Children: Early Intervention

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I very much welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate and to join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, on initiating it. The noble Baroness has a long history of interest in this subject and it is good to hear that her passion has survived moving from opposition to government—and long may that be the case.

There is probably unanimity about the importance of this issue. I suspect that had we been discussing this 20 years ago, there would have been a debate about whether it was right for government to comment on or intervene in what happened in families. That battle has been won. If we are to move forward, it is important not only to stand on that as a basis but to realise that we have to sustain and protect that belief. I do not necessarily want to go through the evidence of how early intervention works; I believe in it passionately and have enjoyed listening to the evidence so far, and no doubt there will be other contributions on it. However, having won that battle, we need to be very careful about any government action that would take us back to where we were before.

I do not want to dwell on this for too long, but I also remember that, in 1997, parts of this country were a waste field as regards early intervention. Some local authorities had no provision for nursery education. However, the infrastructure has been built up over the past 15 years, and we now have more than 3,000 Sure Start centres covering 2.7 million people. The provision of a £2.2 billion budget just for Sure Start and early years intervention has led to a massive change. It has provided more than simply the fabric and the bricks; it has brought about a change in culture in this country, such that it would now be unimaginable for a politician from any party to say that they did not believe in early years intervention and support. That is how far we have moved and it is very important that we do not risk it. It is still early days and it may not be as rooted as I hope that it is.

I want to look forward on the two fronts by which I will judge the extent to which we are likely to build on the progress, or to throw it away. I shall consider, first, the amount of provision and, secondly, the quality of that provision in the coming years.

On both those issues, the Government’s record so far does not give me confidence that they will build on the past 15 years of investment and progress. There are three main threats to the amount of provision. First, there is the 13 per cent cut in cash terms to the intervention budget, which is real money out of the service and will have real consequences. Secondly, there is the un-ring-fencing of the budget, and, thirdly, the diminishing of our nation’s ambition for a universal service to a targeted service. I do not want to go into all of those in great depth, but this was a Government in which both parties went to the election promising to protect the early years and protect Sure Start. Now the Minister who is now responsible for that has said to people that if they want Sure Start to continue they must lobby their local council to let it happen. That is not government responsibility; the public have made clear their view about Sure Start and early intervention. They have done their lobbying and voted for parties at the general election that promised to keep Sure Start and the amount of investment in that sector—and that was all three of the major parties. I worry that what the Government have done in their early months is to give away every single lever they had to ensure that this work continues. That is what happens when you un-ring-fence a budget and say to local authorities, “Here is a smaller budget—you decide how it will work out”. I am left wondering where the Government’s levers are to deliver the pledges that they made before the election.

The next thing that I wanted to look at was the quality of provision, because there are some fairly ineffective things happening in this sector. It is bound to be the case. In education, we are quite good at carrying on doing ineffective things; we are not as good at actually changing our practice so that we build on the evidence of what works.

I shall talk about one error that the Government have made and then comment on one opportunity that they have. Frankly, it was a mistake to remove the requirement that at least one person with qualified teacher status or early years professional status should be in our children’s centres. I admire the Minister for his commitment to the quality of teaching and praise him for having made it clear in this House that the Government are committed to that at school level. I just cannot understand why he can care so passionately about the qualification of those who work with our children at five and above but less so about those who work with our children at five and below. We have the irony of a situation in which you can teach children only when you have a degree level of 2.2 or above but do not need a qualification to work with our under-fives.

The last point that I make is about evidence. I join the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in saying that the work that Graham Allen has done in talking about an evidence base is crucial. However, I disagree with her in that I am not sure that we have the evidence. There is some lousy research around, and we do not write it down and equate it as we should.

I want to take from Graham Allen’s comments in my last few seconds. He talks about the need to evaluate programmes by randomised control trials and other things of really good quality. I declare my interest in that as a member of the Institute for Effective Education at the University of York. We must then classify those programmes by quality, impact and caste and only then allow the professionals to make wise decisions on behalf of the interventions they make.

Education: Pupils and Young People

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I welcome the debate and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on introducing it. She always does so in a thoughtful and sensible way and I enjoy listening to and debating with her, as I do this morning.

She has highlighted some of the issues that still need to be addressed. I do not differ from her and I am not going to go over them. However, I should like to place on record the improvement there has been in our school system over recent years. Certainly I remain proud of the achievements under the previous Government—we made a wise investment—but I am not blind and I know that there is work still to be done. It will be more difficult to do at a time of falling budgets but that is the situation we are in.

