Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Nash and Baroness Blower

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Although I share some of the noble Lord’s concerns about simplifying the regulatory system, as a lawyer—and, I admit, an academy sponsor—I struggle with the concept of producing legislation that overrides contracts that have been negotiated between the Government, proprietors and trusts unless absolutely necessary. The officials might say that they do not understand them because there are so many of them. Frankly, I think that they should. They are not that different. The trusts certainly understand their own individual contracts.

Before the Government seek to overturn these agreements and add a vast array of powers to them, they need to explain precisely why that is necessary, as a number of noble Lords have said. I believe that the DfE already has sufficient and substantial intervention powers and that these clauses are therefore unnecessary. As we go through the Bill clause by clause, I will articulate why I think the Government already have the powers and they need just to use them where necessary.

The MAT sector is in good shape. As my noble friend Lord Baker said, the number of cases where the DfE feels it now needs to intervene is extremely small, and the kitchen sink approach in the Bill seems like a sledgehammer/nut situation. However, if we can be satisfied that any of these clauses or something like them are necessary—it is clear that there is consensus for this across the House—we are prepared to work with the Government to craft them appropriately, but we need time to do so.

The Minister mentioned that when I took the Children and Families Bill through your Lordships’ House in 2014, we added free school meals. We had to do that because they were not covered by funding agreements. Much of what is in the Bill is already covered by funding agreements, so the Government need to explain why they need to bring in a lot of these clauses.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I find myself following the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I wanted to say that it was a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker, but it is equally a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I have very little to say on the report since it has been covered fully by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher. I say in passing that the wisdom and clarity of the speech of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles, was a very good contribution to the debate.

As we have heard from all sides of the Committee, the extremely long, but apparently inexhaustive, list in Clause 1 appears to be overreach at an extraordinary level. As was said at Second Reading and earlier today, it is really a power grab by the DfE without any real understanding of what the purpose of all these things then residing with the Secretary of State would be. As the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said, they are things that have never been seen. It is remarkable. It would be remarkable for school governors and staff to think that head teachers were going to be appointed in Sanctuary Buildings. It seems so remarkable as to beggar belief. These are unacceptable propositions.

As I thought about speaking today, I reflected that when I started teaching in the early 1970s, we thought of and talked about education as a national service locally delivered. That is what I would like to continue to see it as. I think all noble Lords would agree that the aspiration of the education service in England should be a good local school for every child. That seems to chime both with the title of the White Paper, Opportunity for All: Strong Schools with Great Teachers for your Child, and with the SEND Review: Right Support Right Place Right Time—it does not say local, but it has that sense of local.

Where is the local dimension in Clause 1? It is absent. It resides with the Secretary of State. Some matters are best dealt with at national level—my noble friend Lord Knight referred to one—such as remuneration, salaries, conditions of service, pensions and so on. That means that there would be coherence across teaching and education staff nationally, which has massive advantages because it means that teachers are free to move around the country and take their expertise from one place to another. In particular, when thinking about women teachers, it means that they do not have to worry when they move from one school to another about what their situation might be with, for example, access to maternity leave and maternity pay. However, if all these things are different, as they are at the moment, that is a significant problem. Clearly there are things which would be better done at national level, although it is my contention that salaries, pensions and conditions of service would be much better done through a framework of sectoral collective bargaining rather than by being imposed by the Secretary of State.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to Amendments 23, 24, 25 and 27, to which I have added my name, and Amendment 26, which, alas, I overlooked but with which I absolutely agree. I declare an interest as a vice-chair of the APPG for Parental Participation in Education. The bulk of these amendments are obviously about the role that parents could and should have in their children’s schooling. It simply cannot be right that the voice of parents is absent from the fora in which important decisions are made. These amendments provide the opportunity to fill what I hope the Minister will acknowledge is a gap in the Bill.

Amendment 24 sets out the requirement for community engagement to make sure that it is not overlooked but is indeed strategic and effective, supported by the requirement in Amendment 26 for a parental council, for which I am sure all noble Lords would like to thank my noble friend Lord Knight.

Amendment 25 deals with local governance in the round to ensure that each constituent academy of a MAT has a local governing body, to which at least two parent governors should be elected. This seems to me an absolutely basic and essential requirement because if these things are done without parents, then when we want their help they will feel on the outside rather than being part of what is going on in those schools.

Amendment 27 is crucial to the local dimension of academies in a MAT. I am bound to say—I have some experience of this because it is going on at the moment—that it is all too easy when an individual school or academy is in the process, with a representative of a MAT, of their school possibly being absorbed into that MAT for it to be told in response to a variety of questions: “Yes, of course, that is an individual school decision.” That comes in response to a range of things that might be asked by parents or indeed staff. The fact is, however, that it is not clear that it necessarily will be an individual school decision, unless there is some requirement for it to be so.

Amendment 27 sets out the requirement that a multi-academy trust must devolve some responsibilities to the governing bodies of individual academies within the trust. That seems only sensible. We heard earlier from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, that there was a trust with two schools in Norwich, one with presumably a relatively white demographic and one not too far away that was completely different. The noble Lord said that 25 languages were represented, which suggests a slightly different demographic. So of course, it has to be that some of those things are school-level decisions because the constituent schools are different institutions. It is central that local decision-making and engagement should be carried out by that local governing body.

The responsibilities suggested are all specific and ensure that each school within the MAT has the authority to determine, within its own local context, its strategic direction. The parties involved in a particular school would see these responsibilities as entirely appropriate and better held at the individual institution level. One example in particular is

“the professional autonomy of teachers over curriculum and content”.

This is not to say that each individual teacher goes in and does whatever they like; it is about developing curriculum content within the particular context of the school and with other teachers. In a primary school, it would be likely to be the whole school. In a secondary school, it might be at department level. It is logical to protect the professional autonomy of teachers so that they can make choices about curriculum content and, in particular, that they can make some decisions about pedagogy.

Most schools—obviously, I cannot speak for them all—would say that they are proud of their distinctive ethos. It is something all schools say. It is why it was quite appalling that someone once said “bog-standard comprehensive”. There is no such thing; there are schools that have differing ethoses. This amendment would ensure that the enhancement of that ethos would be with the local governing body and would be its responsibility—a local governing body, where all the voices of all the stakeholders would be able to be heard. Taken together, the amendments in this group could provide a significant improvement to what we have heard this evening is not, as it stands, a particularly good Bill.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I will comment on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the benefits for an outstanding school of moving into a multi-academy trust, given that it is already outstanding. One of the biggest benefits for schools in multi-academy trusts is the career development opportunities for teachers. Lots of multi-academy trusts are now run by people who used to run one school and now run a group of schools. They consistently tell me that, although it did not necessarily occur to them when they got involved in MATs, the best benefit was career development opportunities for teachers. They used to lose all their best staff when they ran one school because they had no career pathway for them. Now they can give them career pathways. They can identify their rising stars and move them around. That is a major benefit.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the noble Lord for giving way. I had the experience of being a teacher from the early 1970s and what the noble Lord describes in a multi-academy trust is exactly what happened in many local authorities. There were many teachers—for example, primary teachers—who did not particularly want to go into management but had a particularly useful skill to spread around. They could be seconded from their school to the local authority to work in lots of different schools, enhance the skills base of their colleagues and perhaps enhance their own leadership skills. I recognise exactly what the noble Lord is saying, but that was entirely possible in local authorities prior to the MAT arrangements.