Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Lucas Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I rise to speak to three amendments tabled in my name: Amendments 10, 95 and 120A. I am hopeful that the first two at least may improve the drafting of the Bill, though it could be that the Minister will in response say that what I think is set out in the Bill is not as I think it is.

A grouping of this size, which deals with many different, technical and difficult points, is not a way to legislate. I do not know how Members of the Committee can possibly follow a grouping of this scope and technicality. I hope that in future stages of the Bill the groupings will enable Peers who are not experts in education law—and even those who are—to follow more reasonably.

Amendment 10 seeks to insert in Clause 1(3) the phrase,

“(as may from time to time be amended by them)”.

This is an attempt to make clear that the academy agreement between the Secretary of State and the other party should be defined not only as the initial agreement but as an agreement which may be amended by them consensually from time to time. I hope that that is helpful, because without those words we might run into trouble.

Amendment 95 seeks to amend Clause 2(4), which entitles the Secretary of State to indemnify those running an academy if the agreement is terminated. The amendment simply adds the word “reasonable” before “expenditure” so that the indemnity would be in respect of reasonable expenditure. Paragraphs (a) and (b) then refer to what the indemnity may relate to. It is a prudent provision because without it lavish and unnecessary expenditure would be indemnified, and that cannot be right.

Amendment 120A seeks to amend Clause 4, which deals with academy orders. I have tabled the amendment for clarification because I do not understand what the words at the end of subsection (3)—

“or a school that replaces it”—

mean, or are intended to mean. Are they intended to cover new free schools? I do not think they are because the whole of Clause 4 is confined to existing secondary schools converting into academies.

[Lord Lucas]

I shall speak to my Amendments 31 and 34 in this very diverse group. Amendment 31 proposes that,

“substantial freedom is given to the school to innovate”.

When I am going round schools I notice how hidebound they are by the restrictions that are placed on them in trying new things. Although the previous Government introduced an ability to innovate, it was subject to applications in triplicate to the Secretary of State and an extraordinarily cumbersome procedure. I hope we will now see a pronouncement in favour of innovation. I suggest that where a school does innovate it is merely necessary to inform the Secretary of State that this has happened—this becomes a risk factor for Ofsted in its decision on when and where to inspect—and that there is a requirement on the school to keep proper records so that the benefits or otherwise of the innovation can be judged in subsequent years. The whole tenor should be in favour of innovation. There are many good and experienced teachers out there who are capable of doing a great deal of good for the system if we let them have a go.

On Amendment 34, one of the good things to come out of the past 13 years of government was an increasing interest in schools co-operating with each other. Neighbouring schools will always be a little at loggerheads, but there are good examples—both those induced by the Government and those that have occurred privately—of schools forming networks to share problems and good practice and generally to get together and get beyond the confines of what is possible within a school, particularly a primary school. I am thinking particularly of the transition from primary to secondary and how schools can work together. There have been some excellent examples of that and I would not like the process of becoming an academy to be seen as an excuse to be isolated and a star on your own. It ought to be a process of becoming more co-operative and more linked into schools generally.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lady Garden and Lord Phillips of Sudbury and explain what is troubling me about academy orders.

Section 14 of the Education Act 2002 is incorporated into Clause 1(4), therefore enabling academies to be dealt with by what might be called the fast-track process of essentially calling into aid the powers given to the Secretary of State in that Act. The difference is that only very specific use was made of the power in Section 14; I do not think that it was intended to embrace a whole category of school in the way that will be possible under the Bill. My straightforward concern is that, where we are looking at the possibility of removing many statutory forms of consultation, virtually no restraint will be placed on the Secretary of State, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, and that he will be accountable to no one but himself. The combination of Section 14—the powers of the Secretary of State—being incorporated into the Bill with the fast-tracking of the academy orders means that an academy could be approved, or for that matter rejected, with the involvement of virtually no one but the Secretary of State. Within a democratic structure, that is not an acceptable way to go.

We must therefore look very closely at the amendments that have been tabled. They would bring academies back into the structure of the academy agreement—my noble friend Lady Garden referred to this—which would enable us to set conditions and requirements for the schools that have to be met under the academy agreement but that do not have to be met in the same way under an academy order.

I, too, would be very grateful for greater enlightenment from the Minister on what accountability there is in mind. For example, it might be possible to look at the report from the education department on the experience of academies, their standards, their meeting of the admissions orders and other requirements under the academy agreements. That would enable Parliament to debate how far those requirements and conditions had been met and to distinguish between the effects of academy orders and academy agreements.