We do not have a great deal of time and I wish to concentrate my comments on one specific matter. One of the strands that outlines the coalition’s approach to school improvement—I agree that it is a key issue—is the devolvement of power to teachers, trusting professionals and teacher autonomy. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said that that is not enough; that there needs to be an accountability mechanism as well. I wish to challenge that because I do not buy into it. I am second to none in my admiration for teachers and the work they do and I, too, believe that we have the best generation of teachers we have ever had. I trust most of them but I do not trust all of them—and I probably do not trust any of them all the time. That is human nature and would be the same with any profession.

There was a time when we trusted teachers to get on with it—the days when I started teaching—but, to be honest, the quality of teaching was poorer and the outcomes and results for children were weaker than they are now. It is an easy thing to say—it sounds good and will certainly put you in the good books of teachers—but, for me, it is not the way to school improvement. Two things have to happen: I trust teachers if I know that they are working within a framework of challenge and high-quality support; I do not trust teachers if they are left to get on with it themselves. I want to consider both of those issues in the time remaining.

If teachers are taking decisions about which pedagogy to use, how to group children, what reading scheme to use, what the balance of vocational and academic work should be, I would like to think that there was an evidence base to which they could refer when making those decisions. I trust my doctor to prescribe the right medicine because I know that every single medicine will have been through a trial and proven to work in certain circumstances; I know that he will not reintroduce leeches for me because of the system which states that leeches do not work. I therefore trust him because he is making a decision within a proven framework. Where is that framework for teachers? Where is the bank of evidence for what works? Where is the research for teachers to access and the time for them to do it? Where is that strand of professionalism whereby a professional person bases their practice on sound evidence and evaluates what they do? We have a lot more to do to give teachers the tools to do the job in the form of top-level information about what works.

My second problem with merely devolving to and trusting teachers is that it is not the first time that a Government have tried to do it. The Tories tried when they were last in power and we tried with the academies. On both occasions, we ended up building a new middle. The Tories built the Funding Agency for Schools, having taken schools away from local authorities, and the Labour Government set up the biggest section of the Department for Education and Skills to manage academies, having taken them out of local authority influence. History and evidence show us that—whether we like it or not—there is government, there are teachers and there needs to be something in between. There has been a lot of dissatisfaction, which I share, with local authorities performing that middle role. I do not argue about that: when they are good, they are good; when they are bad, they are awful. It is less than satisfactory.

We have had three, very good middle layers which have been simply abolished or ceased to be funded. One was the School Youth Sports Trust, which looked after sports in schools; another was Creative Partnerships, which looked after that section of the curriculum; and another was the whole specialist schools movement. They were the best middle layers that I had ever seen. They concentrated on training and top-level professional development; they made teachers researchers and reflective practitioners; they enabled them to create professional networks. I cannot see why a party of government who want to trust teachers have removed in one fell swoop a middle layer that was proven to work, that was not a quango, that spent money wisely and that had a track record of raising standards. Quite honestly, I could weep, because it is really bad education—time will tell whether it is good politics—and it will make it far more difficult for the Government to deliver on freedom to schools and teachers.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I support the amendment, although I did not get round to adding my name to it, for which I apologise to my noble friend. The amendment is one of the best that we see on Report because it evolved from an amendment—I think Amendment 4—that my noble friend tabled in Committee. The Minister pointed out that, if my noble friend’s initial amendment were carried, no academy could be formed if there was to be any effect on any school in the local area, whether good or bad. My noble friend’s amendment has evolved to enable the Secretary of State to take into account whether any good local schools will be adversely affected by the creation of a new academy.

My noble friend’s amendment is particularly important given that government Amendment 30, which is about consultation, refers only to existing schools converting into academies and not to brand-new schools. When a brand-new school is introduced, the local community will have to rely on the common sense of the Secretary of State to make sure that that school does not take all the pupils from other perfectly good schools in the locality.

My noble friend’s amendment comes out of his experience in Suffolk, which I think he mentioned in Committee. I, too, have been approached by one of my honourable friends in another place, Mr Don Foster, the Member of Parliament for Bath. He has had similar problems with an academy that was created under the Labour Government and is having an effect on very good schools locally. Of course, we must not underestimate the effect of the view that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. A new school, which seems to offer something novel, especially if it has a shiny new building, could well take pupils from other schools that really do not deserve to lose them. The amendment would give the Secretary of State the discretion that he requires, in the Bill, so that we can all be reassured that he will take these matters into consideration when looking at an application.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendment. The point has been well made by noble Lords on both sides of the House that there needs to be an element of planning. I suppose that it is for the Minister to make a decision about whether his Government spend money on surplus places or on building schools for the future. It is interesting that one day there is no money for the Building Schools for the Future programme and the very next day, from the same department, there is money to fund surplus places. Surplus places cost money and do not contribute to standards.

