhat gooey regime in which data did not really matter. Data really matter. Without them, there is a real danger of groups of children in a school being missed and not progressed properly. By all means, let us add real intelligence to schools and give them real support, but let us not go back to the days when whole sections of kids could be left behind because we did not notice that they were not progressing.

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[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I am sorry to intervene but I do not think that is right. What the noble Lord is talking about is what can be claimed to be the obsessions about narrow forms of data that dominate a lot of inspections at the moment and therefore dominate a lot of headlines. However, the intelligent use of data in terms of tracking individual pupils is something an inspector needs in addition to all the qualitative work that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, talked about. When schools are only just starting to get there on using data in an intelligent way, it would be a retrograde step to chuck that out and return to the rather blunter instruments of the public lists which do not do the more sophisticated work that I am talking about.

[Lord Lucas]

Yes, my Lords, I agree that, used internally, those sorts of data are wonderful. I recall how, 15 years ago, Greenhead College in Huddersfield was one of the pioneers of such data, and it made a great difference. Even the English department was enthusiastic about it because it helped the staff to be better teachers. In a dumb world, data are great, but you do not need to inspect on them. If you do, you turn something that is a helpful internal tool into a weapon of oppression. It is a matter of getting the balance between being inspected on enough data that happen to be produced by the system and not pressurising teachers into recording every single aspect of every single child at great length and in close detail. The amount of time people are spending on this means that it is not productive. The inspectorate should not be interested in data at that level except when diagnosing a school that is clearly going wrong.

I am concerned about my noble friend’s relaxed attitude to inspection, particularly of the free schools that will be coming through under this Bill. These creatures are going to need to be looked at very carefully. As I said earlier, the New Schools Network is clear about the need for inspection, and I am clear that if you are starting up a new enterprise and you want to be proud of it rather than be landed with nasty cases where things have gone wrong and you should have known about it, you need a good system of what I call inspection but my noble friend Lady Perry would call a relationship between inspectors and schools. You need something that allows someone in authority outside the school to say, “Hang on. Something is going wrong and we need to get in and help”. If you wait for data that appear late because you need a year or two’s data before you can see the trends, a newly formed free school could be heading for trouble. So I hope that over the next year or so I will be able to convince my noble friend that going back in time and picking out the virtues of the system of which my noble friend Lady Perry was such an eminent part will be a good model to pursue. Not only can we do that, but we can save the Government a great deal of money while getting there. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I wish to speak against the amendments proposed by my noble friend Lord Whitty, as they would take us completely in the wrong direction. It is in everybody’s interests that schools should be encouraged to run and manage healthy budgets and to build up sensible surpluses if they are planning for developments perhaps two or three years ahead. I have always felt strongly that head teachers of whatever school—an academy or a normal community school—have to be able to manage their own budgets for several years ahead. If you are moving towards the provision of single sciences when you have been doing a joint science course, for example, it will inevitably take real investment, particularly in teaching but probably in facilities too. The amendments would be a retrograde step. My concern about the package in general is that in some way I would like the freedoms that are being talked about regarding budgets to go across the piece for all schools, whether they are academies or not. I should declare an interest as normal as working for ARK and city academies.

[Lord Adonis]

I support what my noble friend Lady Morgan has just said, with particular reference to Amendment 11A. We need to distinguish sharply between deficits and surpluses. At the moment, unless the policy has changed in the past 18 months since I was in the department, schools with deficits are not allowed to transfer to academy status. The deficit must be written off before the school can transfer. I remember many long and very difficult negotiations with local authorities about how deficits would be dealt with.

The issue of deficits then becomes very important if not clarified. Schools with deficits, particularly those with difficult relationships with their local authority because it quite rightly is seeking to get to grips with the deficit, might regard the opportunity to transfer to academy status as a way of evading their responsibilities to deal with the deficit. It can be in no one’s interests that that should happen. If a school is being poorly managed, its budget may be suspended under Section 66 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006. It is not clear under the current Bill what will happen to schools whose budgets are suspended. I should welcome clarification from the Minister on that point, perhaps in writing. There is a statutory procedure for a school’s budget to be suspended, which has to do with very poor management, so will such a school be allowed to transfer to academy status? I imagine that it would be allowed to apply but would not be allowed to transfer. I think that the general principle should be that schools with appreciable, non-trivial deficits should not be enabled to transfer to academy status until the deficit is dealt with. In the early phases of the expansion of academies I find it inconceivable that a school with a large deficit would be able to transfer in any event, as I cannot see how it could be rated as outstanding if it has a non-trivial deficit. That is an important point in terms of taking the policy forward. Will the Minister confirm that it is not the Government’s policy to allow schools to transfer to academy status as a way of evading responsibility to manage their budgets properly if they are currently in deficit?

