Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

My Lords, I am sure that this is the first of many days that we will spend on this subject. I add my congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who is, I am sure, coming back. He has a great and very important job. I declare my interests. I advise the charity ARK, which sponsors and runs city academies. I also serve as a school governor of a city academy, and chair Future Leaders, a charity which intensively trains prospective head teachers for challenging urban schools and receives government funding via the National College.

I am an academy enthusiast. I share much of what the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Harris, have just outlined. My experience is similar to theirs. When I started to read the Academies Bill and the Explanatory Notes, I sat down to summarise what I think the new Government’s overall strategic approach should be. This goes for academies and beyond. The Government should set clear desired outcomes for the system as a whole and its constituent parts. They should give as much autonomy as possible to teachers, parents and pupils in pursuing those outcomes in the most appropriate way for them, while at the same time reserving the right of control to get the basics in place and intervene when pupils are failed. They must properly fund the education system, recognising the needs of the most disadvantaged. They must hold institutions and professionals to account. This is not a question of being top-down or bottom-up, but of being clear about where the state can be effective and where it needs to give others the power to deliver. The state needs to be intrusive where the basics are not in place and where there is failure, both obvious and hidden. However, in other areas, genuine and lasting achievement is most likely to be brought about by the teachers, parents and pupils for themselves.

From 1997, the Labour Government dramatically improved the education system, increasing resources and giving three-year funding agreements to allow head teachers to plan properly. They cut class sizes, rebuilt the schools estate—remember outside toilets and leaking roofs—and regenerated the teaching profession, improved standards and brought new expertise and diversity into the system. More pupils leave school with a good set of qualifications and there are far fewer failing schools. Underlying literacy rates have improved significantly and schools serving disadvantaged communities have improved faster than the average. There is stronger accountability and more transparency for parents when choosing schools. What often worked best was a combination of investment and reform—for example, in relation to the teaching profession, where much was achieved, though there is still some way to go. As an aside, I do not quite understand why the abolition of the GTC will raise the standing and standard of the profession. By all means, reform and strengthen it—it needed that—or even replace it, but do not leave a vacuum.

One reform was particularly controversial—particularly, I remember, with some Members opposite—and that is the one that we are talking about today. That was the attempt to foster dynamism to deliver excellent schools where there was failure, leading to the concept of city academies. The idea, we now know, was simple: to create independent state schools with support from business, successful individuals who wanted to put something back, universities or independent schools. Each school would have its own ethos, clear behaviour codes, a focus on literacy and numeracy, and high aspirations for all pupils. The controversy was huge both inside and outside the educational establishment. It is important to think first about the rationale that underlay those original academies. They were, above all, a means of getting the best schools into the areas that needed them most. They were not conceptualised as a way of extending market reforms to education. It was not about competition per se but about seeking to replace failing provision and providing a spur to achieve higher results across the piece. It was about trying to give some of the best to those who were denied even the average, and largely it has worked. There are now fewer failing schools than at any time since records began and we have high-performing providers effectively delivering outstanding education in areas that have been blighted by unacceptable standards. What is more, GCSE results in academies are improving faster than the national average. The evidence now tells us clearly that outstanding schools can overcome a pupil’s background in determining outcomes. That is crucial.

There has also been a massive investment in new and renovated school buildings. Those are part of the equation; amazing buildings do not deliver great education, but poor or dingy buildings sap morale, limit the curriculum and perpetuate the divisions in the education system. We should not underestimate the effect of investing in the fabric as well as in the teaching. I will never forget talking to a girl at one of the first academies I visited who said, “I never believed I could come to a place like this”. “This” included the tangible results of the investment she saw around her every day. Great principals, such as Sir Michael Wilshaw at Mossbourne, talk very clearly about how building design actively contributes to curriculum delivery and behaviour standards. I know that finances will be very tight going forward, but let us not underestimate the effect of the environment on behaviour or the delivery of the curriculum.

For me, the next big push would be to extend the principles behind city academies to coasting schools and poor primaries. We need top-notch providers to replace poor management teams at schools which may be above national benchmarks but are still below what we should be expecting. The Labour Government had announced that chains of academy providers and successful school operators would be able to take over coasting schools. This is important not just for reasons of improving schools across the system but because of equity concerns. Even in schools where more than 30 per cent of pupils achieve five good GCSEs, including English and maths, it is still on the whole the poorest students—those who are eligible for free school meals—who perform worse. Tackling this debilitating achievement gap must remain a priority. I am somewhat unclear about government plans in these schools. Will there be a strong push on these schools or will it just be left to the market? Will the hidden underachievement be left? My fear is that these are not the schools that will grasp the chance to become academies. They will be left somewhere in the middle. They are not the failing schools but they are not the schools that will grab this process and run with it.

