Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Pinnock Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Pinnock]

15: After Clause 6, insert the following new Clause—
“Scrutiny of education provision
(1) The Education and Inspections Act 2006 is amended as follows.
(2) After section 70C insert—
“70D Scrutiny of education provisions
(1) This section applies where more than 10 per cent of schools in a local education authority is eligible for intervention under section 60B.
(2) The relevant local authority may establish, under section 21(2) of the Local Government Act 2000 (overview and scrutiny committees), a committee of that authority to review and scrutinise matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area, and to make reports and recommendations on such matters in accordance with regulations under this section.
(3) Regulations shall make provision—
(a) as to the matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area which the committee may review and scrutinise;(b) as to matters relating to the provision of education in such schools in the authority’s area on which the committee may make reports and recommendations to local Academy sponsors;(c) as to information which local Academy sponsors must provide to the committee;(d) requiring Regional Schools Commissioners to attend before the committee to answer questions.””

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

First, I apologise to the Committee for not being able to attend the Second Reading of the Bill because of diary clashes.

My noble friends Lord Storey, Lady Sharp of Guildford and I have tabled this amendment to improve the local and democratic accountability of schools in a local community for a number of reasons. The first reason is that school funding accounts for around 50% of local authority spending for councils that have responsibility for education. The second reason is that, by their very nature, schools reflect the communities they serve and parents expect there to be a local process of oversight and a local means of expressing any concerns. The third reason is that there have been a number of high-profile failures of financial governance in the academy sector. For example, there have been allegations relating to fraud in a number of schools in Bradford and County Durham. The Education Funding Agency has issued financial notices to improve to several academy chains, including the Academies Enterprise Trust in 2014. The fourth reason for tabling this amendment is that multi-academy trusts currently seem to be the favoured way forward, but they are accountable for their strategic and financial performance only to the Education Funding Agency and the Secretary of State. The fifth reason is that governance models in multi-academy trusts ensure that the sponsor or sponsoring body controls the trust. I am sure the Minister will have seen the publication by the New Schools Network.

Multi-academy trusts are governed by a trust body and by so-called directors of the trust who take the strategic and financial decisions for the schools under their control. On the whole, multi-academy trusts set up local governing bodies to do the day-to-day running and there is no parental or staff involvement until this lower level of governance. The document recommends that there should be one member of staff and two parents on those bodies and that they should not have any oversight of the financial controls of the trust and therefore of the school in which they serve. The crucial thing in this model is that decisions on school budgets are in the hands of the directors of the trust and that the trust members are self-appointed and accountable for their actions only via agreements signed with the Department for Education and the Education Funding Agency.

In this model there is no accountability to the local community and to parents. This amendment seeks to address those serious concerns. There is currently a vacuum of democratic accountability regarding the attainment and achievement of schools and, even more importantly, for the attainment and achievement of the children in those schools. Those matters are no longer within the remit of the local authority. As a serving local councillor I can say that when parents approach me with concerns about their children’s academy school’s ability to achieve realistic opportunities for them, it is difficult to address those concerns other than by going through the very processes that created them in the first place—that is, the school’s governing body or trust.

In this amendment we propose to put matters right. In 2006 the Government established local authority health scrutiny committees. The government guidance for those committees, which is on the GOV.UK website, is very clear about their purpose. I think that the purposes for which health scrutiny committees were established could serve in establishing parallel scrutiny committees for schools within the local authority area. The government guidance for local authority health scrutiny committees, available on the GOV.UK website, states:

“The primary aim of health scrutiny is to act as a lever to improve the health of local people, ensuring their needs are considered as an integral part of the commissioning, delivery and development of health services … Health scrutiny is a fundamental way by which democratically elected local councillors are able to voice the views of their constituents, and hold relevant NHS bodies and relevant health service providers to account”.

It seems to me that by substituting “schools and education” within that guidance we have a prime way of letting local communities call to account all schools, particularly academies because there is a big vacuum in accountability for local academies. In the nearly 10 years since the committees were introduced they have been extraordinarily effective in bringing together local democratically elected representatives, health commissioners and CCGs, representatives of the acute trusts in the district and the public health people to scrutinise health issues. Together they have been able to resolve some of the difficult challenges of providing health services in the community. I would attest that this same model could work really well for local education.

The guidance goes on very helpfully to demonstrate how scrutiny committees can add value by bringing together partners providing, in this case, health services. I suggest that it could also be done for education in a district. It says:

“A greater emphasis on involving patients”,

and for education that could be parents,

“and the public from an early stage in proposals to improve services”.