Perhaps even more significant than the proposals that my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, have put forward is the need for this Committee to look closely at the level of accountability for academies and at academy orders under the Bill.

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[Lord Lucas]

I had better get around to addressing my amendments in this group or I shall be caught up by my old friend on the Front Bench. I like faith schools, although I have no faith myself. I send my youngest daughter to a Church of England school and am very happy with it. Although I sympathise a lot with what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, said, I also have a great deal of understanding of what the right reverend Prelate said.

In the Bill we are looking at moving schools from the maintained school regime to the independent school regime. The provisions in relation to religion are different. We have fought long and hard for that in this House. I was one of the supporters of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in the battle, which we sadly lost, to bring up to date the relationship between state-funded schools and their religious sponsors. As part of the old and untouchable settlements in this country, there is a group of about 60 what you might call extreme Christian schools. They are inspected by their own inspectorate and have their own rules. We have allowed latitude to independent schools—where parents go to the length of paying for their children’s education—that we have not allowed in state schools, where we pay for the education. That is fair enough. If the community is paying for education, we can reasonably ask things of the religious sponsors of schools that we would not ask of them if they were paying for the education.

There are two crucial elements. The first is now broadly accepted. Even in schools that are of a firmly religious character, children should be taught about the precepts and practices of other religions and—I agree—humanism. They should be taught about the world at large. I have had, as part of my recent education, a lot of correspondence with my Catholic friends and cousins about how the Catholic Church has changed over the past 50 years. I now know why I did not study religion at university. It is far too complicated and difficult to penetrate for a mind such as mine. I was quite content with nuclear physics.

It is clear that the Anglican Church, in which I was brought up, and the Catholic Church are committed to teaching a broad view of faith in their schools. However, I am worried about the people who might try to run free schools. One of the great motivations for running your own school is to run it within the confines of your religious faith. That is fine; I am happy for people to do that. However, if the relevant school is a state school, it should promote understanding, community cohesion and all the other virtues for which we have fought. In other words, it should teach children about the religious and non-religious worlds at large.

My second amendment goes back to the battle that the noble Lord, Lord Baker, and I fought. Purely religious schools that accept no other pupils are, of their nature, divisive and always have the potential to cause harm to the communities of which they are part. There may be circumstances where that is not the case—for example, where the relevant community is very much a minority community. However, where large proportions of a particular faith are represented in the make-up of a community and that community resorts almost entirely to its own schools, the situation becomes divisive. By observation, that is the case in the west of Scotland and Northern Ireland. It is not something that we should encourage. Some Anglican schools and more Catholic schools remain exclusive. One should seek to persuade them to open their doors. However, the notion that we should create new schools with this exclusivity—that we should not just perpetuate it but increase it—seems to me a very bad idea, as it was three years ago. I very much hope that I can convince my noble friend that it is a bad idea.

[The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells]

My Lords, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, which is very largely rural, we have some 184 church primary schools, which have served their communities for a long time. They are essentially community schools. That is reflected across the country to a greater extent than we might imagine. The essence of those schools is built around how you make a community and what is part of a community. Some of them have rather more effective relationships with their parish church than others. Some of them have Christian head teachers, others do not, but the essential ethos of those schools, founded within the framework of Anglicanism, has carried through to a greater or lesser extent in their religious commitment.

It is key for us to recall the requirement for a national curriculum of religious education. There has to be a commitment to that going across not just the faith tradition of the particular school but the wide experience of religion so that young people have an opportunity to understand it. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that many of these schools are committed to reflecting on the philosophy underpinning humanism. I was asked a few moments ago to try to clear up what is a faith and what is a belief. I shall not risk doing that, but I will say that all faith involves belief at some level or another and is committed to some kind of system. By definition, faith cannot ultimately be proved. Therefore, how we understand and develop these things depends on a whole variety of our relationships with one another in the wider spectrum of life.

I support academies. Indeed, I had the privilege of being the chairman of the board of education in the diocese of Southwark when the first of the academies in south London was formed. I am extremely proud of that, because it did indeed reach into that community at its most vulnerable level.

However, the concept of free schools raises for me real anxieties, particularly in the sphere of religious influence. That is not simply because I want to hold up my hand to say that the Anglican or Catholic churches have a corner of the market. I remind your Lordships of our national identity and the way in which we are tied into the concept of the sovereign as the head of the Church of England, under our constitution, and our relationship with Parliament. The issue is much more complex from that point of view.

