Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I move Amendment 17. In this group is Amendment 53 on a related issue, in the names of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and myself, to which my noble friend will speak later.

This is really about the accountability of the new academy system and of the Secretary of State when he is exercising the powers that he will have in the management of the academy system. It has been pointed out on a number of occasions in debates on this Bill that in some crucial areas the Bill represents and provides a significant increase in the powers of the Secretary of State and a significant centralisation of the education system and the school system with regard to the academies. The more academies are created, the more that will be the case. There is a movement of powers of supervision, monitoring and various other aspects that have been discussed away from local education authorities to the Secretary of State and the processes that the Secretary of State will put in place, such as through the Young People's Learning Agency.

These amendments look at two aspects of this. The first is the creation of academies. There were amendments in Committee to make the academy orders—in relation to the conversion of individual schools, for example—subject to parliamentary approval. I think that there were some amendments from the Labour Front Bench suggesting that this should be the case. The argument was put forward, with, I think, considerable justification, that in most cases, or all cases, they would simply be a formality and that would clog up the system because there were going to be quite a lot of them. Rather than parliamentary approval being required for individual academies being set up or converted, however, this amendment would require parliamentary approval for the criteria by which academy arrangements will be created. It suggests that before entering into academy arrangements, the Secretary of State must make regulations that set out these criteria, and the criteria will be subject to parliamentary approval.

A later amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—Amendment 28, I think—is similar, in a sense. It refers to academy orders and says that the Secretary of State has to publish the criteria by which academy orders will be made, but it does not actually go as far as requiring parliamentary approval.

Whether this is about the orders or about the arrangements—obviously they are all part and parcel of the system that is going to exist—there are important policy issues here. It is not just a question of mechanically carrying out a system of creating academies; it is a question of setting out the criteria by which academies can be created. To some extent, it is a matter of whether or not schools qualify. To another extent, it is a matter of the model academy agreement, and it may be that that agreement, which this amendment does not cover, requires some sort of parliamentary scrutiny as well.

These are important issues. All these important central policy issues are being concentrated on the Secretary of State, who will have considerable power. No doubt Parliament can find ways of scrutinising these as it wishes through various parliamentary mechanisms, but there is nothing automatic in the Bill that sets that out.

That is the purpose of Amendment 17: to probe, and to promote yet again the concept that when the Secretary of State is making these decisions, the basis on which he is making them—the fundamental policy—really ought to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

The second amendment, which my noble friend will speak to, is about scrutiny of the system after it has been operating. It is the other side of the same coin. I beg to move.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 53, which is also part of this grouping. I agree with my noble friend that the proposal that he makes under Amendment 17 would be appropriate.

Owing to the lateness of the hour, I shall keep to my own amendment, the purpose of which is essentially to give Parliament an ultimate level of accountability for what happens in the secondary and primary education system through the process of an annual report repeated every year about the progress of academies, their successes, their failures, their record and so forth.

I shall say clearly, but briefly, why this matters so much. The present structure of accountability is by way of local authorities through to, eventually, their electorates. That system will be largely disappearing by the time that this Bill is passed, certainly for whatever group of schools that apply to be academies. The question then becomes, as my noble friend has said, whether there is any level of accountability, other than directly that of the Secretary of State to Parliament, more precisely related to academies themselves.

It is of the greatest importance that we have a report to Parliament. There will of course be reports to Select Committees, but we all know that Select Committees—although we hope that this situation will be substantially reformed—do not get the public or media coverage that is given to Parliament itself. The idea of a report to Parliament in which all parliamentarians, Members of both Houses, can ask questions is of the first importance. I cannot emphasise enough the crucial nature of accountability in any major democratic reform of this kind. I will simply say that the purpose of Amendment 53 is to arrange for an annual report. That report would clearly be greatly strengthened by the belt-and-braces approach suggested by my noble friend, as we would then know whether academies maintained and ascribed to the agreements and arrangements that were made for them. Even so, the importance of a report to Parliament is central. We have reports to Parliament on a wide range of issues, so why not on a major part of the education of the people of this country?

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Williams of Crosby and Lord Greaves

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

That is also untrue. They were abolished by my predecessor, Mr Fred Mulley.

[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.