Engaging people has got to be a positive. It continues:

“The work of health and wellbeing boards”,

in this case we could bring in the education scrutiny committee,

“bringing together representatives of the whole … system”.

This will therefore add value to the decisions made. It will provide an opportunity for a public, open, transparent and democratic hearing of a local community’s concerns about local schools.

One key to success in a school is harnessing the support of the local community that it serves. Anyone who has ever been involved in education, as I have, knows that good schools are supported very well by their local community. One indicator that a school is beginning to fail is when the local community starts taking support away from it.

The risk with the multi-academy trust model is that schools will become more remote from the communities they serve. I suggest that a successful multi-academy trust would welcome the opportunity of a public platform where it could demonstrate transparency in its decision-making and respond to questions about its performance from local people. With that in mind, I hope that the Minister will be able to respond positively to this proposal. I beg to move.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I very much welcome the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am not sure whether her suggestion is exactly right but the principles that she raises are very important. They concern local democratic accountability and they also concern what she described as flaws in the governance structure of academies, particularly multi-academies. I share her view on both points.

The noble Baroness suggested that we look at the health model and I think that she is right. One thing that puzzles me about academy trusts is that they do not seem to allow for a direct relationship between the governance and the parents, except in the circumstances that she has described. I suggest that we look at NHS foundation trusts, which after all were developed at around the same time.

I know that the education department is very isolated in Whitehall and this is yet another example of that, but the ownership of an NHS foundation trust is rooted in patients, staff and members of the public, because they become members without paying any cost and it is the members who elect the governing council. The governing council, in turn, appoints the non-executives and the chairman to the board and approves the appointment of the chief executive. The board of directors is a statutory body. It is the board that you sue and harangue if things go wrong, but it is accountable locally through a very well-ordered structure and it carries with it a much better sense of accountability. There is a clear line of responsibility with a proper board of directors. There is no problem about its legal responsibilities and it is accountable. When I chaired a foundation trust, the fact that I had to appear before the governors’ council every month or so to explain the trust’s problems and what we were doing about them was a very good discipline. It was not a very easy discipline—I confess that I did not enjoy doing it—but it was an immeasurably strengthening exercise, and I think that the noble Baroness is trying to get at that in part of her amendment.

The noble Baroness also raises the whole question of the local authority’s role in the education policy that the Government are developing. I refer back to a point raised by my noble friend Lord Knight during our first day in Committee. He basically said that if the Government want all schools to be academies, why do they not just say so and bring in legislation? Why do we have to have this rather obscure, backwards way of academising all schools? That is basically dishonest. I hope that the Minister might just praise a maintained school—he has four hours in which to do so but I have yet to hear him ever praise a maintained school. Clearly, he has an ideological problem with maintained schools. That is why we remain suspicious of the Bill and some of the motivations behind it.

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[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being here in the Committee’s session last week. It was for medical reasons—and my experience has not filled me with either enthusiasm or confidence that importing wholesale from the health service will solve all our problems. However, there are some very good individual doctors in the system, which is why it works.

To go to the challenge put to the Minister about maintained schools from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I spent this morning with seven head teachers from maintained primary schools in the most difficult areas of inner London. I have no doubt that they are doing a terrific job. I agree that there are some excellent maintained schools doing an excellent job. Some of them even refer to the good partnerships with local academies which they hope will develop. That is the other side of the picture.

However, I would make two or three quick comments. When I hear the expression “democratic accountability”, the philosopher in me wants to write three articles to try to clarify what that means. The Committee should not worry, for I am not going to try to do that now, but it is a shibboleth at times. At other times it is an important use of language, just as talk of human rights is, but sometimes it covers a multitude of uncertainties and unclarities. I do not deny that it is important but here, for example, we have to distinguish between accountability for financial systems and governance—one kind of accountability that is not necessarily for a public committee; I would rather have a high-powered team from PricewaterhouseCoopers or some such going in to inspect them and report back—and the separate form of accountability which is necessary for educational practice. Parents and teachers no doubt have important things to say but it must never be forgotten that at least half of those, possibly both, are interested parties.

