“Educational Excellence Everywhere”: Academies

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Nicholas Brown

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my neighbour and right hon. Friend for his question. He raises important issues that we have addressed in the White Paper, in the sense that we highlighted that there are difficult issues around place planning and transport, and that we need to work with local authorities, the Local Government Association and others to make sure that we get this right. Ultimately, if schools are autonomous, we have to trust the frontline to deal with those difficult issues.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

How much scope is there for local government or community involvement in new multi-academy trusts?

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. The answer is: a lot. In the White Paper, we set out the plans by local authorities—two, certainly—for multi-academy trusts. Many of them are already exploring spinning out their services, as well as setting up multi-academy trusts. There are limits on the ownership that they are able to take. A lot of local authorities are exploring the option of setting up a trust in which the heads of the schools own part of the trust. That is a strong model, and it builds on the great collaboration that we already see in our education system.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Baroness Morgan of Cotes and Nicholas Brown

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to talk about the opportunities offered by schools becoming academies and by fairer funding, which will mean that more money gets to the frontline, that schools are in charge of their own destinies and that they can expand to take on more pupils. We also want local authorities to work with academies to secure more places, and also to secure more free schools—for example, to deal with parental demand.

[Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)]

The case for academisation so far rests either on the desire of an individual school to academise or on arguments around school improvement. However, that will not be the case in future, when schools will be required to academise even if they are good or excellent, which will see them risk losing the very features that made them good or excellent. As the Secretary of State considers legislation, will she consider an academisation model that allows such schools that wish to remain in the public sector to have a form of academisation whereby they may do so?

[Nicky Morgan]

I was following the right hon. Gentleman’s question up until the last sentence, when he seemed to imply that, somehow, academies were not part of the public sector. He could not be more mistaken: they get their funding directly from the Department for Education, their teachers are trained in accordance with our guidance and they can follow the national curriculum. What does the right hon. Gentleman say to the headteacher who wrote to me after the Academies Show last week, saying that her colleagues were forgetting that children are the priority, change is the reality and collaboration is the strategy. How can it not be our moral responsibility to serve as many children as possible by working together? That is what we want to see.