Academies Bill [Lords]

Debate between Lord Coaker and Glenda Jackson

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Glenda Jackson]

I rise in the light of the remarks made by the hon. Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), both of whom were proselytising on the basis that it would be unthinkable for anybody engaged with a primary school not to consult automatically, at least with the parents. I realise that this is merely anecdotal, but there is a situation in my constituency where the board of governors of a grant-maintained school—or, the aspect of the school which is grant-maintained—wishes to pull the school down and build a brand-new one. No one has consulted the parents, who certainly do not want that to happen. I acknowledge that that example is merely anecdotal, but it underlines my underlying fear about the Bill: that if it does not say that parents must be consulted on such issues, we are essentially going to destroy state education.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point about the need for parents to be consulted, which relates to what the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) said about the phrase

“persons as they think appropriate”

not being sufficient. Instead, the Bill should list groups such as parents and the local authority. If the Government had done that, it would have strengthened the Bill and meant that many of the difficulties that some of us have with it would have been to some extent ameliorated.

--- Later in debate ---

[Vernon Coaker]

I am not a lawyer, but one of the phrases that people often use is “for the avoidance of doubt”. Given the magnitude of the decisions that could be entered into, I would have thought that, for the avoidance of doubt, it should not be beyond the wit of us all to list some of the groups that we think it should be essential to consult—local authorities, parents and so on—and then to have a phrase at the end such as “and others as the school governing body thinks appropriate”.

[Glenda Jackson]

Briefly, it is hardly going to advance educational standards if a proposed academy cannot get up and educate because both the school and the Government are engaged in a judicial review, quite apart from the expense that such a review would create.

[Vernon Coaker]

I agree.

We have serious doubts about the capacity of primary schools, and about what the costs will be, who will be leading the process, how it will be managed and so on. There are also financial implications. I have been told of a primary school in the west midlands—I think that it was mentioned in the other place—that recently developed serious structural faults. The local authority found the money to put the problem right, with a final cost of around £1 million.

Another example of where the local authority often steps in is on the matter of fires on school premises. How would that work under academy status? The Department for Education advice states that it would expect schools that had become academies facing such problems to take out loans. How could a small school possibly afford to do that? What does the Minister imagine would happen in those circumstances? How would the repayments be made? Who would get the loan in the first place? How would that operate? Most primary schools rely on the local authority to pick up the costs of redundancies and employment tribunals, as well as the legal costs associated with challenges on accidents. The school would not necessarily be able to find the cost of the insurance to cover those things.

Again, the Department for Education’s own website states that, for most schools, the cost of insurance will be between £60,000 and £100,000. The cost of purchasing legal and personal advice commercially needs to be taken into account. How would that work? What will happen with all that? Are we going to have another advisory committee to look at all those details, as we did with special schools, before we get a proper answer? The problem for primary schools is that all these are unanswered questions. Many primary schools are on holiday now, yet some of them are supposed to be opening in September as academies. How is that going to happen? What is going on?

A great deal of work has been done over the past few years, by others as well as the Government, on managing the process of transition from an early years setting into the first year of primary school. The review of the early years foundation stage announced by the Government over the last week or two will not, I trust, represent the reversal of much of that good work. The reality is that there are overlapping responsibilities between early years settings, the children’s trusts—the abolition of which would cause great concern for Labour Members, but I know that Ministers are either considering or proceeding with it—and a number of child care and early years settings sited with primary schools. How is that supposed to work? What happens with all of that—child care, nursery provision, early years provisions—in relation to primary schools? Will there be separate applications to convert separately? Do they stand alone? Will it work differently for a primary school, a nursery and an infant school? Again, I have seen no explanation of that. In many ways, I am concerned not so much about the ideology as the practicality. In the rush to get the Bill through, many practical issues have not been thought through and, frankly, Ministers do not have the answer to them.

Thousands of primary schools—some small, some big, some in rural areas—are involved, but where is the evidence for this change coming from? As I stressed in the debate on the last group of amendments, the crucial evidence that Governments often publish on their Bills is the equality impact assessments and the impact assessments. All members of this Committee will have seen and read those assessments, but there is not a word about primary schools in them—not a word. How, then, are we supposed to judge? This is supposed to be the evidence base for the Bill. Where is the evidence base for this Academies Bill, when there is nothing in it about primary schools? How can any hon. Member look at the evidence base and decide whether the Government’s proposals are acceptable?

Conservative Members seem to think that the idea of primary schools becoming academies is great, but their new Government effectively said, “We do not believe that policy should be made without evidence,” so where is the evidence?