Free Schools and Academies

Baroness Shephard of Northwold Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shephard of Northwold (Con)]

My Lords, how inspiring it is to follow my noble friend Lord Harris. His enthusiasm for the work of his life shines out and encourages us all. I also congratulate my noble friend Lady Evans on her sparkling and enthusiastic opening to this debate.

Surrounded as I am by noble Lords on this side, I wonder whether I dare confess—but I am going to—that, when academies were first introduced by the Blair Government, I had some misgivings. However, it is true that the spirit of the academy movement—a loosening of local authority control—was already present in the creation of grant-maintained schools, specialist grant-maintained schools and city technology colleges under previous Conservative Governments.

In my professional life before politics, I had been the chief inspector of schools in a local authority. I strongly believed that the most important public service there is, namely education—also known as the future of our children——should be democratically accountable through elected bodies. But, from being in a job that meant I was in schools and colleges a lot of the time, I also knew that the excellence or otherwise of any institution, including schools, depended on the quality of the head. It was also obvious that the best heads ran the best schools because they were innovative, creative and determined to make their schools serve pupils, parents and their neighbourhoods.

However, I began to note that those heads were frequently frustrated by their inability to pursue change inside the local authority system. They needed more flexibility in recruitment and to be able to vary teachers’ pay to attract the best. They needed the opportunity to vary the curriculum to reflect the needs of their pupils and generally unleash creativity within their institutions.

When the academies movement got under way, it did indeed attract those creative and innovative heads and teachers, whose achievements have created a system in which nearly 50% of all our schools are now academies. The results—particularly when compared with those in Scotland and Wales, which pursued a different path—are more than encouraging. Since 2000 the UK has moved from 21st to seventh in the international league tables in maths, and from 11th to ninth in science. One of the most impressive achievements is the result of the requirement for failing local authority schools to become academies, thus giving those schools more support and fresh hope for children, often in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, for the future. As Tony Blair said at the 2005 Labour Party conference,

“the beneficiaries are not fat cats. They are some of the poorest families in the poorest parts of Britain”.

My noble friend Lord Harris has given graphic illustrations of that.

While I obviously understand the wish of a new Government to innovate, I do not know and cannot understand why they would want to limit the current powers of academies to vary the curriculum to meet the needs of the pupils in their schools. Academies, like local authority schools, are inspected by Ofsted, and any irregularities that affect pupils, disadvantaged or otherwise, would surely be picked up and dealt with. Regular Ofsted inspections should also meet the Government’s concerns about qualified teacher status and the relaxing of requirements for that status in academies.

I greatly respect the Minister. I have in my mind that last week she apologised for sometimes being grumpy. I hope I am not going to bring out a display of grumpiness from her, but I hope she will allow me to ask the obvious question: exactly what problem with academies does the new Bill seek to solve? I had always believed that academies were an area of cross-party agreement, so my hope is that this debate and the passage of the new education Bill will continue in a good spirit. Good educational standards can only benefit our children, who will bear the burden of the future.