I want to raise a slightly different point, which I do not think has been mentioned so far. I should like an assurance that the Minister understands the impact of a new school on another school that might already be doing a good job of raising standards. I start from the premise that it is not only academies that will raise standards; many good schools that do not have academy status are already on the journey of turning round underperformance. They are in a fragile state but are improving—going from failing and underperforming to being successful does not happen overnight. During that important period, when they have good leadership and are changing their reputation within the community, and when parents are understandably nervous but are restoring their confidence in those improving schools, they need a bit of protection. I worry that if an academy opens with a blaze of glory, with new money from the Building Schools for the Future programme, as was indicated yesterday, that will undermine the progress that the school makes.

I am not in the business of defending failing schools—I have done my share of closing failing schools and replacing them with either maintained community schools or, indeed, academies. However, I am in the business of trying to support and nurture schools that have put in a lot of effort and are now improving. Quite honestly, if surplus places are built into a local system, it will not be the schools that are already strong and successful that are damaged but those that have already had a lot of state intervention and support and are on the journey to becoming good schools. I should like to hear the Minister’s comments on that aspect of the amendment. It is an excellent amendment and I look forward to supporting it.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I, too, am sympathetic to the amendment. It is particularly important to emphasise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about the number of places in schools that are already free. Quite apart from the complications that exist with new free schools entering into academy status, I should like to hear from the Minister whether the powers that he already has will allow him exactly the same right to make a decision, and whether having that in the Bill will make any difference whatever, given that presumably he will retain the right to make a decision based on whatever evidence may be brought to him that such a school will have a bad effect on other schools.

--- Later in debate ---

In summary, I agree with the right reverend Prelate: do not hurry this. There is no need to rush to primary academies. The offer has been made by my noble friend Lord Hunt to come back with future legislation that we know is in the stocks and to make the case then, having made progress with secondary school academies. Therefore, I say yes to all-throughs but, for now, no to isolated independent primary academies.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I support the amendments and wish to raise two questions. I agree with all the comments about the difficulty of primary schools becoming academies and I shall not repeat them. However, I am a bit concerned about two suggested ways forward.

One is the notion of schools grouping together, which the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, talked about. I am absolutely an enthusiastic advocate of federations and clusters. They are at the heart of school improvement. However, I worry about the Government seizing on that as a way of managing the capacity of primary schools to become academies, as that would be the wrong reason to create a cluster or a federation. There are a lot of reasons for schools getting together to form a federation, which should be about what is best for school standards and for local provision of education. If schools get together to form a federation or a cluster merely to apply for academy status, that would be the wrong reason and I fear that the federation would not do a good job.

Another concern is that the academy will have a legal contract. It will, if you like, be a legal entity in terms of the academy agreement. If in three, five or 10 years’ time the academy sees the possibility of a better partnership that is in the interests of the children in the community, it might be more difficult to form a new set of relationships with the school. Therefore, I have some worries—not about federations but about the wish to become an academy being the purpose that brings the schools together.

I am also concerned about the second lock which the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, mentioned. I am a bit of a doubter on this, because nothing that the Secretary of State has said so far leads me to believe for one second that he is likely to exercise that amount of discretion and say to a primary school, “You are not ready for it yet”. All that I have heard from the Government is that they are enthusiastically campaigning for as many schools as possible to become academies. If the Government become interested in that second lock, the Secretary of State would need to publish a list of criteria against which he will make the decision and to say under which conditions he would accept an application from primary schools to become an academy. Can the Minister say whether that is likely?

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I shall direct my comments to Amendment 72, although I also support Amendment 73. On this occasion, I shall disagree as strongly as I might with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry.

Of all the freedoms that academies may be granted, it is the freedom not to take part in the education of vulnerable excluded children that worries me most. This amendment is important and, if we do not pass it, we do so at our peril. Quite frankly, academies are not queueing up to take these excluded children. The children are often difficult to teach, they come from homes with difficulties, they do not do anything for the school in terms of its position in the league tables or its Ofsted inspection and they do not improve the school’s social image. Let us say it as it is: these kids are not top of the pecking order in terms of schools wanting to take them on.

We also know that traditionally we have dealt poorly with these children. If they go to a pupil referral unit, all the evidence is that they are very rarely reintegrated into the mainstream education system, they do not pass their exams, they do not continue in education, they do not fulfil their potential and they do not carry on to university or have the life chances that they might have. That is the problem that we are trying to solve.

This problem started in my day—and one knows how one becomes precious over things that began when one was in the department, so I apologise for that. Co-operation has now been built among schools so that they say two things—that their prime responsibility is to their children but that there is a generosity of spirit that accepts an obligation towards children in the community. That has meant that schools have had that generosity of spirit and have been prepared to take other children on to their rolls, rather than having them excluded to a pupil referral unit. That is my first point: if you can keep an excluded child or a child who is not settling in school within mainstream education, that has to be better than excluding them from mainstream education. That will not happen if you leave it just to market forces.

