Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Penn Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I should perhaps declare an interest on the amendments moved by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, given that my children attend academy schools in the area of that diocese.

We would like to put on record our appreciation for the contribution of the Church of England to education in the country. I think it was very well put that there needs to be a strategic approach. The amendments tabled by the right reverend prelate the Bishop of Durham would better able that to happen, so we are sympathetic to the case that was made.

We were already minded to support Amendment 60, and my noble friend Lady Morris made the case better than I could. The issues highlighted prove that the Bill would have benefitted from some pre-legislative scrutiny.

I was particularly pleased to hear comments about fair access and admissions. Should we be forming a government any time soon, we would probably want to explore that and push it still further.

Given the very solid case that was made by both the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, and my noble friend Lady Morris, we would want the Minister to be as sympathetic as she can be in response to these amendments at this stage.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My Lords, I will start by responding to Amendments 59, 64 to 67, and 71 to 74 in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester for moving these amendments on his behalf.

I acknowledge the very important role played by churches and other religious bodies in state education. As the right reverend Prelate has said, these amendments relate to powers to support schools to join multi-academy trusts, helping to fulfil the Government’s ambition to have all schools in or joining a strong trust by 2030. I welcome the right reverend Prelate’s support for that ambition. I understand that, as he said, the purpose of Amendment 59 is to make the language used in Clause 29 consistent with other legislation relating to maintained schools in a church context. However, the existing wording of the clause already captures these particular schools and so this amendment would have no material effect.

Amendment 64 relates to requirements for local authorities to obtain consents before applying for an academy order on behalf of a school with a foundation. The Government understand the desire for the appropriate diocesan authority, as the religious body for a church school, to be among the bodies whose consent is required for an application. However, as drafted, the amendment captures only the diocesan authorities and not religious bodies for other faiths, and the position should be fair for all religious bodies.

The remaining amendments tabled by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham seek to enable certain religious bodies to apply to the Secretary of State for academy orders in relation to schools for which they are responsible. As I have said, the Government want schools with a religious character to enjoy, like all others, the benefits of being part of a strong academy trust. The Government are sympathetic to the principle of these amendments but further consideration is needed to establish the scope of the religious bodies that could apply for an academy order and the types of maintained school to which it should apply. As drafted, the amendment may not adequately capture all the religious bodies involved in maintained schools with a religious character. It may also inadvertently include bodies which are responsible for schools without a religious character.

Although I have set out some concerns relating to Amendments 64, 65, 67 and 71 to 74, the Government understand the intentions behind them and will reflect further on the issues raised by those amendments and the right reverend Prelate.

Turning to Amendment 60A, first, I want to reassure the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, on a specific point—though this may be unnecessary, because he said that this was a probing amendment. He will know that music and dance schools are typically independent schools, and that 16 to 19 maths schools are already academies. As such, they will not be affected by this clause. However, it would be wrong to exclude any schools in the maintained sector with a music, dance or maths specialism from the benefits of being part of a strong trust. I recognise the importance of preserving the unique characteristics of specialist schools within a fully trust-led system, as we have heard from the Committee. I can confirm that, in the event that a local authority applied for an academy order in relation to a specialist school, the regional director would have regard to the capacity of the proposed trust to preserve and support that school’s specialism. But to be absolutely clear to the noble Duke and the Committee, there are no powers in the Bill that would force an existing academy to join a multi-academy trust, and that might be why he was struggling to amend the Bill to address his concerns.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I am a little confused. In the White Paper, the Government’s intention around MATs is quite clear. I think the noble Duke is seeking some assurance that that will not apply to the schools that he is interested in.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I absolutely understand that point. I was simply reassuring the noble Duke that within this Bill there are no powers to compel anyone to join a multi-academy trust. It is the Government’s vision for every school to be part of a strong trust by 2030. The intention is for the Government to work with academies and to move people with the Government in pursuit of that vision. I was simply saying that there is nothing in the Bill that would compel an academy to join a multi-academy trust. That said, we have consistently seen that schools in multi-academy trusts are stronger together. The collective focus, vision and community creates opportunities, facilitates collaboration, enables resilience and improves educational outcomes.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

