Education: Multi Academy Trusts

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 6th April 2022 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for securing this important debate and congratulate him on his vision, so long ago in the mid-1980s, in the work he proposed at the time. As we all know, it is still a work in progress but this Government are committed to delivering on it.

As noble Lords have said and as set out in our recently published White Paper, our mission is that by 2030, 90% of children will leave primary school having achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, and that at key stage 4 the average attainment in both English and maths will increase to grade 5. Currently, the average for children at key stage 2 is 65%, and for children with special educational needs it is around 22%. As my noble friend Lady Berridge pointed out, that is unacceptable and it is that on which we need to focus. I also thank her for her kind words, and possibly the best ministerial handover breakfast that either of us will ever have.

Strong multi-academy trusts—I stress “strong”—are absolutely central to achieving this ambition. Our priority is to extend their impact across the whole country, particularly in areas of high need. We want to remove barriers to conversion for all types of school, while strengthening the system in regulation and accountability, and making sure that every actor in it has a clear role. We believe that this will level up standards and ensure that every child has the best possible opportunity to succeed in the future.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, gave examples of how we would do this that related to chapters 1 and 2 of the schools White Paper, I think. He rightly said that this is done by having great teachers for every child, and the Government entirely agree. He also said that it is done by having a really strong curriculum based on evidence and supported by excellent behaviour and attendance—those are my words, not the noble Lord’s, but I do not think that he would disagree. As your Lordships are aware, that is supported by the parent pledge.

I must correct the noble Lord’s statement—forgive me if I do not quote him accurately—that the department picked a headline and then picked the facts to meet it because we had already conceived the policy. I give the noble Lord my word that I worked really hard with excellent officials on that and that is just not the way that we did it. We started with the targets that we wanted to achieve and looked at the evidence for how they could be delivered, and that is what your Lordships see in the White Paper.

We know that this matters so much because teachers and staff in all schools, whether maintained schools or academies, have been working tirelessly, particularly over the last two years, to achieve excellent outcomes for children. Trusts have been able to support teachers in schools where that challenge is greatest. The noble Baroness, Lady Blower, questioned why we referenced the seven out of 10 sponsored academies. Those were schools that were inadequate—many of them were failing for many years, as my noble friend pointed out—and had failed several children in the same families. We put that in bold because the successors of 434,000 children who were in inadequate schools are now in good or outstanding schools. Some 600,000 children in this country are still in inadequate or double-RI-plus schools. We are absolutely determined to make sure that we see an end to that.

On the NEU research that both the noble Lord, Lord Watson, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, referred to, I note that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, used the term “manipulate figures”, and I hope that he might retract that statement. I would be delighted to meet with both noble Lords. We are preparing a formal response to that paper, as we believe that there are misunderstandings, at best, within it. The claims are based on selective data and misrepresent the published evidence. As I say, we are preparing a full response for the NEU, and I would be delighted to take both noble Lords, and any other noble Lord, through the data that we used in putting together our proposals.

As I have said, we want all children to be educated in strong trusts, but we know that the system remains mixed at present, and many of our best schools operate alone. On my noble friend’s point about single-academy trusts, I say that they have so much to offer the system, with their leadership and innovations, and we want that to be shared across schools that do not currently benefit. Whether that comes from a single-academy trust or a maintained school, our focus is on quality, and we need some of those trusts to grow. Those that fall short of our expected standards need to be replaced with much stronger ones.

We want to ensure that every pupil is educated in a strong trust, and we set out the five key characteristics of a strong trust in the White Paper: first, that there should be a high-quality and inclusive education; secondly, that there should be sustainable school improvement; thirdly, that there should be training, support and opportunities for teachers throughout their careers; fourthly, that there should be strong strategic leadership and governance; and fifthly, that there should be effective financial management.

In his speech, my noble friend thoughtfully explored the question of the size of multi-academy trusts. We are not pursuing size for its own sake, but if we think of our priorities in terms of educational outcomes, the hierarchy is a well-supported workforce, strong governance and financial efficiencies. We must have educational performance as the first and we believe it cannot be done without a well-supported workforce and strong governance. We are not pursuing size for its own sake. My noble friend is right that there are some great smaller trusts. Equally, I do not recognise some of the data that he referred to about the largest trusts, but I am more than happy to sit down with him to go through this. If I can name two of our best trusts, at the risk of offending others that deserve to be named, the Harris Academy Trust and the Star Academies Trust both have outstanding results and have done remarkable work in terms of school improvement. I am wondering whether some of the data that my noble friend is looking at includes schools that were recently failing and have just gone into those trusts, because they have done a lot of the heavy lifting—not just those two, but others—in turning around very weak schools.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and other noble Lords referred to CEO pay. We take it extremely seriously. There are two issues that we need to think about, as I said in our response to the noble Lord. One is the absolute figure. I do not know whether the right metric is to look at the Prime Minister’s salary, and we have to be careful because often the figures quoted include pensions and other benefits and are then compared with salaries. There is, of course, an issue about absolute levels, but there is also an issue about value for money. On that point, the largest trusts offer much the best value for money. If you look at CEO pay or overall leadership pay per pupil, they offer the best value for money. We now have trusts which have responsibility for 75,000 children. We need to get the best people to lead them.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, talked about the importance of local. We heard it loud and clear, not just from your Lordships but in our engagement with schools ahead of the White Paper. We are very clear that that is extremely important. The data from the 2021 National Governance Association report showed that 76% of trusts have a local committee for each academy in their trust and a further 12% have a local tier of governance which oversees a group of academies, so 88% of trusts already have some form of local governance in place, but we agree that it is important. To clarify, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, asked, we are not forcing schools into trusts.