The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, made an interesting point when she talked about an academy phoning another school to say, “We have a child who does not seem to be settling or fitting in here. Will you take them?”. That is the way it will be. The middle-class schools that are already full will be able to say, “No, because we are full”, while the schools that will have to, by law, say yes are those that serve deprived areas. Those that have spare places will have to take on such children. The schools will already have children such as those, whom they will be working their socks off not to exclude, and they may not have the capacity to deal with these children.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I hope that the noble Baroness will accept that principals of academies may well share our concern for the most deprived and difficult children. The principals of academies whom I have talked to have expressed every bit as much concern and care for the difficult and disadvantaged children in society as we have in this House, who do not have to run schools. There seems to be a kind of arrogance on our part in assuming that, unless we control the schools, put things in legislation and make them do it, they will not of their own free will wish to do the right thing.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

But the evidence is on my side. The number of exclusions by academies is very great, while the number of children at risk of exclusion by non-academies being taken in by academies is very small. That is why the amendment is important. This is not about the Government saying to schools, “You must do this, that or the other”; it is about a partnership that already exists. We are not instructing schools to form these partnerships; they exist already. The schools work together and make professional judgments. There are times when a child needs to be out of a school. Such children do not settle, the relationships are broken and the damage is done. They need to be elsewhere. The best system is when schools, through generosity of spirit and professional judgment, almost come to an arrangement to help each other out. By doing so, they also help children out.

The only point of including the local authority in the amendment is that someone has to broker the arrangement. I do not care who it is. All that the local authority does is broker the partnership that provides this better way of dealing with excluded children. The local authority cannot tell a school to take a child—and that is good. All that the local authority does is hold the ring for families of schools to make professional judgments about where these excluded children should go. My prediction, which I know is accurate, is that if academies are allowed to exclude themselves from this partnership of schools that deal with these most vulnerable children, a lot of academies will do exactly that and the burden will fall on schools that are not academies but are still in the partnerships.

I have listened carefully to the Minister. As well as emphasising independence, he has emphasised partnership. Academies under his Government have to partner with an underperforming school to raise standards. What better way is there of cementing that relationship and philosophy than by his Government also saying that academies should stay in the partnership and play their part in making sure that we deal with our excluded children as effectively as we can? We have not done that well in the past, but the partnerships that have flourished in the past few years provide the evidence that that is the best way to proceed.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, unusually, disagree with my noble friend Lady Perry. The points that she makes about partnerships are precisely correct; indeed, a number of academies are part of these behaviour partnerships, which are working extremely well. In exactly the same way, many school confederations are working well. Many of us are now saying, “What a good thing confederations are”, although initially some of us were a little hesitant about the Government forcing schools into confederations. Where there have been confederations, many members of staff have found them very useful.

I particularly endorse Amendment 73 on the need for academies to participate in the behaviour partnerships in exactly the same way as other locally maintained state schools should. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, getting on the telephone and talking to other heads is precisely what it is all about. The partnership does not need to be heavy-handed or forced; it can be very light touch.

I also agree very much with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The low-incidence special needs can be overlooked and it is extremely important that they are not disregarded.

We are all concerned about these exclusions because we do not want these young people to fall by the wayside into the category that we call NEETs—not in employment, education or training. They are drop-outs from society, so it is important that we meet their needs. Many pupils with low-incidence special educational needs get disregarded. They are not a great nuisance. They sit at the back of the classroom, playing games and talking among themselves, but they do not get educated as they should because nobody has looked at what their needs are. We have got much better at this over the past few years, but it is vital that academies, too, pay attention to these young people. The Minister has promised to come back with another look at the process surrounding special educational needs and I hope that he will incorporate the issue in the review that he is undertaking.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

My Lords, I declare an interest in that the diocese of Liverpool is a co-sponsor with the Catholic arch-diocese of three academies, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, mentioned. We have already seen remarkable progress being made in our first academy situated in an area of great deprivation. Within four years, the Academy of St Francis of Assisi has gone from 27 per cent to 66 per cent of its pupils gaining five GCSEs at Grades A to C. The one thing that I have learnt from the academy experiment—it is now more than an experiment as it is well established—is that children’s performance is improved through investing in the training and performance of teachers. There is a direct correlation between the performance of teachers and that of pupils. This surprised me, even though I began my professional career as a teacher. Investment in the head, the senior management team and the teachers in academies has made a remarkable contribution to improving people’s life chances, especially in deprived communities.