I have listened to what the Minister has said, having not joined in on the debate on this amendment before. Are we saying that specialist schools which stand out from the normal run of schools are not expected to join because it goes against their ethos or because they do not fit in terribly well but that it is a jolly good idea if they do? This is a little confusing. We need some clarity before we move on. Effectively, the Government are saying that joining a multi-academy trust is a good idea but that these schools do not have to, but they then say that they want every school to join one. Can the Minister clarify this?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

We are saying that joining a multi-academy trust is a good idea and that we would like everyone to do it. We are encouraging everyone to do it, but there are no powers within the Bill to compel people. The reason we think it is a good idea is that we have seen that schools in multi-academy trusts are stronger together. Of course, it would be open for such specialist schools to, for example, perhaps form a multi-academy trust with each other. We know that there are many high-performing, stand-alone schools that have the capacity to support other schools within the combined accountability of a MAT model.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

I may be wrong, but is there not a route to making it enforceable, or close to enforceable, by way of secondary legislation, given the way in which the Bill is drafted?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I sought to confirm the point that was directly raised by the noble Duke about the powers within the Bill, and I have been given the reassurance that there are no powers within the Bill to force an existing academy to join a multi-academy trust. I will seek further, triple reassurance on that point, but I sought clarity on it before addressing this.

[The Duke of Wellington (CB)]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for her various replies. I am not nearly as expert on these matters as the many former Education Ministers who are Members of this House clearly are. Nevertheless, my concern remains that the way the Bill is constructed means there will inevitably be regulations and other secondary legislation coming forward, or indeed even possibly another Bill. I am trying to seek an assurance from the Government that these sorts of schools will never be forced into a multi-academy trust without the consent of their own governing body. In the case of the maths schools, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, so rightly put it, each of them has an existing partnership with a university. Therefore should a maths school ever be forced to join a multi-academy trust, or the Government of the day forces one, surely it should not be done without the consent of its own governing body and its sponsoring university.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I understand the reassurances that the noble Duke seeks. I reassure him that we understand the unique nature of these schools and we want to see them thrive. We think that is possible within a multi-academy trust model. However, I reassure him that in the Bill before us today there are no clauses or powers that would force an existing academy to join a multi-academy trust. I am afraid it is not possible for me to think about any future Bill that could come before this House. We have a stated policy aim—an ambition—but we have chosen not to put any powers in this Bill to force any academy to join a multi-academy trust. We have been clear that in pursuing that policy aim we want to bring schools and academies with us. That is the approach we would seek to take.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My understanding is that the powers in the Bill including ones for single-academy trusts to be subject to all the directions and all the compliance that we discussed on Monday. I believe there is a recent government amendment to make this possible. Therefore, my reading of it would be that the powers are there. If a Secretary of State decides that all single-academy trusts are going to go and they are all going to join multi-academy trusts, the powers are there for them to find reasons to do so and use the powers in the Bill to close down the single-academy trusts, which are then left having to find a home.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I take the noble Lord’s point. I absolutely reassure him that that is not the intention. I will also go away and double check that there is not the ability to do that under those powers. Given the discussions we have had on those parts of the Bill and our commitment to reflect on them, our discussion on this issue and the reassurance that is being sought will also form part of the discussions.

[Viscount Eccles (Con)]

May I just articulate another problem I have? The noble Baroness used the word “intention”. When I think about the summing up and read the summings up in Hansard, we have been presented a stream of good intentions. The problem is that I do not think Parliament is at all wise or sensible to live on good intentions; we all know where they can take you. I reiterate that it seems that the scheme of this Bill, broadly speaking, allows the Secretary of State to find a way of imposing the policy that every school should be in a multi-academy trust one way or another. At the moment, that is the position. I am afraid that both the right reverend Prelate and the noble Duke must view the future rather pessimistically.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

