Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Morris of Yardley Excerpts

Tuesday 16th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.

I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.

I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.

Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I want to speak to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has done. However, on managed moves, these are good things when done well, as they can prevent permanent exclusions. At their best they are in the best interests of the child.

I know Birmingham very well, and the size of Birmingham. Sometimes the managed moves are made on a consulting basis. I ask my noble friend Lady Longfield, who moved the amendment, to reflect that if you make that more bureaucratic in terms of the local authorities’ overall role, it will put too much of an administrative burden on what is working very well in some parts of the city. I am not saying that it is working well everywhere, but where it is working well on a consulting basis, it would be a shame to add layers of bureaucracy. However, on the whole, managed moves based on the framework she suggests are very good.

On admissions, my starting point is the same as that of the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash. Why would you want to prevent a good school expanding? Also, if something is good, why would you not want more children to go to it? That is at the centre of what this is about, because it is true. However, life is not as simple as that. It is not only the interests of the school and the children who might go to it that are affected by the amendments.

I was reflecting back on both noble Lords. One of the best things they did as Ministers was to recognise the early mistakes made by the coalition Government in having stand-alone academies and not encouraging schools to work together. The work they did on multi-academy trusts was a very good step forward from what we had at the start of the coalition Government. Inherent in that is the understanding that schools do not stand alone. At their best, they work with each other, help each other, depend on each other—and the key point is that they do no harm to each other. They do not make life more difficult for the school down the road.

This goes further than multi-academy trusts. Take geographical areas such as Birmingham, Camden or Coventry, which I know reasonably well. There is something about those places that every school in the area has in common. For example, it does not matter whether they are an academy, a maintained school, a faith school, a free school or an independent school—they teach the children of Birmingham. What they hold in common is that they teach the children who go to school in that area. They owe the same obligation to each other that I have just praised in multi-academy trusts—do no harm, support each other, help each other, and compete. You want to get to the top of the table, but not at the expense of the school down the road, because we want all schools to thrive. The problem with the amendments is admissions. If they were to follow these amendments, it would harm other schools serving the same group of children. That is a problem, and that is why I oppose these amendments.

If numbers are rising and there must be an expansion of places, then I take the point: why not expand the good schools? I have often thought that that is not as simple as it is claimed to be, because sometimes the success of the school is the size of the school. You cannot put in two, three, five or six more children—it does not work. You end up putting in 30 more children per school year. You raise it by one form of entry, and over seven years you have more than 200 pupils. The change in the size of the school sometimes makes it different in nature and different in culture. It might damage its academic performance and its pastoral work. Expanding good schools is not done at no cost at all. There is something to pay.