The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, is right that under the previous Administration there was a shift from the original intention, which was to break the mould of education in deprived communities, but the policy has broadened out and schools have benefited. In the context of Liverpool, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, made a powerful point. The Government may resist her amendment and stick with academies, but I hope that they will share the aspiration of the previous Administration to change the nature of education in our deprived communities—whatever name we choose, that is what is at stake—as the academy programme has shown that we can do that. If the Government persist with the title “academy”, I hope that they will also persist with the ambition to improve the life chances of young people in our most deprived areas.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, this is an interesting debate that has raised important issues. Legal status and legal titles are exactly that, but at the end of the day they are not the mark of success or failure in our education system. We may disagree on whether legal status is the measure that raises standards or whether it is something other than that. I very much agree with the previous speaker that standards are raised through the quality of teaching and of leadership rather than through legal status or title. However, whatever the relevant legal status was under the previous Government, the fact was that most of the effort and resources were put into the areas of greatest deprivation. I believe that is what academies should do. Once you spread the size of the club, you make it less special and you are not able to devote the same expertise to the schools that need it most. That is the decision that the Government have to make. In that respect, I wish to ask a very specific question about the impact assessment. On page two, it is estimated that over four years the net benefit will be £1.72 billion. I am surprised at that. The relevant figure is £282 million a year. The impact assessment states:

“Benefits are in terms of the increase in estimated lifetime earnings of the additional number of pupils attending academies and obtaining improved GCSE results … Evidence for impact of academies on pupil attainment is based on evidence from academies that opened before 2006”.

I find that very strange and would welcome an explanation of it. The schools that became academies before 2006 were situated in challenging areas. They were often failing schools that were letting down very bright students. The minute they got the chance, their grades improved, and over 12 to 24 months some schools went from fewer than 20 per cent of their pupils getting five A to C grades to as high a figure as 40, 50 or 60 per cent. The Government have decided to concentrate their effort, time and resources on outstanding schools, which may already have 90 per cent of their pupils getting five A to C grades, including English. Given that evidence, I am surprised at the impact assessment and the amount of money that is quoted. The maximum improvement that schools could make would be to increase from 90, 91 or 92 per cent to 100 per cent of all pupils. I like to think that I am an optimist in life, but I am surprised at how that could create a net benefit to the Exchequer and the nation of £1.72 billion over four years.

I have a further question on that. The figures relate to lifetime earnings. What measures or mechanisms are Ministers using, and in which years of these young peoples’ lives might that money accrue to the Treasury?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I should like to make some points which are, I am afraid, against the group of amendments. I accept that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has a certain logic on her side, but I do not like the logic. I rather take the point made by the right reverend Prelate—at least I think it was his point—that, whereas academies hitherto have been for underachieving and underprivileged communities, henceforth they will, as far as I can see, be at the other end of the educational spectrum. I actively dislike the prospect that they would be called something different, as if to emphasise that they are of a different “class”—a ghastly word. I like the idea of these posh new future academies being linked to the existing ones.

I endorse entirely what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said. So often in this Chamber we underestimate or forget how our legislation will impact in the real world. We underestimate the effect of the mishmash of new names caused by our astonishing excess of legislation and constant wish to change and refine. For goodness’ sake, let us not create another category of schools.

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[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Will the Minister please answer the specific question I asked?

[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.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my Amendment 104 is in this group. I am not quite sure why Amendment 3A is in the group—I think that it should have been in a previous one—but the rest of the amendments are all about consultation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that appropriate consultation, over a sufficient time, leads to good decision-making. The decision that schools have to make about conversion to academy status is terribly important, so I think that they should consult.

I have a few words to say about the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Morgan. I am not sure why they felt the need to include CRB checks in Amendment 4A. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that all those who had dealings with schools had to have CRB checks anyway. Indeed, I know a young teacher who does both paid and voluntary work in a number of schools and has had four CRB checks. I hope that the coalition Government will smooth out that totally unnecessary duplication. Also, surely the Government normally do due diligence on anyone with whom they intend to sign a contract, so I think that the second subsection in the amendment may be superfluous, too.

The main point of this debate is consultation. Of course schools should consult all the relevant people and provide them with the information that they need to be able to respond appropriately. To become an academy is an enormous change in the governance and funding of a school. Indeed, I think that it is very risky, as Clause 1(2)(b) and Clause 1(3)(b) give enormous power to the Secretary of State without any scrutiny by Parliament. Perhaps we will get that changed during the Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House. We will discuss the merits of these arrangements later, but the fact remains that a school that becomes an academy under the Bill does so entirely at the whim of the Secretary of State, so it needs to be sure about the potential benefits of the change to the education that it provides to all the children in its locality.

Incidentally, I do not believe that these schools should be called “independent”, as they have been described. They will be totally dependent on the Secretary of State for their funding and the terms of their operation. My noble friend Lord Greaves referred to them as “autonomous”, which I believe is a better expression.

The difference between our amendment on consultation and those tabled by the Opposition is that we do not include the trade unions. I thought that I should explain why that is. Unions are national organisations, whereas we have proposed consulting local people or organisations that have a keen interest in the school. No national organisation can have a relevant view of the merits of the application of every individual school. The local people matter here and it is they who should be consulted.