There is real merit in our looking towards the development of academies, but I hope that the view of the future of good schools will not be that they should all become academies and enter the independent sector. We have many good schools and, if we go down that road, I fear that we will, in the end, marginalise some of the poorer communities.

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, this is a hugely disparate group of amendments. We have covered a lot of topics and it has been difficult sometimes, despite the intelligence of Members of the Committee, to see any common thread in what has been discussed. I want to return to the issue raised by the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. They deal with the absolutely key issue of the catchment area from where the academy will draw its pupils.

In recent years, I have been increasingly concerned over the whole issue of catchment areas, largely because we have seen that, where there is a good, strong school, parents who can afford to do so understandably—I do not blame them for it at all—cluster around the school and buy or rent houses in the area. There are even stories of parents being slightly economical with the truth in all sorts of interesting ways about where they live in order to claim that they are within the catchment area of a good school. Meanwhile, the schools most in need are in the most deprived areas. The people who live near those poor schools, often on local council estates, do not have the option of moving. They cannot buy their way into the catchment area of a good school.

This is one of the big issues for academies. I know that in Hackney the academies do not have catchment areas, but they do use banding and lotteries. I know that my noble friend Lord Lucas has an amendment—for various reasons, it is not in this group—that raises the issue of banding. I ask the Minister to think seriously about the issue of “wholly or mainly” in a local area and about the freedom which grammar schools have had since their inception and which grant-maintained schools had in their day—and which, as I say, many existing academies have taken—that allows them to go outside their area, maintaining the inclusiveness of the intake by means of banding but giving it a social mix or even a mix of talent.

[Lord Lucas]

I support entirely what my noble friend has just said. It is important, particularly when we are granting new freedoms to outstanding schools, that one of our ambitions for them is that they should reach out of the area immediately around them, which frequently has been colonised by people who can afford to buy houses in the area, to those who are not in that position. We will come to my amendment later. Perhaps I take a more active view than my noble friend, but I certainly would like it to be an ambition that all these schools should free themselves from geographical catchment areas that allow for their capture by financially mobile people. They should, at the least, be able to reach out and include those beyond the local area.

I also support the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in what he said about state boarding schools. They have a strong role to play and I would like to see an increasing role for them. As he says, most of them are excellent, but they are clearly not serving their local areas in any particular way. That also applies to religious schools. Existing schools such as the Jewish Free School have a wide catchment area and are excellent. I cannot see why they should be excluded just because their communities are widespread. They should not be geographically confined, particularly if new schools are following the 50 per cent rule. I do not see any damage arising from that. Again, historically we have supported dance, drama and music in specialist schools and I suspect that it would do our national pride a bit of good if we supported tennis. All in all, I come down to agreeing with the first amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I cannot see a function for subsection (6)(d) that could not reasonably and justly be dealt with in the ordinary discretion of the department.

Having agreed with noble Lords opposite, I take issue with my noble friend Lady Williams. If I start from the same premise as she did, I get to opposite conclusions. The community that my local primary school is part of is the village in which it is situated. The school is governed from Petersfield eight miles away, but that is an alien presence, not a local one. A primary school is very local, so one that has its roots in the local community is a much more local thing than one that is subject to the whims of the local authority, which has a lot of considerations other than the wishes of the local community. I see that as progress.

I spent part of my life running a small business, which felt like a primary school in that there were lots of things that I could not do myself. However, if I wanted to know about employment law, I subscribed £250 a year to a telephone service from Sage or someone else. I did not need a local authority to provide it for me. There will be lots of other providers of these services—indeed, there are many—and it is not like having to pay a City lawyer £500 an hour every time advice is needed. Services are built to be provided to small enterprises like primary schools.

However, I share my noble friend’s concern about how fragile primary schools are. The wrong head in a primary school can kill it in about two months, so I urge the Minister, when he comes to consider applications from primary schools, to make sure that they have strong heads and governing bodies and that they are committed to stay in place for some time. It may well be, over the long term, that a primary academy would be better as part of a wider federation of some kind, such as a group of primary schools, or as a school that is connected to a secondary school, as the existing primary academies are. That would provide the resources to deal with problems as they arise and which can so easily bowl over a small primary school.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am considering that. On the specific point of sixth-form expansion, an increase in places would require a change to the admissions arrangements, which would itself require local consultation and agreement by the Secretary of State. That may provide the noble Baroness with some comfort.