I come to the nub of what I want to say. The problem that the Bill is facing up to is essentially a question of dealing with what has arisen in schools that are currently maintained under the local authority system. If that is so, just recreating it without modification will not do the job. We need more subtlety and sophistication in trying to face that problem, when it is there that the difficulties have arisen. The Committee may have dealt, as I gather it did at some length last week, with the definition of coasting. But if there are coasting schools, a number of them have arisen within a local authority and within the maintained system. So there are good, bad and coasting schools, all of them within the maintained sector. That is why I find it difficult simply to pick up a proposal that all you have to do is to spread the responsibility by having ways of taking on board an additional set of views, without a means of sharpening them.

To go back to my speech at Second Reading, there is a danger that we will simply bring in delaying tactics, which are the curse of the current system. I am still worried about the Bill having delays built into it in a way that I find unacceptable. That is why I am not—

[Baroness Pinnock]

Perhaps I may help out a bit. What I have proposed in the amendment has nothing to do with delaying anything. What it seeks to do is to find a way for local people to have a local voice about the schools that serve their community, be they maintained schools, schools in a multi-academy trust or single trust academies. All the amendment is about is creating an opportunity for an oversight of what goes on in a local community. It is not about decision-making, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, may have thought. If we follow the parallel of the local authority health scrutiny committees, it is not only about membership by local elected councillors. Those committees have a membership that is drawn widely from both those who are elected to serve their communities and those who have an interest or past professional experience in the health sector. Those people are drawn together to look at the health services in their area and come to some conclusions about them, as well as enabling local people to come forward with their concerns. So this is nothing to do with delaying or only having a committee. It is about enabling some sort of platform for local people to voice their concerns, or perhaps even their delight, at what is going on. I hope that that has clarified it a bit.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, this new clause would allow a local authority to establish a committee to review and scrutinise the provision of education in coasting schools, where such schools make up more than 10% of schools in the local area.

First, I shall touch on the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, about the accountability of academies. Our view is in fact that the accountability structure for academies is stronger because it reflects their status as both charitable companies and public bodies. This means that when it comes to matters of good governance and financial management, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, noted, are very important, they not only have statutory responsibilities under company law but explicit accountabilities to Parliament. Because of this dual layer of accountabilities, academies have a stronger financial framework and are held up to greater scrutiny than most other types of schools.

[Baroness Pinnock]

I wonder whether we are at risk of thinking that accountability for children’s education—their one chance to get a good education—is all about balance sheets, audits and professionals coming to some conclusion having looked at attainment levels. At their heart, parents are concerned about whether their children are happy in school, whether bullying is dealt with and whether they get opportunities outside school for extensive education—creative, artistic or sporting. Those are the sorts of things that they take into account as well as their child’s academic progress. That is the accountability that I am talking about, not some dry, dusty PwC audit report that parents may not be able to understand. They do understand what happens to their children’s experience in schools. Where can they ask the questions?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I mentioned that because the noble Baroness specifically talked about academies suffering financial failures, so I was addressing that point. I will come on in due course to talk about some of the other issues that she has raised.

We believe that the amendment is not necessary as the Bill gives regional schools commissioners, working on behalf of the Secretary of State, the powers to work with, and intervene in, any school that is coasting. Both the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, mentioned health scrutiny committees as a potential way of looking at this issue. The structure that we believe will work best is that of regional schools commissioners, and I will go on to explain why. I am sure that we will come back to this matter time and again this afternoon but I will attempt to put down the first marker as to why we believe that the Bill has devolution at its heart.

First, the Bill is concerned with improving schools that have failed. Decisions will be taken by regional schools commissioners, who are immersed in their local context—a point highlighted by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, from the conversations that he has had and from what he has seen. They are also advised by outstanding local heads. So there is local accountability and I will come on to talk a little more about that in due course.

Secondly, one of the main measures in the Bill gives greater power and responsibility to education professionals. The thrust of the Government’s agenda is to devolve power down to the very local level, trusting head teachers to know what is best and to do all the things that we want to see in good schools, as mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock. I am sure that we will return to this in later amendments.

As I said, the Bill provides RSCs with additional intervention powers for maintained schools so that RSCs can directly tackle schools that have been allowed to fail, or indeed coast, under the local authority’s watch. This means that all coasting schools will come under the scrutiny of regional schools commissioners. The RSC will work with each coasting school in their area to identify whether the school has the capacity to improve sufficiently by itself, which is one option, or whether additional support, including potential intervention, is needed. Such additional support could come from a national leader of education. Alternatively, the RSC may consider that the school should become a sponsored academy, or, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, mentioned, there might be a partnership between the existing school and other local maintained schools or local academies.

