Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I want to raise a point probably connected to the comments of my noble friend Lord Baker, which may help my noble friend the Minister. I raised on the first day in Committee the consideration of the legal vehicle that we are dealing with here, which is potentially affected when you move from the bilateral to the unilateral, and any implications for not just charitable status but the role of charity trustees, as well as that of company directors, as in most cases these are charitable companies. I know that my noble friend intends to write to me, but it may be that the comments that follow from that have a connected purpose to what my noble friend Lord Baker has said in relation to any effects on the charitable purpose as well as the vehicle. We are dealing with a legal entity, and the implications for that need to be fully considered in the change from a bilateral contract to the unilateral situation that my noble friend proposes.

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a chair of an academy trust and as a trustee of the Education Policy Institute.

I shall give a little background on trustees and their role and recruitment. When I became an academies Minister in 2013, it was clear that the very good initiative started by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—who I see is not in his place—to find academy sponsors, such as myself and my noble friends Lord Agnew and Lord Baker, had been put very much on the back burner by officials in the rush to academise; it took a very long time to warm these people up and it was a long process. I said I did not care how long it took to warm these people up; we must have this process. I did not care if we got chucked out of government and the Labour Party came back in and used all the people that we had found—good luck; it is a very noble purpose.

As it happened, we did not find too many nutters like myself and my noble friend Lord Agnew who were prepared to go from a standing start to being full academy sponsors in one move, but we found hundreds, if not now thousands, of people who were prepared to go on the boards of multi-academy trusts as non-executive directors, pro bono, to serve a very good public purpose. I wonder how many we would have found if they knew they could be chucked out by the DfE at its whim.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the thrust of the arguments from the noble Lords who have led this debate. I shall make one or two points that perhaps have not yet come out strongly. The freedom to set their own admissions arrangements was given to academies when they first started. To be honest, I think that was a huge mistake. In local areas, it caused terrible animosity between the academies and the other maintained schools. That is part of the rift and the bad feeling that exist in many communities. I do not know many schools that, in setting their own admissions criteria, have sought to prioritise the poorest and most challenging children, those who have been excluded from more schools than anyone else, those without supportive parents and those without a room to work in at home—that is not how choosing your own admissions criteria actually works.

This is not the schools’ fault but, in terms of judging schools by how well they do academically, our whole system incentivises schools to have admissions criteria that get those children who are most likely to do well academically. If we were to change the accountability mechanisms so that we had as our most important accountability measure how much you can do for the poorest 5% of children in your city, we would have a different system, but that is not the way it runs.

However, I also blame schools. I was a teacher for 18 years. At the heart of it, I have always believed that the job of a professional teacher is to teach the children who end up in front of you on any given day—not to pick and choose; not to reject and throw away; not to say, “It’s easier to teach you than you”, but to do your best with the skills you have with the children in front of you. I taught in a school that was very challenging, and as a teacher the greatest rewards come from the progress you make with the children who are furthest behind when you start—but that is not the way the system works. There have been too many examples of academies that have used their ability to have their own admissions arrangements to select the children, or the parents, that will put them highest in the accountability stakes.

If you are a school that is undersubscribed, this argument does not matter to you. If you cannot get enough kids through the door for your published admissions number, then none of this matters. It matters only if you are a school that is oversubscribed, because only when it gets to oversubscription do the criteria for admissions come into effect. So think that through: if you are a school that is undersubscribed and not attracting children, so not getting the money, you have to take whoever no one else wants. Therefore, you do not improve, you do not get as many children, you do not get the money and again, you do not improve. That is the cycle that happens: undersubscribed schools do not attract children and therefore find it very difficult to improve.

Looking back, when the academies started under the Labour Government they were addressing the needs of those schools in the most challenging areas. In truth, what happened was that if you gave them a new building, a new head and a committed sponsor, they still did not have a cross-section of students coming through their doors. The idea at that stage, in giving them some power over admissions arrangements, was to try to get a better social mix. I can sort of see that, but it has gone way out of kilter with how it should be. In 2010, the minute the vision was that every school should become an academy, that just did not make sense.

I say to my noble friend Lord Hunt that where schools differ from hospitals is that who you treat in one hospital does not usually have an impact on the neighbouring hospital or another in the outer ring of the city. But schools are interrelated: who you choose to admit has an effect on every other school in your locality as it is an interrelated business, so it is very important that we do not have schools competing with each other in any geographical area for the bright kids. It has to work across such an area, for two reasons.

