Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
Main Page: Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Griffiths of Burry Port's debates with the Department for Education
(10 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberI share my noble friend’s sentiment entirely. I am fully aware of that. I am extremely grateful to him for his support of the academy programme and, as I said earlier, we should encourage more philanthropists like him to come into the system, rather than trying to score cheap points against them.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that, while there is a full-blooded debate to be had about the relative merits of academies and schools that have some local authority involvement—a debate that I suggest will have its full import when we have rather more evidence from the academies than we have at the moment—it does not do anybody any good to castigate those schools that are not yet academies and whose results are manifestly brilliant and would hold any academy’s results to shame? Can we have some assurance that the language we use is not polarised in a way that damages schools in the public sector?