On the issue of surpluses I take the view entirely of my noble friend Lady Morgan. I do not believe it right that schools should be penalised for being well managed and accumulating surpluses. I can see no reason whatever for a school that has a surplus to have that surplus seized by the local authority if the school chooses to become an academy.

That raises the issue of excessive surpluses. As I know only too well, an excessive surplus is a much debated concept. It may seem excessive to the local authority but, generally, it does not seem excessive to the school, which regards the fact of the surplus as a testament to its excellent management of its own affairs. I am sure that if you ask a school about the purpose for which it has maintained that surplus, it will give you 100 good reasons why it needs the surplus and 100 good reasons why it should not be seized by the local authority.

Therefore, I do not have much sympathy with the notion that schools with surpluses should not be able to transfer to academy status, but I believe that there is an issue about deficits which the Government need to address.

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[The Lord Bishop of Salisbury]

My Lords, perhaps hearing of the experience that I had at one stage of being chaplain to an Anglican school that had a house of Jewish boys in it might help noble Lords to be less anxious about what may happen, not only about the 25 per cent but also on the question of communities that can live together. In this case, there was no doubt that a small group of boys from a very distinctive faith background did a great deal to sharpen the sense of religious exploration of the whole school—not only faith exploration, but the exploration of world views.

I suspect that we are in great difficulties because we are sliding very easily between talking about church schools and faith schools, when by faith schools we tend to mean those that are founded by and for a very exclusive view of one particular faith tradition, whereas the position of the Church of England has always been that schools are for the community as a whole, and are known to be enriched by members of other faiths. The basis on which we in this country operate is that the church models an inclusive community that is lived out not only in the school life, but in the lives of the surrounding communities. Many noble Lords have talked about local schools that reflect exactly that tradition. What we need is not to minimise that tradition, but to broaden it and remind ourselves of its inclusive basis.

That is why the legislation that we spent a good deal of time on some months ago, to increase the broad and inclusive basis of all our common life, is so important. It would displease me to see denominational people withdrawing behind a more exclusive pattern, and also using that pattern to promote, encourage and wave the flag for other types of exclusivism, not just in religion but in other areas of political or social life. These things all cohere, and I have a great deal of sympathy with the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in his position as a member of the Church of England, which is not dissimilar to mine. That is the basis on which we ought to be more precise in our language, and maybe in the way in which we talk about legislation outside this House, when we should make a distinction between a church school and a faith school.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I always get very nervous listening to these debates in this House—we are going through many of the same conversations that we had three years ago—because there is a real danger that we will end up falling into a shorthand of “Church of England good, everybody else bad”. People listening outside to this debate could get a clear feeling that we think that you can have as many Church of England schools as you like because they are fine, but any other religiously supported school, albeit fully state-funded, is a bit iffy.

We must be very careful about the message that we send from this debate. There is a distinction between the issue of faith schools and those of, for example, admissions, proper supervision, the curriculum and inspection. They have always been crucial for taking forward faith schools in this country. I know that we do not like central control any more, but if there is any way that we can give an assurance that there is proper supervision of the curriculum through inspections, and potentially look again at admissions, that would be very helpful, rather than allowing a separation between types of faith.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, this has been a remarkable debate and I do not envy the Minister the job of winding up. The noble Baroness, Lady Murphy, put some very pertinent points to him, which, in a sense, reflected the dilemma that we face, to which my noble friend has just pointed. On the one hand, we know that the majority of faith schools are successful, thriving and popular with parents and that local communities give them tremendous support. They are, if you like, a glory and an indication of the diverse system that we have. They are schools with a distinct specialism, mission or ethos. We know that, at their best, faith schools do an incredible job. As an example, I point to the report of the Commission on Integration and Cohesion, Our Shared Future, which recognises that there are faith schools with pupils from many different backgrounds and faiths, as well as largely single-background schools that are not faith schools. Of course, under the current arrangements, all maintained schools, including faith schools, must meet a range of legal requirements, including the need to have fully qualified teaching staff and to teach the national curriculum. In addition, under Section 38 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, governing bodies of all maintained schools have a duty to promote community cohesion. That is specifically inspected by Ofsted.