That is especially true of the children. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 10 years. At the start, when the Labour Government brought legislation before us, we had to put down a lot of amendments about what I call the voice of the child. Gradually, the Government got the message and, I am glad to say, such provisions started to appear in Bills, so we did not need to put down those amendments. I hope that the Minister will take into account the fact that, when you consult children about things that affect them, you get better decision-making. I also hope that, if he cannot accept these amendments, he will at least put this in guidance, so that schools have to consult the appropriate people.

On the matter of the documents that should be sent out to the people who are being consulted, Amendments 101 and 102 are far too prescriptive. We would leave it to the schools to judge what material it is appropriate to send out. On these Benches we intended to add something much briefer and less prescriptive but it got lost and did not go down in the end. The period suggested for the consultation is six weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and four weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. However, the school will have to make the TUPE arrangements with staff, which requires 10 weeks and should not be during the school holidays. Schools will have to take a lot longer than four weeks, and so they should. I have already urged my right honourable friend Michael Gove to hasten slowly, and I shall do the same to my noble friend Lord Hill. That should be the watchword. The decision does not need to be fast but it needs to be right.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Royall. This is a very strange part of the Bill, and I am not sure what the rationale behind it is. The Bill purports to want to know the views of people in communities or schools where children’s lives are affected by what legislation says. However, it excludes from consultation at key points anybody outside the school. I wonder if this comes from the Government’s fears over what happened when they had ballots over grant-maintained schools. If so, I well understand that. That was a procedure that ended up causing terrible arguments and distrust between groups of people and communities who should have been working together. There is absolutely no way that I would want to return to that. Indeed, in my time at the department, we did not have ballots in that manner. I am sympathetic, but the Minister mentioned in the last debate that people are somehow suspicious of academies and free schools. There is no better way of making them more suspicious than to exclude them from being consulted. If the Minister accepts that that suspicion is already there, I am not sure why he wants to risk building it up by, as I say, excluding people from consultation.

I have two more points. When this issue was previously been raised in the course of the Bill, the Minister said that the previous Government did not have means of consulting anyway. Correct me if I am wrong, but the essential difference was that, under the legislation used by the previous Government, one school was closed and a new one was opened. The consultation took place as part of the school closure and opening. In the Bill, the conversion of a school—as far as I can see, there is no official closure and opening—excludes any consultation at all.

Finally, the amendments do not seek to take away from the Secretary of State the right to decide whether or not a school should be granted academy status. You might argue that they ought to, but they do not. I cannot see that they would delay any consideration. If I was the Secretary of State in this situation, I would want to put myself in a position where I took the community with me, just to give any new school the best possible start to its life. To load a school with potential suspicion when that need not be the case is really not acceptable. To accept amendments along these lines, if not in such detail, would be very good for any schools that become academies under this legislation.

[The Lord Bishop of Liverpool]

My Lords, as a supporter of academies, I very much encourage the Government to accept the spirit of these amendments. I have been involved with three academies. I chaired the first and co-chaired the second. The first academy arose from community consultation. When there was anxiety in the community over the other two, there was consultation which allayed people’s fears. I put it to the Government that the people who are being proposed for consultation—young people, parents, governing bodies—are the constituent parts of the big society. It seems a contradiction that if you want to build the big society, you then exclude the very people who are the essence of it. Consultation is called for here.

Free Schools Policy

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

The overriding imperative in this policy is to attempt, where there is poor provision, to give teachers’ groups and parents the chance to improve the quality of teaching as rapidly as possible. Our starting point in this is that every year that passes is another school year that has been missed out and another generation of children who are falling behind. I understand entirely the points that my noble friend Lord Greaves makes. However, in the balance between perfect provision, carefully planned, and giving groups greater opportunity to start the urgent work of improving the teaching for children who need it most in areas of greatest disadvantage, we come down on the side of more flexibility over premises rather than going for the full, perfect Monty.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, will the Minister say a little more about parent-led free schools? We all want parents to be involved in the education of their children, because the more involved they are the better, but I see two problems. If parents set up a school, the contract they let to a provider could be as long as seven years. Within that time, there could have been 100 per cent changeover of parents at the school. The further point is that the parents who are the original promoters of the school may not even get their children into the school if an oversubscription criterion of, for example, a ballot were used. So there could be a situation in which the original parent promoters do not have children in schools, and within three to four years the percentage of parents with any say or influence at all over how the school meets its contract is very low. Will the Minister explain his thoughts on that?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful for the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. The truth in this, as with a lot of these things, is that the announcement made on Friday kicked off the process. There will be all sorts of important practical considerations that that process will throw up. Officials in the department, assisted by the New Schools Network, will be thrashing through those considerations and coming to Ministers with recommendations on the back of the process. These kinds of points—which are extremely important; I do not belittle them in any way at all—will need to be thought through as part of the process.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I congratulate the Minister on the way in which he has introduced his first piece of legislation. His speech was very conciliatory and I think that the ensuing debate in Committee will be much welcomed by the rest of the House. I look forward to taking part in that Committee stage with him. I also want to put on record my congratulations to the academies, which have done some magnificent work over the past decade, and to the city technology colleges which did the same in the preceding years. I also make clear my admiration for the work of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who has contributed to this debate, and the chain of academies which now bears his name—the Harris chain—and operates in some of the most challenging areas of London. They have transformed opportunities not only for his students but for their families, communities and every generation to come—because that is the way it goes. I am in awe of what he has managed to achieve.

