Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as a vice-president of the Local Government Association and as a member of the Beckfoot multi-academy trust in West Yorkshire and of the Leeds Diocesan Learning Trust.

The Bill before us today is, in part, a disappointment. While some parts go some way towards further protecting children through additional safeguarding requirements, it is unfortunate that great amounts of the Bill are in danger of driving down standards in our education system and of winding back many of the successful education reforms introduced by the last Conservative Government. As the Shadow Secretary of State remarked in the other place, this Bill can be seen as

“nothing less than educational vandalism”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/1/25; col. 863.]

The last Conservative Government left office with educational standards on the up. As we have already heard, within international league tables, England rose from 21st to seventh-best in mathematics, while Labour-controlled Wales slumped to 27th. That Government left us with an educational system that was working for students. But I worry that this Government have weaponised this Bill, based on ideology as opposed to what is best for children in this country.

For example, this Bill rolls back a lot of the freedoms gifted to academies during the coalition years, particularly with respect to pay. We should uphold the principle that academies can decide for themselves how much they wish to pay their staff. If academies want to set competitive salaries as a means to drive up standards in schools and deliver better results for students, we should encourage them to do so. The plans outlined in this Bill to bring academies in line with the same core pay conditions as in other schools risks cutting pay for more than 20,000 hard-working teachers. We must seek to listen to the experts. The chief executive of the National Education Trust said that the Bill seeks to

“inhibit academy freedoms that have led to innovation”

and “raised standards for pupils.”

I also wish to touch base on the provisions in the Bill that will prevent schools with academy status recruiting teachers who do not hold qualified teacher status. Of course, as a former teacher, I have a great deal of respect for teachers who train hard in their early years and aim to give something back to students. However, in some cases academies bring in teachers without QT status when they have specific industry-level experience. This has greatly improved our education system. For example, I have heard of veterans from the Armed Forces and business leaders being brought into academies to teach specific subject areas. It is hugely beneficial to students and, rather than banning it, we should seek to retain the rights of academies to do this and we should use the Bill to extend the right to local authority-maintained schools. Surely, as academies have been so successful, the Bill should extend the freedoms academies have to local maintained schools.

The Bill needs significant changes in Committee if we are to safeguard the standards across education and not appear to be using ideology, rather than the needs of children, as the basis for our thinking.