Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Bates Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, I was reminded of visiting a children’s home some time ago with an inspector who made the point that she had been asked to be an inspector for care homes for the elderly and had declined because she was a teacher by background. She said, “What do I know about care homes for the elderly?”. There has been an issue—I am sure that it is still an issue—of ensuring that the inspectors are the right ones for the particular institution. The inspector also said that the remit of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, for which she worked at the time, was very much about supporting and developing good-quality practice and supporting the staff. After the remit moved to Ofsted, certainly the information that I received suggested that it became very much about checking that someone had done the right thing and criticising them if they had not, but not about asking, “Have you tried this? What about that way?”, and supporting the development of better practice.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, suggested using retiring teachers. The National Union of Teachers has emphasised the need to ensure the proper and continuing professional development of teachers who are already practising. It is concerned that past advice from the Department for Education—then the Department for Children, Schools and Families—was, “You shouldn’t let teachers off during the school day to get continuing professional development. They should do it at other times because we need them in the classroom”. If we could free up teachers with quite a lot of experience to spend a day in another school and take part in the sort of inspection and support arrangement that the noble Lord is discussing, that might kill two birds with one stone inasmuch as it would give them a chance to see how someone else teaches and to learn from that. They could be refreshed by that, as well as producing a report that could be useful to parents or whomever, and they could support professional development at that school. That occurs to me having recently read the information from the National Union of Teachers. No matter how much we improve the training and recruitment of teachers, most teachers are already in post and will be there for a long time, so we really have to think about their developmental needs. That is a bit of an aside.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Lucas for moving this interesting amendment. My default position when I first read it was that it was completely opposed to what the whole Bill is trying to do: to free up Ofsted inspectors so that they do not spend endless amounts of time visiting schools that are simply outstanding across the board but devote that time to schools that are failing in some areas so that those schools can be given greater attention and support. I take the point made by my noble friend Lady Perry, but that was very much where I was coming from.

When I heard the debate, however, I began to move towards seeing a couple of problems that need to be explored. I wonder whether part of the solution, which probably needs to be developed a little further, should not be the partnering of a highly successful school, which is enabled to become an academy, with a failing school. What would be the format of that relationship? Could the successful school assess and supervise the failing school in the interim?

Then there is the role of the governing bodies. Often very little is said about them, but under the new arrangements they will have hugely more power, authority and responsibility. How much training are they given? When one becomes a non-executive director of a firm, there are often lots of training courses about your duties, statutory responsibilities, the pertinent questions to ask and what you should look out for. The head teacher on the first governing body of which I was a member absolutely insisted that there was never any need for a member of the governing body to come to assemblies or to visit any of the classrooms, as that was way beyond their remit. Later on academy boards, I found that the head teachers of good, successful schools went out of their way to encourage governors to experience classroom teaching, to sit in the staffroom and to talk to teachers. Do people actually know this?

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. Does he accept that his personal experience may not be universal? As one who has had a series of non-executive directorships over the past 30 years and has served on a number of school governing bodies, I must confess that the picture he draws is not that of my experience.

[Lord Bates]

I defer to my noble friend’s experience, but bodies such as the Institute of Directors put on training courses and provide structured guidance for directorships, so I wonder what the equivalent is for governing bodies? Is there a body which fulfils this role?

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I have also been a school governor in one form or another for getting on for 40 years. Training courses for governors are run not only by local authorities but also centrally, and they are quite detailed courses. There is also a training guide on the web. The noble Lord might like to look at the Department for Education website where he will find that under “governors” there is a sort of teach yourself course to show you what you should know to become a good governor.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as president of the National Governors’ Association, perhaps I may be allowed to make a tiny comment. There has been a good deal of improvement in the training of school governors, but it is not uniform. I think there is a desire on the part of the National Governors’ Association to pay rather more attention to this side of things so that all governors are given some training before they start as well as ongoing training whenever that is necessary.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, one of the great joys of this House is the realisation that when you raise an issue, you suddenly find several world authorities in the Chamber with the answers ready to hand, which is fantastic. I will not delay the Committee except to say this. Under the new mechanism the school will be separated from the local authority, which will not provide these functions going forward to an academy. Given that, could there be a role for the governing body of the academy to take a more detailed view—almost a form of Ofsted standards “light”—of the institution? That would provide some internal checks and balances while at the same time it would strengthen the governing body’s understanding of what is actually going on in the institution for which it is responsible.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, as in so many areas, this has been an interesting debate which again has ranged further than the specific scope of the Academies Bill, and I have been struck by a number of the points made. It seems that we have been talking about three separate strands: one is to do with information for government and accountability; one is to do with support for a school; and one is to do with information for parents. In that context, if I am not puffing my noble friend Lord Lucas too much, the Good Schools Guide, which I heard him mention earlier, is a good example of how parents can be given human and anecdotal information about a school. That is an extremely informative way to find out what is going on. Generally, going forward and thinking of the ways in which parents can access more frequent and better information about their children’s schools, it is clear that this is something the Government should think about. We have said that we will try to reform the league tables to make them more relevant, but I should like to reflect on some of the points made more generally by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lady Perry outside the context of the Bill, and perhaps we could discuss them further. The question of how one gives parents information that lets them know what is going on in a school in a regular and relevant way is an interesting one which I should like to explore further.

