Education: Academies

Lord Baker of Dorking Excerpts

Monday 9th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for his comments. Given his vast experience in this area, he always makes helpful observations. He is absolutely right in what he says. There is no doubt that our comments about compulsion had caused anxiety in the system. In order, if you like, to take the heat out of it, we have decided to remove that because we think it is right that people should work out for themselves the benefits of academisation, whether on their own or in multi-academy trusts. In answer to his last point, yes, those issues will be subject to the affirmative resolution of both Houses.

[Lord Baker of Dorking (Con)]

My Lords, as the Minister responsible for converting the first local authority education schools to independent city technology colleges, at the time I believed that if we could show that they were successful, others would follow; it would be a natural flow of events. In fact, that is exactly what has happened. Progress can be achieved by the natural flow of events rather than prescription, so I am glad that the Government have accepted that approach. I should also say to the Minister that I agree very much with the point made by the noble Lord on the Cross Benches that all good schools should not necessarily join multi-academy trusts. On the other hand, multi-academy trusts are essential between the institutions and the Government, which cannot possibly be responsible for 30,000 schools and the independent schools in our country. I am also glad to see that there are to be tough inspections by Ofsted. There are some very good multi-academy trusts, the best of which is that run by the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, who has been working at it for 30 years. But there are also some poor multi-academy trusts, and a poor multi-academy trust is no better than a poor local education authority.

[Lord Nash]

I entirely support my noble friend’s comments about success proving itself. Of course, he is vastly experienced in this area and, indeed, if it were not for his invention of city technology colleges all those years ago, we would not be here today. Of course, there are poorly performing academy groups and we are intent on intervening whenever we can to improve them. As my noble friend said—and I entirely support his comments about our noble friend Lord Harris—we now have enough outstanding academy groups, such as Harris, Ark, Outwood Grange and many others. We know that when a multi-academy trust is functioning well, it provides a standard of education to which all multi-academy trusts, we hope in time, can aspire.