The noble Lord, Lord Baker, was right when he said that the Bill’s origins lay in the city technology Bill of the 1980s. They can be traced through the city technology colleges, Grant-maintained schools, Specialist schools, academies these sorts of academies and free schools. You are left thinking that if something was meant to be that good back in the mid-1980s, why did we not just get on with it and do this before in the past 20 to 30 years? Why did we need five categories of school, with five titles and umpteen pieces of legislation, to try to get all schools to be like these schools, which are meant to be the ideal? When I look at the description of each of these categories of school, I see that they all say the same. They are intended to build a school system of independent state-funded schools that are free from local authority control. The key words are “independent”, “free” and “free from local authority control”.

I differ with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and the Minister in that I do not think there has been an even-handed approach to the issue of category of school throughout those 30 years. I do not accept that previous Governments—certainly not previous Conservative Governments—introduced city technology colleges or grant-maintained schools without an ambition that they would become the norm. I believe that they had that ambition but that they did not introduce the legislation necessary to make it a reality. They went to the ballot, and they sought external funding for city technology colleges. This Bill is another attempt to establish a norm without showing the necessary courage and making the necessary provision to make it happen.

Over the past 30 years we have had a period of not knowing, of uncertainty and flux. These independent state-funded schools exist alongside other structures of school. They are also excellent and I always make that clear. I often speak in favour of local authority-maintained schools, because excellence is found in every structure. But these independent schools have always been the favoured child. They were the favoured child of both the previous Tory Government and the previous Labour Government—my Government. They are also the favoured child of this Conservative Government. This favoured child has never quite achieved its potential. It has never quite taken over or grown to the extent necessary to make independent free schools the norm rather than the exception.

The Minister was right. I believe that it was the intention of some members of my party—including my former party leader, for whom I have the greatest respect and affection—to make these free schools the norm. They were wrong, and that is where I disagreed with them. But regardless of whether it was the intention, the truth is that the academies are now focused on the least affluent schools in the most deprived areas and not on the rest. Given that so many schools which are not academies are also successful—some are as successful as the academies, and some are more so—what is the justification for speeding up the move to academies? When Ofsted has already described a school as outstanding, what is the justification for changing its structure from community school to academy?

There are three key questions here. First, what evidence is there that a system that is in its entirety independent, with schools free from local authority control, will be more effective than what we have at the moment? The evidence which the Minister quoted is that schools that had been underachieving and were turned around improved their attainment more than the average across the nation. I am sorry, but that is to be expected given the attention that they had. Quite honestly, with all that we put into the academies, if we could not have turned them around, we would not have deserved to hold the job. Moreover, it is not only academies that can do that. It is not a trick and we know what to do with underachieving schools. You put in damn good head teachers and let them attract really good staff. You support them and give them some more money. You monitor them, but you let them get on with it. It was not the freedom of the academy status that caused the improvement in results, but something quite different which I shall come back to. So my first question is this: what is the evidence that there will be a systemic improvement and not just improvements for individual schools?

Secondly, what will be the effect on the rest of the education system, which will consist of an increasingly small maintained sector? Thirdly—and for me the key question—is it really worth focusing the attention of the Secretary of State, of the department, of local government and of both Houses on going through this structural change? As the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, said, this will be a big move. What is the justification for taking the focus of the whole machinery of government and the education service away from teaching and learning and putting it on whether to apply for academy status or not? The only justification for this Bill is if the noble Lord can prove that, in itself, it will improve the quality of teaching in the classroom. I am glad that there is agreement across the Chamber that it is that which makes the difference. Which clause in this Bill means that schools with academy status will see improved teaching and therefore improved learning? There is actually nothing about teaching and learning in the Bill; no mention is made of them. So I am left to conclude that the intention of the legislation is that these freedoms will somehow improve the quality of teaching and therefore the quality of learning. I do not believe that and I have never believed it. Indeed, that has been the cause of some of my unhappiness with some of the things that my own Government have done.