I was clear about the Government’s intention for these powers, which is not to use them to make single academies join a multi-academy trust. I also gave two undertakings in listening to this group in Committee. One is to go away and confirm, on the scope of the powers as drafted in the Bill, that it is not possible to do that, but the other relates to our wider conversations about those parts of the Bill where the Government have already given an undertaking, having heard the views of the Committee, to listen and reflect. My noble friend the Minister started today’s Committee by trying to give an assurance to your Lordships that that is what we are doing. Therefore, on this particular question it is important to be clear about the Government’s intention, which I hope I now have been, but I will also undertake two further actions, which speak louder than words, both to confirm on the powers as drafted and to reflect on how we have drafted those powers.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

In that spirit, will my noble friend also discover whether the Government have the power to use the money they give to these individual schools in a way which could in fact insist that they become members of a multi-academy trust? My own experience is that the most important thing is to ring-fence the money from the interference of a Secretary of State who would use it to say, “You don’t get your money unless you join this”, or, “You get more money if you join this.” We need that reassurance too.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

My noble friend’s contribution falls within the remit of the undertaking that I have already given to the Committee.

[Lord Grocott (Lab)]

My Lords, to my mind, the various assurances the Minister has given present a further complication. If she is able to give reassurance to the noble Duke about a particular type of school, which is pretty well defined, being able to guarantee its continued independence away from a multi-academy trust, as it were, what does that say to other schools which may have particular characteristics? What is the defining characteristic that distinguishes schools which can remain if they want to from those that cannot?

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

To be clear, the undertaking I gave was around the Bill’s powers being used to compel an existing stand-alone academy—the noble Duke gave the example of a specialist maths school but it is not restricted to that—to join a multi-academy trust, not based on any further characteristics of the school. I hope that reassures the noble Lord.

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

I think the noble Baroness knows what we are getting at here. She has said that she will endeavour to come back with something concrete for us, and that is appreciated. However, reflecting on this, this is not just about requiring these schools to join MATs. The noble Duke has highlighted for us that the powers contained in the Bill could get to the activities of these schools and undermine the essence of them, which my noble friend described. There is nothing in the Bill to protect those schools from that. Previously, my noble friend said that she would quite enjoy the ability to impose standards across all schools, but I do not think she was thinking of these schools when she said that. There is a bigger problem that we have come across here, which the Minister should also attend to.

[Baroness Penn (Con)]

The most successful multi-academy trusts build on the strengths of these types of schools. The intention is to build on the strengths that we see in all sorts of academies, including specialist academies, in building the school system that we want to build in future. That is what is set out in the schools White Paper and what we are trying to deliver and achieve. Looking at and building on the freedoms that those kinds of schools have used to strengthen our education system is the direction of the travel that the Government have set out. We certainly want to continue to support that. We believe that these schools do an excellent job and we want to protect them in future.

I think I have gone as far as I can in setting out my understanding of what the Bill does and in seeking to reassure noble Lords that I will go away, check this point and look at it in the context of the wider concerns about the powers in certain sections of the Bill.

We heard in the debate about the partnership model that these schools have and their important role in providing outreach to other schools in the local area; indeed, that is part of the model that they have. Although it is our view that they can be part of a successful multi-academy trust, I have none the less given an assurance about our intention behind these powers and an undertaking once again to go away and confirm that point for noble Lords. With that, I hope that the right reverend Prelate will withdraw the amendment for now.

[The Lord Bishop of Chichester]

My Lords, the amendment in the name of the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington, has produced far more energy. I have to say, what I think is shared here is a concern that what happens in our schools is not done in a piecemeal, ad hoc way but intentionally. So it is not just about the intention of the powers that are brought but about what their effect will be. Of course, finding that you are alone is a dangerous place to be in a powerful, fast-moving organisational circumstance.

I am grateful to the Minister for her assurance that she is sympathetic to and understands the Church’s concerns over church schools. The need for a wider scope for what we had drafted in this amendment will be considered. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in the name of my right reverend friend the Bishop of Durham.