Multi-academy Trusts

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe

Wednesday 10th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, my noble friend is entirely correct. A few dozen trusts have not performed as well as they should have on governance, but we have that in any large organisation—we now have over 1 million adults in the academies sector, and things go wrong. However, we have seen tremendous progress. We now have over half a million children in schools that were previously failing local authority schools and are now rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. According to last year’s Progress 8 scores, converter academies have outperformed their comparable local authority schools on every category and type of child—white, mixed, Asian, black, Chinese, SEND pupils and those in receipt of SEND support.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, following on from the question of the noble Baroness, Lady Watkins, which I presume relates to the length that people continue in post, could the Minister say—I am sure he wants to continue to improve governance—whether he has looked at the Cadbury principles and seen whether they could be applied in certain areas of trusts?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

To reassure the noble Lord, an academy trust is scrutinised not only by the Department for Education; we are co-regulators with the Charity Commission and, when a person becomes a trustee of a trust, he or she is also a director, as in company legislation. We expect the highest levels of probity, and we act when that does not happen.

Education: Industrial Strategy

Debate between Lord Agnew of Oulton and Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe

Monday 24th June 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, for that to happen, we need to make sure that we have apprenticeship standards for the creative industries. A great deal of work is going on there and the number of apprenticeships in creative subjects is increasing as we speak.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, will the Minister say whether—notwithstanding all the money that he describes the Government pumping into further education—he is really content with the present funding arrangement, as posed in the question from the noble Baroness on the Back Benches?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am concerned about funding for further education. I believe that it needs to be a priority in the spending review; I have said that publicly, as recently as last week at the Wellington Festival of Education. We need to put more emphasis on that and to ensure that we are developing the skills base we need for the next generation.