I want to look at this in a little more detail. Many of these freedoms are illusory. The letter sent to schools by the Secretary of State does not set out a long list of extra freedoms because many of those freedoms are already available to maintained schools. It is not the local authority that stops schools using the freedoms they have; it is fear of the accountability mechanism. The problem is not that schools do not have enough freedom, but that not enough schools use what is available to them.

As we have heard in some speeches, the Government feel that two specific freedoms will do the trick: freedom from the curriculum, and freedom from the local authority. Whether teachers should have control of the curriculum is a different debate for another time. I do not think that they should. The knowledge that we pass down from generation to generation is not the responsibility of teachers to decide; it is a responsibility for us all. It is a civic responsibility and duty. What I know is this: a poor teacher does not become a good teacher just because you change what they teach. Changing the history syllabus will not make a poor teacher a good one.

As for freedom from local authorities, it should be noted that they do not run schools or have such powers over them. I find it incredible that both the Minister’s Government and my own Government have spent two and a half decades removing the powers of local authorities. When I was Secretary of State I intervened on underperforming local authorities by outsourcing to private or third sector contractors probably more often than any other Secretary of State. Having achieved that and changed the role of local authorities, why do we still talk about them as though they are still running schools? It is as though we do not want to claim the success we have had in terms of local authorities. We have had successes in our party, and the Minister’s party has had successes as well. Academies under the Labour Government were successful not because they were free to develop their own curriculum or because they were free from their local authorities, but because they were a small group of disadvantaged schools in disadvantaged areas that were given a lot of high quality attention and clear focus.

Let me list some of these things. Those schools attracted some of the best head teachers in the country, along with some of the finest teachers we can offer. They did so because they were seen as the place to be. If I had been a young teacher when the academies were introduced under Tony Blair, I would have gone for them. They were the sexy sort of school, the club where things were happening. If I wanted to get on, that is where I would have sent my first job application. That is also why, when it was set up, Teach First operated predominantly if not solely in the academies. The academies had banded intakes. They changed overnight in a very good way by taking not only children from the local area but—as the noble Lord, Lord Harris, described—by ensuring a mixed ability intake. Every single academy has that sort of intake. The schools were given external support by the department, from sponsors, from the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust and from anyone else who wanted to contribute. Quite frankly, far from being free, independent schools, the academies were the most monitored, watched, weighed and measured we have ever seen in this country. And the result was that they improved in the way that the Minister described. But unless we understand why they improved, we will get it wrong again. They did not improve because they were given extra freedoms; they improved because they were supported and given the best quality leadership and teaching. I see nothing in the Bill that can possibly make those advantages available for every school that applies to become a city academy. Indeed, by the very nature of what my Government did, they cannot be replicated until you have more good teachers and school leaders being given lots more support and a bit more in the way of resources.

If this Bill is passed, there will be consequences for the education system. Many noble Lords have talked, first, about the important role played by local authorities and how they need the capacity to fulfil it, and, secondly, about the fragmentation of the schools system. To tell the truth, I object to the notion that schools which become academies will be made to link with other failing schools. Why would anyone think that that is the preserve of the academies? It is what schools are already doing and is one of the greatest achievements of the last Labour Government. They joined schools together to teach each other and enable all to learn from the best. Church schools, community schools and special schools link in with each other. We do not need an Academies Bill to ensure that underperforming schools are supported, because that is already being done. So we must not allow the academies to be seen as the group that makes it happen.

I shall finish with some questions, many of which have already been referred to by other speakers, but one or two of which have not. On admissions, like other noble Lords, I would welcome an assurance that the admissions code of practice will apply. I can see, even though I might not be thrilled about it, how it is possible legally for a grammar school to be transferred into an academy and still be allowed to select under existing legislation. What I cannot see is how Clause 1(6)(d) can state that academies must have,

“pupils who are wholly or mainly drawn from the area in which the school is situated”.

I do not know of one grammar school that draws wholly—100 per cent—or even mainly from the area in which the school is situated. Will the Minister clarify that, in the future, grammar schools will have to accept pupils wholly or mainly from the area in which they are situated?

Secondly, there are two routes for funding: academy agreement and academy financial assistance. I do not know why the second route has been introduced, or indeed what it is for and how it will be used. Thirdly, I add my voice to the others which have said that we must consult parents and look at charitable status.

My final question—which I have not heard mentioned; I may have misread the legislation—is what does the Minister envisage will be the role of sponsors? Does he believe that, with 1,000 applications of interest in gaining academy status by September this year, and with six weeks of the school term left, he can put in place sponsors for each of those academies? That external sponsorship, that external eye on the role of education, has been a power of good. I look forward to the rest of the debate today, certainly to the Committee stage, and to gathering responses to my questions when the Minister replies.