The work of RSCs will go beyond what is suggested in the amendment. RSCs will not wait until 10% of schools in an area have been notified that they are coasting before reviewing the education provision in those schools. Their work in relation to coasting schools needs to be continuous and thorough, with the aim of intervening swiftly where necessary. RSCs are strategically placed around the country to make decisions about coasting schools while, as I said, being immersed in the local context.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, asked about the role of local authorities. They will work very closely with RSCs, and I will come on to that. However, in terms of provision, local authorities can run competitions to set up new schools in areas where there is such a need. So there is still a role for local authorities, and many around the country have been active, although perhaps not enough due to the places issue that we are facing.

As I said, we expect RSCs to work closely with local authorities, and we have already seen evidence of effective partnerships. For instance, in Suffolk, the regional schools commissioner, Dr Tim Coulson, meets the local authority every month to discuss schools of concern. The RSC has strongly encouraged the authority to use its existing statutory intervention powers, and over the last 12 months Suffolk has issued 22 warning notices to poorly performing schools. The RSC has brought into Suffolk a number of new academy sponsors with proven track records of success. Overall, 17 underperforming Suffolk schools have become sponsored academies since September 2014 and a further five are in the process of converting. Also, this month the RSC is meeting the leader of the council to discuss establishing a school improvement board with the aim that every school inspected by Ofsted over the next two years will improve by at least one grade.

As to accountability and parents, the Schools Causing Concern guidance which is currently out for consultation makes it clear that local authorities should already alert the relevant RSC when they have concerns about standards, leadership or governance in an academy or a free school. Parents can, and already do, write to RSCs when they have concerns. As I have said, RSCs are very clear about the need for community and parental engagement.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

If I may respond to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, one listens to the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Peckham, talk about his schools and the transformation that they have wrought, and indeed one listens to the Minister talk about our local school here, and it is clearly a huge and most important change that is very much to be welcomed.

I suppose that I need to be careful not to strain at gnats when we are talking about bigger issues. I recognise that expectations about the educational attainment of young people in care have been too low in the past. We have said that they have had too difficult a time, it is tragic and we cannot push them. However, we need to be careful not to move from one extreme to another. Ultimately, the best thing is what the Government are trying to do: to recruit and retain the best professionals closest to the child who are in the position to make a judgment on just how hard to push that child forward and at the same time how gentle to be with that child—a nuanced, sensitive approach. The children who visited us yesterday—what to say? I agree with these measures and I am sorry that I have not expressed myself more clearly. I certainly agree that we should not let children down by having too low an expectation.

[Baroness Pinnock]

I thank noble Lords for the interesting debate that we have had around accountability. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for the general support that he has given for the idea of trying to establish a greater degree of accountability within the system. I also thank him for reminding us that this is in fact a very nationalising, centralising approach to education, notwithstanding the remarks made by the Minister. In essence, all academies have to report to the Secretary of State, with one layer in between, which is the regional schools commissioner who is appointed by the Secretary of State. If that is not a centralising, nationalising approach to schools, I do not know what is. That is one of my problems with the creation of academies without any local accountability built in to the system.

Moving on to the regional schools commissioners, they are not regional in the accepted, geographic sense of the word. In my part of West Yorkshire, our regional schools commissioner is in—dare I say the word?—Lancashire. I have to tell you that it does not go down particularly well to be described as being part of the Lancashire—and a little bit of West Yorkshire—schools commissioner. I jest, in a sense, to make the point: because of the way that the regional schools commissioners are set up, they do not understand and know the regions. Most of the north-west is made up of very different communities from the old textile and engineering communities that I serve in West Yorkshire. For one man—it is a man—to try to understand and have that soft information, rather than always relying on the hard data, to make decisions about accountability is much to be regretted.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, raised the shibboleth that is democratic accountability. We need to understand both those words. We are in danger, I think, of creating an education service in this country that has no, or very little, democratic input. For a service that is for every child, regardless of background, community or place, to have no democratically elected person to whom they can call on for help and guidance, and for those elected people to have no means by which to address those concerns, is a route down which we should not be going. Where else will those people turn? There is no point saying, as the Minister did, that parents are already writing to the reginal schools commissioners. No doubt they are—but they will not be some of the parents in the communities that I serve, for whom English is a second language and whose own literacy skills are not very good. They will not have those skills, so who does it fall on? Who in this chain will stand up for parents and their children who are not perhaps getting a fair deal locally? That is what I want to know and that is why this amendment was tabled. I have yet to hear the answers.