First, successful schools will always manage to attract children who, quite frankly, are easier to get the high results with—I would not say they are easier to teach. That has an effect on other schools and creates that bad feeling, so it is interrelated. The way you choose to admit pupils has an effect on other schools in your locality. I do not mind what they do, whether they band or have feeder schools, or measure it in yards from the school. What I do mind is that all schools in a local authority area ought to do the same. If you want a social mix, you can band right across the local authority area. I am not sure I like that but I do not have a problem with it because the behaviour of one school will not badly affect the performance of another.

In Birmingham, however, the minute you let over 400 schools set their own admissions arrangements there was chaos. It meant that they do not match each other. Some people of a faith with a child of a certain ability live in a place where they cannot get them into their local school because they do not live close enough, or into a faith school because they are not of the right faith. Neither does their child have the right ability to get selected in the banding arrangements, so where do they go? They go to the school that still has places left. That is not choice, but it happens in areas where there are a lot of schools that are allowed to have separate admission arrangements.

In supporting very much the amendments put forward, my plea is that it has to make sense across a geographical area. That means you cannot allow schools within the same area to have different admissions arrangements from other schools within it. I think the local authority should manage that, and that there is nothing wrong in all the schools getting together with a local authority, the parents and the primary schools to decide what those criteria should be within a national framework set down by government. But at some point they have to come to an agreement, because education is about a social as well as an academic experience. Your social experience is, in part, the children who are around you in your school—and that matters.

To be honest, that is why parents go to so much effort to exercise choice over where they want their child to go. It is not just for the academic experience but for the social experience—again, it is different with a hospital. That social experience will be right for all children, or as good as we can make it for them, only if we have some camaraderie within a geographical area so that people sit down with the same admissions arrangements. Having done that, teachers should do what they do: get on with teaching the children in front of them, not spending time on trying to get a different bunch of children in their classrooms because they think it gives them a better chance of success.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I have a quick comment. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for his history lesson. During the period he mentioned, Rutland had the unfortunate experience of being part of Leicestershire. Had grammar schools still existed then, I can only look back and wonder what my own education—with no money for tutoring—would have been if the local school in the market town had been left as a secondary modern.

I have a specific question on the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, about the backstop power, which I was surprised to see included in, I think, the White Paper. What is the timing of that? At the moment, we know that some boroughs are under extraordinary pressure. When we nationally decide, for instance, to admit tens of thousands of families from Hong Kong—which is a great policy—we create extraordinary influxes of children into particular areas. I was just reading a Manchester Evening News article about the pressures Trafford Council is under at the moment, having had an extraordinary influx of Hong Kong Chinese families into the area. This has unusual ripples in Trafford, where there are grammar schools within the borough.

What would the timing of this be? At the moment, we have local authorities which cannot have any effect on admissions, particularly in those secondary schools that are academies. There is a proposal for a backstop power. This was also before we admitted tens of thousands of Ukrainian families into this country. If in the consultation it is decided not to have the backstop power—I recognise the view from those in the academies sector on local authorities’ admission policies—is there not a case for some emergency power in a situation when tens of thousands of families come into an area? You need different admissions arrangements because you have to think about the cohesion of the area locally. If you have an influx of families, families who have lived in an area for many years find that they cannot get their children into the schools they want. There are also the unpredictable ripples of selection in an area. Can my noble friend the Minister outline the timing of this, because there are boroughs under pressure today?

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify how special educational needs fits into this picture? I know the Government are currently looking at this area, but it is one that has led to the growth of legal firms to fight a way through the system. It is a failing system. I remind the Committee of my interests in special educational needs, and dyslexia in particular. With dyslexics, for instance, we are discovering that something like 80% of those on that spectrum are not identified within the school system. There is capacity here for a group that exists but we know is not even being spotted. Should we not have some capacity for dealing with the people with these sorts of problems, because we know they are going to come across? This also applies to all the spectrum of non-obvious conditions and hidden difficulties.

If the Minister cannot reply now, when we are looking at this, could she write to us about what the Government’s thinking on this sector is at the moment? It is yet another element when it comes to choosing a school or a school’s willingness to take on a pupil. We know there are people fighting this. As I said, if ever there was a definition of failure, it is that you need lawyers to get your rights. That has to be the classic case. Can the Minister give us an idea of the Government’s thinking about admissions? If you cannot get into a school because it has set criteria, regardless of any formal test or examination, it will change how things work. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister says about government thinking on this, because it is another factor that will affect this whole process.