Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Bishop of Liverpool

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?

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Bishop of Liverpool

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.