Academies Bill [HL]

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

I think there is a real difference between primary schools and secondary schools for other reasons, but the relationship between a school and the community in which it is situated varies hugely between schools. Some schools cut themselves off from the community, unfortunately, a tendency that has increased in recent years because of the pressures put on the schools, but other schools look outwards. I do not think there is necessarily a difference between a primary school and a secondary school, although primary schools—by their very nature, because they take in very young children and bring mothers in and so on—are often more closely involved in the community than some secondary schools. However, I do not think there is necessarily a direct relationship between that, and I know secondary schools that are heavily involved in the community.

The parish council in a village, the town council in a town and the district council can all legitimately have a say. I am not saying that they should have a right of veto; I am saying that these are community institutions and if a community is to have a proper debate, no matter how quickly, everyone in that community has a right to it.

There are two principles of general consultation. They help with the difficulties, which the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, identified, of being too prescriptive about whom you consult or of trying to be prescriptive but vague at the same time and perhaps leaving things open to legal challenge. First, you must publish what you are proposing for general discussion so that anyone can pick up information about it and take part in the discussion, and you must publish the responses. That is proposed new subsection (1A) in my amendment. Secondly, once you have the responses, whether from parents, teachers, the parish council or just a group of interested people, you must obviously consider them and decide whether you want to allow them to influence your decision. If, after the consultation, you decide to send your application to the Secretary of State, you send a summary of the responses or the responses themselves to the Secretary of State alongside your application so that someone who is looking at the application can consider them at the same time. Those are the two principles of genuine public consultation and debate.

The argument against such a consultation might be that it will delay the process, but so long as you have a pretty strict timetable and people are fairly rigorous and efficient with it, it does not have to delay the process very much. I think there is also a worry on the part of the Government that if there is too much general public debate about a particular proposal, it will encourage people to decide not to go for it. They might say that it is a bit controversial and hang back a bit. However, given the scale of the interest which the Government assure us there is in these things, whether it is a free school or a conversion—they say that 1,800 schools at least have now asked for more details—the Government and the department cannot possibly deal with that very quickly and will have to go ahead with far fewer, so I do not think that the argument about putting people off carries any weight whatever.

I support the coalition Government, but everything that people have said and everything that they have published so far—in the original agreement and in the coalition document Our Programme for Government—talks about more public involvement, more consultation and more involvement of citizens. We are slowly learning what the big society means, but if it does not mean genuine consultation on something that is as important to a local community as the future of its school, what on earth does it mean? Something needs to be in the Bill about consultation, and it needs to involve not just particular interest groups in the school but the wider community.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support Amendments 114 and 191. I particularly support Amendment 191, because it asks the Government to pilot the academy schools and I think that a conservative approach to this is appropriate. This is so significant to our children’s lives. I recognise that this is an enabling Bill, but we expect many schools to buy into this programme. This is a huge experiment and it really does behove us to act in a conservative and considered way. Piloting a scheme, as the amendment suggests, would be a good step forward.

I have previously raised with the Minister my concerns about not only the most vulnerable children in the system but also the workforce and how these schools might cream off the best teachers and head teachers from the schools around them. I think that there is a consensus that the quality of teachers and head teachers makes the most difference to the education of children and young people.

To give examples from other areas, in the prison system we now have a mixed economy of private and public prisons. Private prisons are often accused of paying huge sums of money for the best executives from the public sector. The public sector trains the best prison officers, who get creamed off by private companies. They are also accused of putting junior officers in place who are underdeveloped and undersupported, and they quickly move on. I do not know whether that is a fair accusation but, from the statistics, the turnover of junior officers in private prisons is very much higher than in public prisons. There were all sorts of benefits to introducing a mixed economy in terms of breaking down inflexible practices, but I hope that the illustration shows that there is some cause for concern.

As regards childcare, I was speaking to the manager of a voluntary nursery which is not far from your Lordships’ House. She said, “We are very keen on training our childcare workers. They work for their national vocational qualification level 3 in childcare and as soon as we train them up they move to the local authority system where they get better pensions, benefits and job security”.

I have already mentioned independent social worker practices. I heard the Minister’s response to that. It is super that such new models can be very attractive to people coming into social work or teaching. They see themselves gaining the autonomy they want to run their own businesses. There is great enthusiasm for that. However, Paul Fallon, who was director of social services at Barnet, reduced the level of social work vacancies in his local authority from 30 per cent to 3 per cent in three years—I hope that I have the figures right, because they sound a bit too neat. He was well respected and was asked by the Government to be part of a committee advising on independent social work practices. His main concern was that these social work practices would cream off all the best social workers from thereabouts and that there would not be the continuity of provision essential in dealing with these children to ensure that they get back to their families.

This is a bit like a game of chess and the devil is always very good at enticing us with an attractive knight, a rook or even a queen. But we have to look further down the game. When we are dealing with something as serious as this, we have to look a number of moves ahead to the end game. I am concerned about this matter. I wish to learn more. I appreciate the Minister’s serious endeavours to reassure me and others.

I also recall the right-to-buy policy, which had many benefits for many people. Unfortunately, the need for councils to redevelop public provision—the local authority homes that were being sold off—was overlooked in that policy. I am sorry to say that in many areas this has condemned some families to sharing a kitchen or a bathroom with five other families. Many families have to live in awful conditions in poor-quality private accommodation because sufficient thought was not given to the overall impact of that policy. This is a good proposal from the opposition Benches and I look forward to the Minister’s reply.