My understanding—perhaps the Minister will confirm this—is that academies will have no duty to follow the national curriculum and that, according to Ministers, certain measures, including social cohesion, will be dropped from future Ofsted inspections. The concern is that, although many good faith schools will obviously continue to foster social cohesion, fairness and inclusiveness, some of the safeguards currently in place may not be in place in the future. I very much reflect on the situation in Birmingham, where we have many faith schools. If different communities have separate faith schools, there is a risk that our hopes for social cohesion and integration will become very much diminished in the future. My noble friend Lady Morgan put her finger on that in her question to the Minister. I think that the Committee seeks an assurance that he understands some of the important points being put to him. I hope that he can reassure noble Lords that there are mechanisms whereby we can ensure that the careful balance of religious freedom, social cohesion and tolerance, which have been a strong feature of our education system, continues in the future.

The Minister may find it useful to meet noble Lords between Committee and Report for a further discussion, because it is quite clear that there will be another extensive debate on Report. My noble friend Lady Morgan really put her finger on the question of how the Committee can be assured in this area. Certainly, anything that the Minister can do to reassure noble Lords will be very helpful.

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[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

In this group of 22 amendments, I shall speak to Amendments 22A and 23, with which my noble friend Lady Walmsley is associated. The first amendment would insert the little word “and” at the end of Clause 1(5)(b). The purpose of that is to make it plain that the undertakings which must be given for an academy agreement to be entered into are both of the matters referred to in subsection (5)—paragraphs (a) and (b). The word “and” would fulfil exactly the same purpose there as it does in subsection (3), where paragraphs (a) and (b) are linked. It is as simple as that.

My second amendment, Amendment 23, would delete from Clause 1(5)(b) the words,

“or provide for the carrying on of”.

That would mean that the undertakings require the undertaker to carry on the school, rather than to delegate the running of the school to someone else. It would be a bit of a hole in the carapace of the Bill to allow anyone to take over the carrying on—the running—of a school from the charity which had negotiated the academy arrangements with the Minister. I cannot believe that the intent is to permit that, because it would mean that there was no control by the Minister over the ultimate organisation running the school. One could envisage—because it does not seem to be prohibited by that wording—a profit-making entity running the school. That would run counter to the whole culture of the Bill, and state schools of whatever type. I would be grateful if my noble friend would respond sympathetically to those amendments.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I shall speak to Amendment 25 in this group, which probably should have been taken with an earlier amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas—I do not know why they have been separated. The aim of the amendment is simple, and I shall be brief: it is to get a little more push in making sure that we have a little more than warm words about outstanding schools that become academies, that we have a little more clarity and a little more than general good will about them giving genuine support to poor, disadvantaged and failing schools in the same area. I have heard what the Minister said and I generally share the approach that schools want to help each other, but if we think back to the reality of grant-maintained schools, that was not the case and they were separate from the local school community.

Noble Lords know that over the past 13 years, there has been a lot more co-operation and collaboration between schools. That has been for the general good and has led to improvements in all schools. Many head teachers of outstanding schools believe that their staff gain from helping disadvantaged schools. The learning is both ways: it is not all going in one direction, it genuinely moves both ways. However, that has happened with support. It has happened through things such as London Challenge and the Greater Manchester Challenge; it has happened through the national leaders’ programme, which has done some of the brokerage to ensure that people are working together, and has put some oil in the system to make that happen. I am anxious to ensure that we do not lose that lesson—that it does not happen spontaneously—and that there is genuine partnership and proper movement of curriculum leaders and senior leaders between schools. Otherwise, with the best will in the world, it will not turn into reality on the ground.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That is clearly the purpose and a new academy set up by a parental group may well need a significant amount of educational support in delivering it. I think that that is the point that my noble friend Lord Phillips raised when he spoke to his amendment. As part of the process of applying for academy status, the applicant would have to demonstrate how education is going to be delivered and whether use will be made of outside services in so doing. It would all be considered as part of the application process.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I am concerned that there is a suspicion—I accept that this is not what we are talking about here—that an academy provider and the group running it could hand over to someone else in two years’ time without being properly monitored. As I understand it, that is the concern being expressed. It is also my concern.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That could not happen. To clear up another often expressed concern that may lie behind the questions of my noble friend and other noble Lords, an academy trust cannot be a profit-making body either—although, clearly, the people providing the service will be paid for doing so.

