Ofsted: Academy Chains

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend: free schools are our most successful group of non-selective state schools, with 24% rated outstanding. We are told by Ofsted that we have the highest-performing school system that we have ever had. The performance of the first batch of primary academies is much higher than that of local authority maintained schools, and secondary academies open for any length of time are clearly also doing better.

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, would the Minister care to comment on a fear that local authority schools have a much higher percentage of children with special needs, particularly those with special needs that affect their behaviour? The Minister very kindly wrote to me, giving me the percentage improvement in free schools and academies, but many schools contact me to say that their local academies and free schools do not take as many children with difficulties and problems, and that, in addition, those schools get better funding.

[Lord Nash]

I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness again with more details on this. However, as far as I am aware, most academies, particularly the 1,000 schools that we have taken out of local authority maintenance over the past four years, many of which were languishing in failure for years, have very high rates of pupils with SEN, EAL and free school meals. However, I am happy to write to her with more details.