In this context, therefore, I was surprised that the only new priority seems to be to allow outstanding schools to become academies. I would appreciate clarity around that. I am in favour of excellent schools gaining more freedom in their operations but have some questions. I hope that this legislation is not rushed through without the proper time that we need for scrutiny. If we want a big increase in academies, we need to ensure that the detail is right. First, what is the plan for admissions? In the Explanatory Notes, we read:

“Academies are all-ability state funded schools”.

However, the Bill seems to suggest that existing selective grammar schools may become academies. I do not understand this and how it fits into the statement that academies are all-ability schools. I have to confess that a sceptic may think that the 1922 Committee had to be thrown something to keep it quiet. I am sure that there is more of a rationale behind it, but I should like to know what it is.

Secondly, the new Government need to be clear on accountability. I make no apology for the regimes of testing, targets and national programmes that Labour introduced. They produced a level of discipline in the system, a focus on driving up literacy and numeracy standards in primary schools, a relentless spotlight on minimum standards in secondary schools and a level of transparency for parents choosing a school. Going forward, there needs to be an even stronger system that measures both performance and teaching, builds confidence in standards and gets beyond a narrow focus on borderline grades. As the Education Select Committee recognised before the election, that means getting Ofsted refocused on teaching and learning and making sure that head teachers assess individual teacher effectiveness. It means that the whole system and the wider public need properly bench-marked data to underpin standards. It also means that we need to instil the principle that it is just as important for a student to move from a B to an A as it is to move from a D to a C. In relation to outstanding schools, reduced inspection will put greater pressure on somewhat imperfect measures. There is a real need to move beyond the A-to-C measures and value-added.

Ultimately, accountability must be more than data measurement and teacher-level assessment. It is about politicians and local authorities having the courage of their convictions and booting out providers that are not getting the job done—whether they are the local authority or an academy sponsor. Supply-side reform is pointless unless we can change supplier. No one can be exempt from performance measurement. The current funding agreement covering academies in effect bestows conditional stewardship. That is spot-on as an approach for the future, and I wonder whether it will continue. The Labour Government had announced that parents were to be given the mechanism, through a ballot, to demand change of leadership in schools. Have the new Government looked at that issue?

The third question relates to fair funding. What is proposed for the academy funding regime? It is important to see the detail. Fourthly, what are the proposals for proper oversight of academies? Clearly the YPLA is in limbo; but has an alternative been proposed? Will the oversight duty go back to the department, and if so, how will that cope with large numbers of schools? Beyond an occasional Ofsted inspection, what will be the scrutiny—and in particular what will be the improvement proposals—if an academy is struggling? Is the assumption that there will be something like a one-way valve, and that once a school is doing well it will happily continue to do so? We all know that this is the case often—but by no means always. In the event of failure, action is needed quickly to halt the decline. We do not want this to reach the level of special measures.

Fifthly, what are the proposals for public and parental consultation when a school is transitioning into an academy? While current procedures are arguably overcomplicated, it would be wrong not to have wider consultation. Sixthly, it appears that transferring schools can carry forward surpluses. This is a good thing if it encourages careful financial management: but what happens about deficits? It would be wrong if Ofsted-defined outstanding schools with deficits could transfer and lose the deficit while gaining the freedoms. For this category of schools, will strong finances be part of the gateway?

Sixthly, will the Government learn from the mistakes that a previous Government made in relation to grant-maintained schools? These were independent of the local schools community, there being in effect a regime of divide and rule, and were unfairly—favourably—funded. In particular, will there be tight and specific requirements that outstanding academies must take on school improvement roles? I do not mean woolly words, but something precise. We have heard reassuring words on this, but we would all be grateful for clarity that the requirements will be tight.

Finally, I am anxious that, in tough economic times, we should spend wisely and pool resources and expertise. Reforms will have to be well planned and not dogmatic. Competition mechanisms in education will necessarily be slow, because parents will not constantly move their children in and out of schools. Strong interventions from the centre will remain vital in driving up standards. In some areas, new schools will be the answer—no doubt we will debate that. However, a slow drift downwards in the number of pupils attending schools in an area may damage the education of many pupils—again, unless there is strong, transparent accountability and fast action. In many communities, focused inspection, rigour and new leadership of existing schools may be what are needed.

Our goal should be simple: the best teachers, leaders and schools for all children, combined with a focus on the children who need them most. Academies can play a great role; but the devil, as always, is in the detail, and I look forward to seeing those details in the coming weeks.