Amendments 45, 47, 48 and 49 revolve around the debate we had about “wholly or mainly”. I share the views expressed on all sides of the House about boarding academies. I am very attracted to the idea and wish to see whether we can do more with them. Other points were made around a particular specialism and one would not want provisions in the Bill which made that problematical.

As to the specific question about the existing 35 state boarding schools—this provides the answer to the substantive question behind it—yes, they are able to apply for academy status. To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, the Duke of York’s Royal Military School will become a boarding academy within the current requirements—which, as he rightly said, date from 1988 wholly or mainly—so they have not prevented that from happening. A performing arts academy has been set up in Birmingham to serve that city’s pupils, and I am advised that that has been possible within the “wholly or mainly” requirement. I am alive to the point—I have asked about it within the department—and I am keen to encourage the kind of developments referred to by the noble Lord and others, including the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I am keen to do this and I am told that it is not a practical obstacle. I shall be happy to take up the noble Lord’s offer to discuss the issue subsequently and make sure that I am right in my understanding.

Amendment 56, which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, seeks to ensure that an academy continues to provide for CPD and suggests making it a requirement for future academy arrangements. Everyone would agree on the need for continuous professional development in academies, as in all schools. I am advised that it is one of the areas without the sort of requirement that she suggests. Academies often do particularly well as a result of the overall way in which they approach staff issues and pay and conditions. Academies are supported by education advisers whose role has included looking at this area in particular. I am told that it is working well, so we are not convinced that it needs to be a statutory requirement.

Amendment 57 would require that corporal punishment be prohibited in academies. The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 amended the Education Act 1996. It effectively abolished corporal punishment in all schools by providing that there should be no defence to criminal or civil proceedings as a result of any corporal punishment being given to a child being educated at a school. That provision applies to academies as well as maintained schools and has been in force since September 1999.

Amendments 58, 99, 109 and 120 would restrict academies to particular types or age ranges. Nursery schools are not able to become academies because they cater for pupils below compulsory school age and, to be established, academies must have at least five pupils of compulsory school age. I listened with interest to the debate on primary schools and understand some of the concerns raised. My noble friend Lady Sharp suggested federations of primary schools, which is exactly the kind of thing that one would want to encourage. We have said—this responds in part to my noble friend Lady Williams—that we will work with local authorities to address these issues as the scale and nature of academy conversion becomes clear. As I have said repeatedly, we are approaching this conversion permissively. We are not seeking to make all primary schools convert. We are committed to thinking through the issues that she raised about the practicalities involved for primary schools. We will continue to reflect on that and work with local authorities. That said, we are keen that primary schools of the sort that I visited in Edmonton on my second day in the department—it is a fantastic primary school which has been turned around—have the chance to convert. The headmistress there, Patricia Sowter, was very keen on academy freedoms. Primary schools should have that chance and we do not want to stand in their way.

Amendments 127 and 25 raise a theme that we have debated in previous groups. They would require a school converting to an academy to join forces with a weaker school unless particular circumstances led the Secretary of State to decide that it was not the right thing to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said that we have used warm words and that one is looking for more than that. I shall continue to try to heat them up even further if I can. I completely agree with her and other noble Lords who made similar points. The importance of partnership between outstanding schools converting to academies and other schools cannot be underestimated. We have been explicit that each outstanding school will be expected to sign up in principle. They will have to set out their plans as part of that process. However, it is still our view at bottom that approaching partnership on a volunteer rather than a conscript basis may make those partnerships more fruitful, in that they will be willingly entered into rather than perhaps approached more grudgingly. Amendment 127 is not limited to outstanding schools. Our view is that if a school is not yet outstanding, to burden it with a requirement to partner with a school eligible for intervention would not be a sensible way forward.

I hope that my answers have provided some reassurance, particularly on the “wholly or mainly” point, which I recognise is important and am happy to discuss further. On that basis, I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, on “wholly or mainly”, could my noble friend provide me—it need not necessarily be now—with an example of the kind of school that the provision is designed to prevent becoming an academy?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My noble friend Lord Lucas has a well earned reputation for being able to ask such questions; I think that it is not designed to have a very simple or easy answer. However, I shall reflect on it. If I were able to offer any enlightenment to him, I should be delighted to do so and extremely pleased with myself for having been able to come up with an answer.