Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Agnew of Oulton Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton (Con)]

My Lords, I refer to my interests in the register, in particular as the founder and chairman of an academy trust with 11,000 children and 18 schools.

In the short time I have available, I will focus on one specific area in the schools Bill. In Part 1, I broadly agree with the move to improve scrutiny of home education—it has become a very worrying issue. Many parents, clearly unable to educate their children, are taking them out of school and we cannot do anything about it. The Government are to be commended on their action, and we will no doubt get into the details as the Bill progresses.

However, if unaltered, the schools part of the Bill will plunge the English education system back into the badlands of 20 years ago, before the previous Labour Government had the courage to begin the reforms that we had built on. I will focus on one area: the watering down of academisation of failing schools. The proposals introduce ambiguity on whether a failing school should be academised. This will present a “get of jail” card for the incompetent management of those schools. Organisations rot from the head down: schools do not fail because of the teachers but because of the people who manage them. Having taken on at least nine failing schools in the last 12 years, I can say, very simply, that the academy trust I founded employs hundreds of teachers who today do a magnificent job under good leadership. Previously, those schools were failing children on an industrial scale.

In defence of this retreat, the line trotted out by the Government is the marvellous new concept of RISE teams: 65 people brandishing clipboards who will run around the country offering advice. If only the Government would listen to those who have tried this before, they would save time, money and, most importantly, not repeat something that has failed comprehensively in the past.

Under my stewardship in the DfE, we had a national leaders of education programme—does that not sound wonderful? RISE teams are just a reheated version. NLEs did not work because there is no line of accountability for the failing school to act on the advice they are given. More often than not, implementing the advice will require strong leadership, such as changing staff structures or bringing budgets into balance.

Do not just take my word for it. In 1998, the last Labour Government did something similar: the beacon schools initiative. The names get ever better, do they not? In that case, the laudable aim was to get high-performing schools to share best practice to raise standards. It was abandoned in August 2005 because there was a lack of clear evidence that the initiative improved weaker schools. My question to the Minister is: what has changed 20 years on? Certainly, human nature has not changed. If weak managers can avoid a reckoning through procrastination without penalty, that is what they will do. It is the Damoclean sword of consequences that will drive change in failing schools.

It is important to say that I do not tolerate failing academies either. Many will know; they had interviews without coffee with me when I was the Minister. The current Government have not addressed this. They have not even seen fit to appoint an Academies Minister, despite them now educating over 80% of secondary children and 40% of primary children.

Addressing failure does not need legislation but just a spotlight on such failures and strong calls for accountability. In my home county of Norfolk, at least two academy trusts have just received financial bailouts from the DfE which should have come with a requirement for mergers or a clear-out of that failing management. That has not happened. This is where the Government’s energy should be directed.

I fear that, as we go through this Bill, a theme we will come across often is that the Government are in essence condemning children to a failed education. It seems they are not prepared to allow the hard edge of intervention to sweep out mediocrity and failure. Those children get only one chance, and we are about to imperil that chance for tens of thousands suffering in badly run schools.

As we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, the Government are simply introducing a two-year delay. Of course, most of those failing schools are in areas of deprivation, so the communities that the Government claim on their Benches to represent will be the ones thrown under the bus, under a senseless ideology. Unless the Government start to listen, I expect this Bill to face a stormy passage as we pit ideology against the interests of children.