Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Addington and Lord Nash

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

I support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lady Spielman and support the sentiment behind them. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that we should not rush to this, because I think Ofsted inspectors will need some training on it. Many of them still do not really understand MATs, and I am a little worried about boasting too much about organisational structure; it is more the results that count and educational outcomes, the support from the centre, personal development, safeguarding, careers, enrichment et cetera. Of course, it is fairly easy to inspect for value for money by reference to comparable statistics, so that could certainly be done. In principle, I support this concept and welcome the very eloquent intervention from the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, it is said that, if you have all-party support on education in the House of Lords, you should probably run with it. We have it on this occasion.

There is a major part of the education system that we are not looking at: we are not inspecting the academy trusts properly. There are some successes there, and some that are not doing as well; that is inevitable, but it is an accepted part of the system now. We should be looking at what works and what does not.

My question to the Minister is as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked: if not now, then when? If we are going to do something along these lines, getting an idea of the structure and when it is coming in would be very helpful, because it is a very important part of the structure. Whether we accept that with a sigh or a smile does not matter; it is there and we should be inspecting it. I look forward to hearing the Government’s plans in this department very soon.