Amendment 26, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, referred, would require future academies to continue any formal collaboration arrangements established between a former maintained school and FE colleges. As Section 166 of the EIA 2006 allows only for formal governance structures to be established between maintained schools and FE colleges, any partnership would operate on an informal basis. That is what happens currently and it is the right way to continue. It is happening in Luton, where Barnfield College, an FE college, is sponsoring two academies. In practice, that approach seems to be working.

Amendment 27 would prevent an academy trust from changing the age range to which it would provide education—and there was a long discussion subsequently, which I may come back to on later amendments, about the role of primary schools. The amendment would prevent an academy from, for example, providing early years education if it did not do so from the point of conversion and it could prevent it from expanding its provision from secondary to sixth form. However, given proper safeguards, those are the kinds of developments that we want academies to have the freedom to deliver. If that is what local parents want, we want academies to be able to do that.

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[Lord Greaves]

One thing about the House of Lords is that we are all so old that somebody at least knows the truth about these matters.

At the time, we all thought that that was absolutely right; in retrospect, we see that it was a mistake, because it drove most of the schools into the independent sector. Most of them are now fully fee-paying schools, yet they are not boarding schools or the classic kind of independent school. They probably serve a wider community than the immediate area as defined in the Bill. Nevertheless, some Government, some time, ought to get a grip on finding ways to provide greater integration of at least some of these schools—on a voluntary basis, obviously—with the state sector. They are almost all highly performing schools and if you cannot afford to go there, you cannot go there. A few of them have foundation scholarships and so forth but real efforts should be made to integrate these schools.

Certainly, in the north of England, these schools—Bradford Grammar School, Wakefield Grammar School and Manchester Grammar School—represent their wider communities. Modification of an academy model might be attractive to some of them. If that could be done it would be worth while.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

For the information of noble Lords, I also went to one of those schools which is now a city academy, so they can already become city academies.

[Lord Greaves]

Well, efforts ought to be made to get more of them. Of course, it would be a good time to tackle some of them because they are feeling the pinch of the financial situation. People cannot afford to send their children to them. On the other hand, it is not the time to dole out public money to independent schools: there would be a reaction to that. If we could plan for a time when public finances have recovered a little—we are told that they might recover in the future; we will see—it would be helpful. I put that pebble in the pond.

The other point that I want to make is about collaboration and support—partnership between schools. The previous Labour Government were prone to talk a lot about getting excellent schools to take over failing schools. Excellent schools are excellent schools because they have a good head teacher, good staff and good governors and are run well. Diverting great time and energy from the people running an excellent school to take over a failing school is probably a recipe for ending up with two mediocre schools. It was a silly policy.

However, partnership and collaboration on a voluntary basis—as the Minister said, volunteering not conscription —is absolutely the way forward. But it should not be seen as a really good school collaborating and going into partnership with a poor school. The valuable partnerships that could take place would be those between schools that are not so far apart in their attainment. Obviously, if you are going to have collaboration between two schools, they must be close to each other. A new academy might have not a poor or failing school next to it, but an average school.

If you are going to have successful collaboration—volunteering not conscription—there has to be mutual respect and parity of esteem. There must be an understanding that the schools that are not doing so well are nevertheless likely to have something that they can contribute to the partnership, to the benefit of both. Let us not talk so much about the good sorting out the bad. Let us talk about people collaborating and bringing their strengths, whatever they are, to the partnership for the benefit of both. I have said enough. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Free Schools Policy

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful for those observations. I would be very keen to discuss further the role that the Church of England can play in this. The general approach to providers currently is to make the system as open as possible. However, I shall follow that up further in the future.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Future Leaders. I share the Minister’s position on the enthusiasm displayed by many teachers who are interested in setting up free schools. I also share his belief that they are passionate about trying to deliver for the most disadvantaged children.

My question is about money. We have heard about the changes in the planning rules, but that does not answer the money question. When will we get real details about the setting-up costs of these new schools, particularly in relation to capital? I am clear how the running costs will be met but, particularly where there is a shortage of school places and there are not obviously empty old school buildings, there is a real challenge about finding suitable building space and meeting the capital costs. We need facilities to deliver a decent curriculum, particularly for older children taking GCSE and A-level sciences, and I am anxious to know when we will have a little more detail.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, in particular for the work that she does for Future Leaders. On the issue of detail, that is work in progress and I shall keep her informed and posted. We made the announcement about the outline shape of the process on Friday, and we recognise that we have to provide this kind of detail. I shall keep her closely informed.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

My Lords, I am sure that this is the first of many days that we will spend on this subject. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who is, I am sure, coming back. He has a great and very important job. I declare my interests. I advise the charity ARK, which sponsors and runs city academies. I also serve as a school governor of a city academy, and chair Future Leaders, a charity which intensively trains prospective head teachers for challenging urban schools and receives government funding via the National College.