Those are my concerns about the words “democratic” and “accountability”. It is about having a local voice; someone who knows and who can be trusted and relied on to stand up for local people. I have yet to hear that. That is a huge shame and one that I think we will live to regret unless we create some means of achieving this outcome. Having made those remarks, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I think it would be best if I wrote to the noble Baroness as I do not have the figures directly to hand.

The academy trust structure also brings greater autonomy with a strong accountability framework. International evidence has shown this drives up standards. Academies operate under a robust accountability framework under which we are able to hold the trust directly to account for their school improvement and we have clear routes to intervene should concerns arise. We would not have the same robust accountability if a maintained school or a local authority took over responsibility for a failing school.

It is also not just about the freedoms and stronger accountability, though; it is also about some of the substantial advantages of operating in a multi-academy trust, which the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, identified. It is acknowledged that the best way to improve schools is through local school-to-school support, and the best, most rigorous, efficient and accountable way to do that is through such a multi-academy trust. People who run multi-academy trusts talk about the advantages of the freedoms, the sense of being in control of one’s own destiny, the career opportunities as people are employed across a group of schools, the ability to retain good staff and, crucially, the ability to share best practice. They talk about leadership development, the enhanced CPD and, on the operational side, the economies of scale and purchasing power of being in a MAT. They talk about the ability to have common school improvement, behaviour management systems, a common curriculum, common teaching pedagogy and systems and the limitless benefits of pupils moving from primary to secondary when a MAT has both types of school in its family.

[Baroness Pinnock]

What I am concerned about in what I am hearing is that the Minister is suggesting that that does not occur in the maintained sector. There is sharing. The schools forum, which all local authorities have to have, brings head teachers together to discuss the very things that she has just described: a common approach to training, personal development for teachers, the sharing of best practice and being able to determine the “destiny” of schools, as she puts it—I hope that in fact we are talking about the destiny of children within them; it always worries me when people talk about the schools rather than the children. None of the factors that she listed there is relevant only to academies. They apply also to maintained schools, and we ought to recognise that.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I did not say that they did not, but we are talking here about multi-academy trusts and why for failing schools it is a good option for them to be involved. Local school forums do indeed have a role but I think that many head teachers would talk about the positive benefits that they have found in setting up a multi-academy trust. That is all I am saying. I am not saying that local maintained groups of schools are not able to form good partnerships themselves.

[Baroness Pinnock]

Would the Minister therefore support outstanding local maintained schools becoming a sponsor for these schools? As she has just said that they can also behave in the same way, there does not seem to be any argument against a local maintained school becoming a sponsor for a failing school.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

They could certainly become an academy and do that, but they would have to have the same legal structure. I shall come on to that in a second.

Given that 65% of our secondary schools are now academies, it is increasingly sponsors for primary schools that we are seeking to source and develop. In small primary schools the MAT structure is even more critical, again making it necessary for sponsoring schools to be academies themselves that are able to form such a MAT rather than leaving small sponsored primary schools standing alone. We would certainly hope that any maintained school with the expertise, capacity and enthusiasm to support a struggling school would consider converting to academy status in order to do this, in the process unlocking all the benefits and opportunities that I have described.

We also anticipate that as more schools become academies and local authorities have fewer maintained schools left, as many already do, we will see members of local authority teams who are skilled at school improvement spinning out to set up their own MATs, and this development would be most welcome.

In conclusion, I shall quote Maura Regan, CEO of Carmel Education Trust, who attended our sponsor event last week. She said:

“We have to accept that what has happened historically in many local authorities has not worked. We are about revolution—we need to take a break from the past and embrace a new model whereby school leaders are increasingly in charge of their own destinies”.

In light of that, as well as my explanations, I urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I cannot but respond to the kind remarks of my noble friend. They were very generous. I could see the word “but” coming and it came. I want to say now, to retain what scintilla of reputation I have in Scotland, that I do not want the Scotsman tomorrow morning to report me as being against democracy. I believe in democracy. It is the least worst system but it works to the best possible effect. It is in Hansard so it must be true.

If there is a need for this tidying-up, I think the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lord Addington does it well. However, I will be interested to hear whether it is necessary. If it is, let us do it and get on with it. One of the things said quite a bit in this discussion is that by implication the government proposal is that there is only one way of changing schools, whereas local authorities have myriad wisdom. I am not sure that is true. I suspect that local authorities are more likely to be monolithic in their response to the need for change than the academy system which, if well regulated—I underline that—encourages variety and different forms of change. These different forms of change and development may well be necessary for the variety of schools in questions.