On the specific point of the amendment, and bearing in mind some of the reservations expressed by my noble friend about Ofsted, to give that body an obligation to carry out an annual report on each academy strikes me as a little excessive. Further, the fact that such a requirement would apply only to academies and not to maintained schools seems a little odd. That said, I would be happy to discuss this further and I will not charge £300 a day for the conversation, which I think is the going rate. With that response and some reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, these are probing amendments with which I hope to learn a great deal from the Minister about the Government’s intentions with regard to selection. We probably all agree that selection is a major issue in any consideration of educational matters, and I am sure the Bill will be no exception. However, the idea of a selective academy is a perversion of Labour’s view of the future of the academy scheme.

As we have already heard, the previous Government used the academy system as a means of helping struggling schools to turn round the life chances of the hardest to teach, which often meant entering an area where a local authority had let down the children it was there to serve. We gave these schools new leadership, outside expertise and relieved them from many of the requirements to co-operate as part of the local family of schools because of the challenges and experiences that those schools had undergone.

I want to learn about what the coalition Government now propose. In effect, they are saying to schools which select a small minority of the top-scoring children at 11, “Take a share of the money that the local area has been allocated to support the most vulnerable, and outbid other local schools for the best teaching staff using that same money”. Is that really what the coalition Government want to say to schools? By definition, the schools with these advantages will be less likely to need support with issues such as special needs. That is what we are looking at.

Amendment 131 seeks to deal with this criticism by insisting on provision for children of all abilities where a selective school becomes an academy. What is more, unamended, the Bill will allow such schools to expand, so we could be talking about a significant expansion of selection. The Minister has indicated that this will not be the case and I should be grateful to hear him say that now. The Prime Minister has made great claims about having changed his party. Change is good and changed it has—I am sure many would say for the better—but, despite those claims, the Conservative Party has been forced—I remain to be convinced otherwise—to introduce this Trojan horse of more selective schools. We know that Conservative MPs want some red meat on selection, but the Government risk showing that they are prepared to bargain away the aspirations of the majority in return for the acquiescence of Back-Benchers in another place. The Minister shakes his head. I look forward to hearing his response and to being reassured and convinced otherwise.

Amendment 59 seeks to remove this aspect of the Bill by preventing academy schools selecting. I admit that it is a blunt instrument—I said at the start that this is a probing amendment at this stage—but it would be, by far and away, the most satisfactory outcome.

Amendments 40A to 40F seek to deal with the second criticism: that the balance between selective and non-selective schools could be disrupted, without any community consultation, by schools converting to academy status and then expanding whether through different age groups or intake.

[Lord Bates]

Can the noble Baroness confirm that selection was included in the concept of academies introduced by her Government; that you could select 10 per cent on the basis of the specialism of the academy? That was in the Education Acts of 2006 and 2002.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, the noble Lord is referring to the 10 per cent based on aptitude, which is a different paradigm—I am not sure whether that is the right word. These are probing amendments and I want to hear what the coalition Government’s intentions are on selection. I am sure that we will all be interested to know.

As with the discussion on the admissions code earlier in Committee, Amendments 130 and 183 will reassure those who are concerned that schools could convert under existing admissions procedures—which may erode over time—with no statutory safeguard against it. Many people outside the Chamber are asking these questions. The amendments would ensure that, in future, no non-selective school could use academy status to become selective.

Indeed, others have expressed this concern from another perspective. The Guardian newspaper reported the views of the National Grammar Schools Association. It stated in regard to academies:

“There may be other covert dangers and, until everything is made clear in the area of legislation and elsewhere, we strongly recommend extreme caution. If necessary, please seek advice from the NGSA before making decisions that may later threaten your school”.

The head of the NGSA said he was concerned that if a grammar school became an academy, it could then be run by a small group of people who might decide to change the admissions procedure. The article continued:

“‘What is the protection for the parents?’, he asked. ‘Does there have to be a ballot? Does it become an all-ability intake?’”

The National Grammar Schools Association is unclear about the coalition Government’s intentions. I should be extremely grateful if the Minister could set out, with great clarity, their vision for the future of selection in academies.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

My noble friend’s Back Benches are in complete accord.

[Lord Bates]

Indeed, the guarantees were not just without any meaningful evidence as to what they actually meant, but without any resources so that teachers would be able to undertake that additional, onerous responsibility.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

If I might add another voice from the Back Benches: to try to guarantee to every parent that their child will have an ideally good school—what a wonderful thought that would be. People have been trying ever since the end of the Second World War to provide a good school for every child; successive Governments have not succeeded in doing so. There are still an awful lot of schools which fail an awful lot of children, so to try to put into legislation a promise to parents that they will have a good school for their child is really an absurd suggestion.