I am an academy enthusiast. I share much of what the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Harris, have just outlined. My experience is similar to theirs. When I started to read the Academies Bill and the Explanatory Notes, I sat down to summarise what I think the new Government’s overall strategic approach should be. This goes for academies and beyond. The Government should set clear desired outcomes for the system as a whole and its constituent parts. They should give as much autonomy as possible to teachers, parents and pupils in pursuing those outcomes in the most appropriate way for them, while at the same time reserving the right of control to get the basics in place and intervene when pupils are failed. They must properly fund the education system, recognising the needs of the most disadvantaged. They must hold institutions and professionals to account. This is not a question of being top-down or bottom-up, but of being clear about where the state can be effective and where it needs to give others the power to deliver. The state needs to be intrusive where the basics are not in place and where there is failure, both obvious and hidden. However, in other areas, genuine and lasting achievement is most likely to be brought about by the teachers, parents and pupils for themselves.

From 1997, the Labour Government dramatically improved the education system, increasing resources and giving three-year funding agreements to allow head teachers to plan properly. They cut class sizes, rebuilt the schools estate—remember outside toilets and leaking roofs—and regenerated the teaching profession, improved standards and brought new expertise and diversity into the system. More pupils leave school with a good set of qualifications and there are far fewer failing schools. Underlying literacy rates have improved significantly and schools serving disadvantaged communities have improved faster than the average. There is stronger accountability and more transparency for parents when choosing schools. What often worked best was a combination of investment and reform—for example, in relation to the teaching profession, where much was achieved, though there is still some way to go. As an aside, I do not quite understand why the abolition of the GTC will raise the standing and standard of the profession. By all means, reform and strengthen it—it needed that—or even replace it, but do not leave a vacuum.

One reform was particularly controversial—particularly, I remember, with some Members opposite—and that is the one that we are talking about today. That was the attempt to foster dynamism to deliver excellent schools where there was failure, leading to the concept of city academies. The idea, we now know, was simple: to create independent state schools with support from business, successful individuals who wanted to put something back, universities or independent schools. Each school would have its own ethos, clear behaviour codes, a focus on literacy and numeracy, and high aspirations for all pupils. The controversy was huge both inside and outside the educational establishment. It is important to think first about the rationale that underlay those original academies. They were, above all, a means of getting the best schools into the areas that needed them most. They were not conceptualised as a way of extending market reforms to education. It was not about competition per se but about seeking to replace failing provision and providing a spur to achieve higher results across the piece. It was about trying to give some of the best to those who were denied even the average, and largely it has worked. There are now fewer failing schools than at any time since records began and we have high-performing providers effectively delivering outstanding education in areas that have been blighted by unacceptable standards. What is more, GCSE results in academies are improving faster than the national average. The evidence now tells us clearly that outstanding schools can overcome a pupil’s background in determining outcomes. That is crucial.

There has also been a massive investment in new and renovated school buildings. Those are part of the equation; amazing buildings do not deliver great education, but poor or dingy buildings sap morale, limit the curriculum and perpetuate the divisions in the education system. We should not underestimate the effect of investing in the fabric as well as in the teaching. I will never forget talking to a girl at one of the first academies I visited who said, “I never believed I could come to a place like this”. “This” included the tangible results of the investment she saw around her every day. Great principals, such as Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne, talk very clearly about how building design actively contributes to curriculum delivery and behaviour standards. I know that finances will be very tight going forward, but let us not underestimate the effect of the environment on behaviour or the delivery of the curriculum.

For me, the next big push would be to extend the principles behind city academies to coasting schools and poor primaries. We need top-notch providers to replace poor management teams at schools which may be above national benchmarks but are still below what we should be expecting. The Labour Government had announced that chains of academy providers and successful school operators would be able to take over coasting schools. This is important not just for reasons of improving schools across the system but because of equity concerns. Even in schools where more than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, it is still on the whole the poorest students—those who are eligible for free school meals—who perform worse. Tackling this debilitating achievement gap must remain a priority. I am somewhat unclear about government plans in these schools. Will there be a strong push on these schools or will it just be left to the market? Will the hidden underachievement be left? My fear is that these are not the schools that will grasp the chance to become academies. They will be left somewhere in the middle. They are not the failing schools but they are not the schools that will grab this process and run with it.