In terms of democratic accountability, if we say that academies are not the single way, we run the risk of returning to the local authority being the single way. What were they doing when schools started coasting? It is not an immediate process; it is slow progress. What were all these democratic institutions that we have—the local education authority, the director of education or equivalent and local councillors—doing? You ask who they can go to. They can go to the local councillor or to their MP.

[Baroness Pinnock]

I feel that I have to put the case for local councillors and their involvement in local education, since it is being not painted in the best possible light by my noble friend Lord Sutherland. I think that local management of schools came in about 25 years ago; I am looking around for some people who know better than I do. I have been chair of a large comprehensive secondary school in the maintained sector for a lot of that period. It is regarded as good by Ofsted, I am pleased to say, its value added is well over 1,000 and I hope we will continue to do well on the other scores of Progress 8 and all the rest. Its intake is below average nationally and locally. This is a local maintained school with local involvement where things can go right. I worry that our mindset seems to be that only local authorities can create good schools. I do not support that argument because it is plainly not supported by the facts. Equally, I do not support the argument that only academisation can do the same. That is not supported by the facts either.

The facts are that neither the structures of local authorities nor the structures of academies produce good schools. What produces good schools is something much more difficult than waving a magic wand and having a different structure. What creates good schools is good, outstanding leadership; a good cohort of leadership teams supporting the head teacher; a governing body that works well in supporting and challenging the school; and a local authority, or whatever the structure, that does the additional support improvement and provides professional training and development and all the rest of it. We know that that is what creates good schools and good opportunities for children in education, yet we insist on changing structures. But changing education structures does not achieve good schools—we know that.

A school in my own area—a leafy suburb school, as it happens—decided that it would become an academy. Within a year, it was in special measures and required improvement; that is the worst and the lowest possible rating. The school was good when it started, but in a year it went from being up here to being down there. Why? Because of the lack of the very factors that I have just described: failure of the head teacher; failure of the governing body; and no group to support it because it was outside local authority control. That is what we have to look at.

I am passionate about education and passionate about children getting a fair deal. Nowhere else are they going to get a fair deal, except through this route. Yet we insist on talking about structures. For goodness’ sake, let us talk about how we are going to deal with the national shortage of head teachers of any calibre, let alone outstanding ones. That would be a start.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I agree with the noble Baroness’s diagnosis of what makes a good school. That is true. Children, and the way that they are dealt with in the education process, are the focus of this—they have one education. I absolutely share the passion of the noble Baroness.

Structures will not fix it all, but structures have made a difference. The academy system has made differences that are very important and have improved the lot of many children. When the current chief inspector of Ofsted was put in place to be head of a failing school, my goodness, he turned it around. That was a structural point. Unless the powers are there to do that, that opportunity will be missing, and that is what we are talking about today.

In view of the passion expressed, I have to share again, as I did in my Second Reading speech, that I was involved in declaring the first failing school. It would have been useless to go to the parents, the governing body, the local authority or the local community; they all hated what was said truthfully. That is the other side of the coin.

Where I am still, if you like, swinging a bit in the breeze—this relates to a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson—is on the use of the word “must” in Clause 7(2). That does cause me some reservations and worry. Whether it will persist to Report that the Secretary of State “must” make an academy order, I do not know. Sometimes, and the point has been made, drafting in the right leadership and head teacher can help, especially in an emergency situation. My worry about the word “must” is that it may exclude the immediate action that has been taken in the past and could be taken now. Making an academy order and setting up sponsorship will take time, and sometimes the school in question has not got time. So I have that worry and am very interested to hear what will be said from the Government side on this. I will reserve my position on that one until Report.

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[Baroness Pinnock]

I am happy to respond. I am still a school governor and many noble Lords will be aware that the governance of maintained schools has had to change, and rightly so, for the reasons that have been given. By September of this year, school governing bodies had been completely overhauled. Many school governors are now co-opted for their specific expertise or experience. On my governing body we have two people who work in local businesses, an IT expert, someone from the finance sector to help with that side of things, as well as a couple of parent governors, staff governors, and by choice, a local authority governor. School governance has been substantially strengthened by these regulations and, where it is done well, they will inject two important elements. One is expertise and understanding, along with keeping the involvement of staff members and parents, and the other is that it is locally based. At the school where I remain on the governing body, it is local business people who are involved. That would be true across the piece, which is to everyone’s enormous advantage.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the noble Baroness.