Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Huyton and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[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]

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Huyton and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.