Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 17th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

I agree with that. Of course, the other reason is, despite what the Minister constantly tells us, that there is a shortage of teachers and we are desperate to find people. Figures published last week suggested that one in six teachers comes from overseas. I do not have any problem with overseas teachers, provided that they are qualified. I come back to the issue that I want to see every pupil in every type of school having a qualified teacher. Linked to that would be the quality of the teacher training and of the professional development while that teacher is in post.

On inspection—and this goes back to the previous debate—it is interesting that some academy chains are now bigger than local authorities. My local authority had 50-odd schools. The Harris academy chain has more than 50 schools. We inspect local education authorities but we do not inspect academies. Amendment 30 suggests that if a school is coasting or failing or going to become an academy, do we not want to know the reasons why that is happening rather than just saying, “It has failed, let’s move on”? Do we not want to understand what has happened in that school so that we can put it right? Do we not also want, when we move that school into an academy, to be absolutely sure that the academy that is chosen is up to inspections and up to the mark, and that we do not move the pupils from one difficult situation to another? I beg to move.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, I respect the noble Lord’s motivation in tabling these amendments. My objection to them does not get into the specifics relating to qualified teachers or whatever, but it is simply that I think that it is wrong for primary legislation to lay down what Ofsted should and should not inspect. The noble Lord suggests a very short list of what should be inspected, and I am sure that Ofsted would have a much wider field of interest in any inspection that it conducted, but I think that he has a focused and almost myopic picture of what Ofsted can and cannot do.

Over the years in which it has worked, Ofsted has built up a comprehensive picture of what is going on in schools and in education. It will undoubtedly have inspected at least one of the schools of most of the chains which might be candidates to sponsor a coasting school. Similarly, I cannot believe that any school would have been classified as coasting over a three-year period without Ofsted having been alerted to that and having gone and had a look at it. So we should have more confidence in what good HMI can do and their knowledge both of the system and of individual schools which are in trouble, rather than trying to lay down specifics such as, “They must inspect to see how many qualified teachers they are going to have, or they must inspect for this, that and t’other”. I therefore ask the noble Lord to think again about the amendments and to have a little more confidence in what HMI within Ofsted would be able to do.

[Lord Storey]

Does the noble Baroness not agree that the difficulty is that local authorities no longer have the resources to give that support which previously existed? Does she not think that we should ensure that academy chains have the resources to do the very things that she suggests rather than always leave it to Ofsted?

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I have declared my interest as chair of Wandsworth Academies and Free Schools Commission. We interview every prospective sponsor. We look at their track record; we listen to what their aims and objectives are; and we listen to their views of education. We can then offer advice from the local authority to the department. I know that the department’s evaluation of every potential sponsor is very detailed. Of course, local authorities will no longer be asked to comment—so my little commission will disappear—but I know that the regional schools commissions will do an extremely thorough job before they hand over any school to a new sponsor. They will have looked carefully at every aspect of the sponsor: its aims, its objectives, its track record, its vision of education and its proposals for what it will do with a school and so on. We sometimes try a little too hard in this House to nail everything down in legislation instead of having more confidence in what professional people will do.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I see the noble Lord’s three amendments as being essentially about the quality and standards of the academy chains being considered to take over individual schools. As a matter of principle, it does not seem unreasonable to require that information be available to those who make decisions and to parents and teachers about the record of that academy chain. I take the point that one does not want to write everything into primary legislation and to instruct Ofsted in everything that it should do. On the other hand, one of the themes through our debates is whether maintained schools are being treated on a level playing field with academies. The suspicion arises because the Government seem to convey the view “Academies are good; maintained schools are bad”. That is why some of us want to see something in the legislation to ensure that academies are dealt with equally, and looking at the past performance of the chain seems to me to be particularly important.