Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

If I might add another voice from the Back Benches: to try to guarantee to every parent that their child will have an ideally good school—what a wonderful thought that would be. People have been trying ever since the end of the Second World War to provide a good school for every child; successive Governments have not succeeded in doing so. There are still an awful lot of schools which fail an awful lot of children, so to try to put into legislation a promise to parents that they will have a good school for their child is really an absurd suggestion.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when my children were at primary school I recall the primary head teacher telling me with great joy one day that there had been a very large package delivered in the school playground. They were not sure where it came from and had asked the police to inspect it. They had indeed blown it up; it was 400 pages of further instructions from the Department for Education. Of course, we agree with many of the aspirations set out in the proposed new schedule but, as the noble Baroness will have heard from behind the Front Bench, we are committed to giving schools more freedoms to get on with the job, with fewer detailed instructions taking less time away from teachers for teaching. What she is suggesting is very much the kind of approach that we want to move away from.

As my noble friend Baroness Walmsley and others have said, writing things down on paper and spending a long time negotiating them does not necessarily make them happen. We therefore share the aspirations but not the method. For most of us on this side of the Committee, part of what was wrong with education policy under the previous Government was the overdetailed instructions and prescriptions to schools, which we all know that teachers grew intensely to dislike. The aim of this Bill and of the Bills which will follow it—a larger Bill is promised for this autumn—is to free teachers to talk with parents and deal with pupils, and not to spend an immense amount of time with pieces of paper and negotiations. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, of course I listened with great interest to the noble Lord’s contribution. The pupil and parent guarantees were actually about empowering parents and pupils so that they can ensure that, in partnership with their schools and their local authority or academy trust, they can get the things that they need for their children. It is about looking at the education service that this country provides from a bottom-up perspective—looking at it from the point of view of the parent and child and of what goes on in the classroom. If we think back to Second Reading, how chastened might the coalition Government perhaps have felt when my noble friend Lady Morris criticised them for focusing so much on structure? Here we have a chance for them, just for a moment, to think about one-to-one tuition, for example. What has happened to one-to-one tuition? We have gone from a situation where the Government were committed to guaranteeing it in statute, with a process through local government—

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[The Earl of Listowel]

Again, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, has said. As far as I know, the best performing country, Finland, does not have league tables but relies on excellent teachers and trusts them to make the right decisions for children. As I recall, Finland also does not have exclusions, but has smaller, very mixed-ability classes.

Two things come to mind in this debate. The two amendments in the group are well related. There is the danger with academies that they will not be so well supported by, for instance, the good approach of having a child psychotherapist working regularly with teachers to talk about particular problematic children. That is a good approach, but it is easy to think that it is too expensive and a bit of a luxury and that an easier option would be to move a difficult child somewhere else. I have sympathy with both sides of the argument. Given that these things are already established, I would prefer to keep the status quo, because league tables have a perverse influence. I look forward to the Minister’s response. If he could say a little more about the plans for league tables and how they will be improved, that would be helpful.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, this is a long-running problem. What we have heard from all around the Chamber this evening is that this matter concerns us all, across the parties, and that none of us is entirely sure that we have the complete and final answer. We are all aware that the early academies had an unusually high rate of exclusions. That was partly because they were going into the toughest areas and trying to reimpose discipline in schools that had lost control—there were special circumstances. I am happy to say that the figures have now come down.

We are also all aware that league tables have had a perverse effect not only on academies. I am well aware of one or two secondary schools in my part of Yorkshire of which it has been said that they have tried to avoid taking on difficult children from difficult areas precisely because of the impact that they knew it would have on their standing in league tables. I am afraid that I am unable to say anything specific about our plans on league tables; we will have to write to the noble Earl. As he will know, the question of how one can shape league tables to recognise the starting point as well as the output is being discussed, again across the parties and across the expert community, because it is recognised that league tables have had a perverse effect. We are engaged on this.

I will also say that these amendments were correctly grouped, because difficult children are often defined in all sorts of ways. I know little about the problems of educating children with autism, which is a low-incidence disability and special need. That also, in a sense, makes it easier for a school to say, “Let’s exclude that child. Let that child go somewhere else”. Therefore, there is an overlap. Children can be seen as difficult in a number of different ways.

On Amendment 72, I emphasise that academies are already required, through their funding arrangements, to take their fair share of challenging pupils through their involvement in local in-year fair access protocols. This will continue to be the case for all new academies, so they do not get out of this obligation. They should be free to co-operate with local partners in managing exclusions but, again, there is a question for the coalition of how one writes that down and in how much detail. The previous Labour Government were always in favour of prescribing everything in the most minute detail—usually twice a year, each time the name of the department or the Secretary of State changed. This, as the noble Baroness will of course admit, is a different approach.

Academies are regulated by their funding agreements, which require that they act in accordance with the law on exclusions as though the academy were a maintained school and that they have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions, including in relation to any appeals process. I hope that that provides assurance that academies have to follow the law on exclusions in the same way as maintained schools.

I turn to the subject of low-incidence disabilities. We recognise that this is a continuing problem, especially where there are only a very small number of young people in a district with those particular needs. Again, partnerships among schools will clearly be the best way forward.

Academies’ funding for SEN is paid on a formula basis by the Young People’s Learning Agency. If a pupil with one of the different forms of low-incidence SEN attracts individually assigned resources as a top-up to the formula funding, the local authority will pay this from its schools budget and will continue to be responsible for monitoring the provision. If the academy fails to secure such provision, it will be in breach of its funding agreement and the YPLA can ultimately investigate following a complaint. Therefore, measures are already in train. I am not saying that they will entirely resolve the problem, just as under the previous Government a number of other measures did not entirely resolve the problem. We all recognise that this is one of the most difficult issues in education in England and we will all need to continue to monitor and to work with others—

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Can the Minister explain how this will be monitored? He said that, if it is a low-incidence special educational need, the YPLA will be responsible for paying an extra premium in respect of that need. However, the YPLA is a payment agency, not an inspection agency. How will it monitor matters to ensure that needs are met in an academy?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure that I can provide an instant answer on that. Particularly in relation to low-incidence disabilities, whether it is to do with deaf or autistic children or those with other needs, a specialist voluntary organisation will often also be doing its best to monitor the situation. Therefore, when I say “following a complaint”, very often the relevant specialist society will be doing its best to support the pupil and will make sure that the YPLA and the local authority are informed and concerned if the need falls short. However, we are looking to develop partnerships among schools. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, went a good deal wider than this and spoke about young people in care going beyond the education sector to the other local agencies that deal with difficult young people. That is the way in which we have to go forward. On that basis of reassurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, on this occasion and given the hour, I have set aside my 2,000-word speech. I shall think carefully about what the Minister has said. I, too, was concerned by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the idea that we can just leave the matter to trust. We know that, of the academies that exist, a very large number—I do not have the exact number to hand—currently take part in behaviour partnerships and they work. However, it is the ones that do not do so that I am worried about.

I shall read the report of the debate. It has been a good discussion and helpful in clarifying for me the Government’s position. I was concerned to hear the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Wilkins and was interested in the noble Lord’s response. However, again, we come down to the academy agreement. When we are talking about a change from the number of academies being in the hundreds to potentially all schools in the country being academies, we have to think much more ambitiously about how we can make these partnerships work.