Schools White Paper

Lord Davies of Brixton Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government think a lot about the happiness of our children. We worry a lot about the children who are in underperforming schools, and where their life chances are being held back because of the nature of the education they receive. This is why we are focusing our education investment on areas of really entrenched under-performance. The noble Baroness shakes her head, but 54% of children in secondary schools in Knowsley today are in schools which have been judged more than twice as requiring more improvement. That is what will turn around our children’s life chances, and that is where we are focusing.

[Lord Davies of Brixton (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for the answers she has given. I welcome the ambition of the Government’s policies as set out in the White Paper. I will look at the statistics they have provided with some care. Are such statistics in a White Paper run past the UK Statistics Authority—not just the figures, but the conclusions drawn from them? It would be useful if we could be told.

I hope I will be forgiven if I suggest, for those with long enough memories, that the support expressed in the White Paper for well-managed families of schools delivering high-quality and inclusive education, coupled with the encouragement in the White Paper for LEAs to establish their own strong trusts, might be taken as an attempt to recreate the achievements of the Inner London Education Authority after many years. Of course, the fear of many people is that academies—particularly when we have multi-academy trusts—lead, in effect, to the privatisation of the education service. The distinction between an MAT and a commercial organisation is often hard to discern.

My first question for the Minister is, what are the Government going to do to ensure that all academies, whether SAT or MAT, operate with a social purpose? My second question, given the emphasis on what parents want from education in the previous question, is, what role do the Government want for parents in the governance of academies? There is a reference in the White Paper to a review of the governance of the system, but it is notable that in the document, The Case for a Fully Trust-Led System, there is only one reference to parents, and then only as passive observers. Should the Government not do more to enable the participation of parents in school governance?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am really puzzled by the image the noble Lord paints of multi-academy trusts representing privatisation. They receive exactly the same funding as any other state-maintained school, and they are inspected in exactly the same way. The majority of them are charities. I am not sure quite where privatisation comes in. What we see in the best trusts—and perhaps this is behind the noble Lord’s question—is that they use the resources from the taxpayer intelligently, in the interests of the child. I will give an example from the north-east of England. I recently visited a trust which, through better procurement, was able to reinvest those savings in dedicated tutoring for all their students. I do not know where the noble Lord’s concern comes from, but I genuinely think it is misplaced.

I turn to the noble Lord’s second point, about trust standards. We will be working with this sector. There is not a lot of detail in the White Paper because we want to co-create those standards together with the sector, and we look forward to reporting back more on that in the future. This would, of course, include the role of parents.