My noble friend asked about the incentives in relation to rural primaries. It is that ability to collaborate, share resources and make a more resilient network of schools. I was lucky enough last week to visit the Old Cleeve First School in west Somerset, which has a grand total of 91 pupils and is part of the West Somerset Academies Trust. The people there gave me two examples—one in relation to the national tutoring programme. As a stand-alone school they would never have been able to participate, but they were able to share a member of staff across three schools in the trust. They also talked about the career opportunities for their staff, which would normally be very limited in a school like that, where you have two forms learning together—so a very small staff team, which is able to move to other parts of the trust.

I would like to set the record straight in relation to the remarks made about the curriculum. Some trusts have a curriculum which they expect all the schools and their trusts to follow; others will give schools in the trust more flexibility. There is really a range—so it is wrong to describe it as such; but I am interested, and I hope that after the debate I will be able to talk to your Lordships about the impact on workforce. On the one hand, we know that the workforce is under pressure but, on the other hand, we have pushed back, and it is something that could save teachers so much time if they have a well-sequenced curriculum to work from.

I cannot accept the point about a lack of transparency on accounts. There is so much greater transparency in the academy sector than there is in the maintained sector.

My noble friend Lady Berridge talked about the importance of focusing on disadvantaged children. I agree with her absolutely; that is why she will have seen that we are targeting a particular investment in educational investment areas, those local authority areas with the highest need and the most entrenched underperformance of schools. I thank her for the welcome for the consultation, which I think she did a great deal of work on, on being able to require schools that have had two judgments below good from Ofsted to join a multi-academy trust.

I thank my noble friend Lady Fleet for all her work in the area of music education, particularly in relation to the national music education plan, which she and I are both looking forward to being published—and not just published but seeing implemented in schools across our country. My noble friend gave some excellent examples of MATs that are really using music as part of the curriculum to great benefit. Certainly, our understanding is that many music teachers might find themselves working in isolation in individual schools, and working in a MAT can be a real benefit in continuing professional development, sharing resources, adding capacity to their teams and giving opportunities for progression.

We also believe that lengthening the minimum school week will benefit some of the curricular and extracurricular enrichment activities.

My noble friend Lady Berridge talked about the risk of capital and use of data in weaker responsible bodies with poor buildings. We have significantly improved our data on the condition of the school estate, including through the condition data collection. Its successor programme, CDC2, will visit every school again in 2026. We also ran a pilot of a capital adviser’s programme in 2021 to test how professional advisers could support trusts to manage their estates more effectively, and we will consider how that can be rolled out further.

My noble friend asked an important question about how long it takes and what the average time is to transfer a school into a trust. I shall write to her on a number of questions. On that issue, I am not sure that the average is really meaningful. The majority of schools are moved in a reasonably straightforward way, then there is a tail of schools, which are extremely difficult and may go on for many years. That is clearly unacceptable, which is why we have set up two MATs—the Falcon Education Academies Trust and the St Joseph Catholic MAT—which can act to hold those schools on a temporary basis until a sponsor is found.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

The Minister is talking about schools moving into MATs. Both the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, and I asked why schools cannot move from one MAT to another or move back into the maintained sector, if they feel it is in their interests to do so.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I have got that, although I am well out of time—but the noble Lord has given me permission to overrun. We are going to consult on the ability under certain circumstances for schools to leave a MAT, if they feel that there are good reasons for that; it is something that we will consult on and explore in some detail.

I am well over time, and I shall write to your Lordships on any questions. In closing, the White Paper is the start of a journey towards a stronger and fairer schools system, with children benefiting from high standards in all areas of the country. It is a journey that will depend on us supporting and empowering our greatest leaders in education; it will depend on us working with parents to make sure that their children achieve their potential wherever they are born, and it is probably the most important journey that any of us will take.