In this context, therefore, I was surprised that the only new priority seems to be to allow outstanding schools to become academies. I would appreciate clarity around that. I am in favour of excellent schools gaining more freedom in their operations but have some questions. I hope that this legislation is not rushed through without the proper time that we need for scrutiny. If we want a big increase in academies, we need to ensure that the detail is right. First, what is the plan for admissions? In the Explanatory Notes, we read:

“Academies are all-ability state funded schools”.

However, the Bill seems to suggest that existing selective grammar schools may become academies. I do not understand this and how it fits into the statement that academies are all-ability schools. I have to confess that a sceptic may think that the 1922 Committee had to be thrown something to keep it quiet. I am sure that there is more of a rationale behind it, but I should like to know what it is.

Secondly, the new Government need to be clear on accountability. I make no apology for the regimes of testing, targets and national programmes that Labour introduced. They produced a level of discipline in the system, a focus on driving up literacy and numeracy standards in primary schools, a relentless spotlight on minimum standards in secondary schools and a level of transparency for parents choosing a school. Going forward, there needs to be an even stronger system that measures both performance and teaching, builds confidence in standards and gets beyond a narrow focus on borderline grades. As the Education Select Committee recognised before the election, that means getting Ofsted refocused on teaching and learning and making sure that head teachers assess individual teacher effectiveness. It means that the whole system and the wider public need properly bench-marked data to underpin standards. It also means that we need to instil the principle that it is just as important for a student to move from a B to an A as it is to move from a D to a C. In relation to outstanding schools, reduced inspection will put greater pressure on somewhat imperfect measures. There is a real need to move beyond the A-to-C measures and value-added.

Ultimately, accountability must be more than data measurement and teacher-level assessment. It is about politicians and local authorities having the courage of their convictions and booting out providers that are not getting the job done—whether they are the local authority or an academy sponsor. Supply-side reform is pointless unless we can change supplier. No one can be exempt from performance measurement. The current funding agreement covering academies in effect bestows conditional stewardship. That is spot-on as an approach for the future, and I wonder whether it will continue. The Labour Government had announced that parents were to be given the mechanism, through a ballot, to demand change of leadership in schools. Have the new Government looked at that issue?

The third question relates to fair funding. What is proposed for the academy funding regime? It is important to see the detail. Fourthly, what are the proposals for proper oversight of academies? Clearly the YPLA is in limbo; but has an alternative been proposed? Will the oversight duty go back to the department, and if so, how will that cope with large numbers of schools? Beyond an occasional Ofsted inspection, what will be the scrutiny—and in particular what will be the improvement proposals—if an academy is struggling? Is the assumption that there will be something like a one-way valve, and that once a school is doing well it will happily continue to do so? We all know that this is the case often—but by no means always. In the event of failure, action is needed quickly to halt the decline. We do not want this to reach the level of special measures.

Fifthly, what are the proposals for public and parental consultation when a school is transitioning into an academy? While current procedures are arguably overcomplicated, it would be wrong not to have wider consultation. Sixthly, it appears that transferring schools can carry forward surpluses. This is a good thing if it encourages careful financial management: but what happens about deficits? It would be wrong if Ofsted-defined outstanding schools with deficits could transfer and lose the deficit while gaining the freedoms. For this category of schools, will strong finances be part of the gateway?

Sixthly, will the Government learn from the mistakes that a previous Government made in relation to grant-maintained schools? These were independent of the local schools community, there being in effect a regime of divide and rule, and were unfairly—favourably—funded. In particular, will there be tight and specific requirements that outstanding academies must take on school improvement roles? I do not mean woolly words, but something precise. We have heard reassuring words on this, but we would all be grateful for clarity that the requirements will be tight.

Finally, I am anxious that, in tough economic times, we should spend wisely and pool resources and expertise. Reforms will have to be well planned and not dogmatic. Competition mechanisms in education will necessarily be slow, because parents will not constantly move their children in and out of schools. Strong interventions from the centre will remain vital in driving up standards. In some areas, new schools will be the answer—no doubt we will debate that. However, a slow drift downwards in the number of pupils attending schools in an area may damage the education of many pupils—again, unless there is strong, transparent accountability and fast action. In many communities, focused inspection, rigour and new leadership of existing schools may be what are needed.

Our goal should be simple: the best teachers, leaders and schools for all children, combined with a focus on the children who need them most. Academies can play a great role; but the devil, as always, is in the detail, and I look forward to seeing those details in the coming weeks.