Education: Academy Chains

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 15th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I share my noble friend’s sentiment entirely. I am fully aware of that. I am extremely grateful to him for his support of the academy programme and, as I said earlier, we should encourage more philanthropists like him to come into the system, rather than trying to score cheap points against them.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that, while there is a full-blooded debate to be had about the relative merits of academies and schools that have some local authority involvement—a debate that I suggest will have its full import when we have rather more evidence from the academies than we have at the moment—it does not do anybody any good to castigate those schools that are not yet academies and whose results are manifestly brilliant and would hold any academy’s results to shame? Can we have some assurance that the language we use is not polarised in a way that damages schools in the public sector?

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord. Many schools that are highly successful are not academies. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, recently took me to visit Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, which is an excellent example of a non-academy, highly successful school.

Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, when drawn at No. 15 out of 15, you never know what is going to be left—perhaps items from the rich man’s table—but I will do my best.

I thought dark thoughts when the noble Baroness, Lady Miller, spoke about food and took my pitch from me. However, I hope that she will think that what I have to say complements what she said so strongly and well. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch for pulling this debate out of the bag, especially given her background of the School Food Trust. I hope that I am entitled to add to what has already been said.

I was led to the subject of food because today I must be ultra organised in that I must go straight from the Chamber to a governors’ meeting at the Central Foundation School, where I have served in that capacity for a very long time. The May newsletter that we shall be looking at at the governors’ meeting concentrates on food, and therefore my subject was chosen for me. I was delighted to see that the newsletter states that detailed discussions between the school’s catering company, Alliance in Partnership, the school council and Islington Council have led to an improvement in the nutritional value of the school’s food, but that it has also smartened up the canteen so that it is a more agreeable environment within which to eat food. All of us know that when we choose a restaurant we want to go to a nice place with ambience as well as gastronomie.

The sort of menu that you now find in the school canteen in the basement of a Victorian building looks as though it might rival the Rivington Grill or L’Abat Jour—my favourite restaurants in my area. On offer are lamb meatballs in tomato sauce, Mediterranean vegetables with couscous, beef curry, vegetable balti, mango chicken baguette or wrap; for side dishes, country mixed vegetables, pasta, braised rice or side salad; and, for dessert, a fruit bag, home-based dessert selection or rhubarb crunch with custard. The mouth waters.

The great thing about this is that it is not simply what is on offer when you go with your tray to the cafeteria; everything is integrated in a more generic approach to food, and that runs through the whole school curriculum. We offer food technology classes throughout years 7 to 9 in which students learn how to prepare healthy meals from scratch. Food technology has proved so popular that we also offer an after-school cooking club.

As though that were not enough, the school has tried out a student-run restaurant called The Globe. Hospitality diploma pupils were given another opportunity to wine and dine guests in their very own food establishment, this time named Central Cuisine. From luxury student-run restaurants to French food tasting, the Central Foundation offers a whole host of ways to keep students excited about healthy eating. Along with a variety of extracurricular sports activities and classes, there is something for everybody. And as though all that were not enough, who needs to write speeches when they are written so brilliantly for you in this way? Top tips—there are seven of them—on page three of the menu reads:

“Drink plenty of water. Take iron. Eat breakfast. Include protein-rich foods. Optimise Omega 3s. Boost energy. Destress with salad”.

It is all absolutely fantastic.

Far from this being an esoteric and rather marginal thing to talk about, we should be making more of good and healthy eating as the basis for a child’s sense of well-being at school so that they are well disposed to receive what happens in the classroom and have the strength to undertake what happens on the sports field afterwards. I should have said that I was talking about the Central Foundation Boys’ School. Therefore, even better, all these things challenge gender stereotyping as well.

Although she is not in her place now, I want to pick up on the intervention of my noble friend Lady King regarding whether the freed, autonomous and freestanding academies are under the same sort of pressure to give the same prominence to food in their general delivery or whether, as she suggested, up to a third have given it very low importance. I ask the Minister to give me some kind of satisfaction on that point but not to take too long on it as I have to get to the school governors’ meeting presently.

As a child in far-away Wales in a poor home where I did not eat any meat until I was 16, it was in 20th-century school canteens that I was fed all my protein through school meals. There was very tough meat. It was not called lamb then; it was called mutton and it was not very nice but, goodness me, it seems to have given me enough strength to stand up in your Lordships’ House and to go on at noble Lords in this way.

In conclusion, from that menu, for me it would be the beef curry with braised rice, and I think I will choose the rhubarb crunch with custard, although that may be slightly counterproductive.

Education Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

Before the Minister sits down, may I probe a little further? He says that, in so far as 14 areas are currently exposed to the new method that has been applied since April 2010, most parents will not notice any difference. Of course they will not; there are only 14 areas where the trial is being implemented. The more important point is what results are coming out of that trial. From what the noble Lord, Lord Low, was telling us, there are quite important, positive and affirmative messages about the success of this new system that should, if the logic were applied, be made available to the whole country instead of just 14 areas. Certainly, proper time for evaluation is necessary before taking a draconian measure of this kind, which subverts something that has been argued for and put in place and is being accepted as a reasonable way forward—especially by a Government who tell us time and again that they want smaller government and for fewer things to happen from Whitehall rather than more.

I have one further thing to say. The Minister introduced one word in his summing up that has not been mentioned at all in the debate apart from in his speech. We have all talked about the arguments and argued the case, reason has been invoked and we have appealed to experience and the history of this problem as it moves forward, but I want the Minister to give me an assurance regarding the word that he introduced: finance. Is it for financial reasons that we are moving from one system to another? Is that the driving force that would stop something so logical, appropriate and appreciated from taking place?

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I was waiting to see if my noble friend wanted to take advantage of a chance to reply. He has not yet convinced me with his arguments. We have had an experiment running, and if we are to terminate it we ought at least to be allowed to see the results so far. It really ought to be up to the Government to provide them to us, and I very much hope that between now and Report we will have the chance to see a narrative, if not an evaluation, of what has been achieved so far.

These are long-standing problems, particularly when it comes to bullying, SEN and children getting into home education when they do not really want to be there. I am conscious that this has happened over a long period and in quite a high volume without any indication that the current methods, which we are to go back to, have provided an adequate answer. What was proposed by the previous Government and is now being trialled is a transfer from one set of officials who are not specialised and have limited powers to another set of officials who are specialised and have better powers. That seems to be worth trying. That is not to say that this is something that should not be done by Government; rather, it is to say that if we do it in a slightly different way, it could be done better.

I am conscious of the suffering that is caused by the current system and its inadequacies, and I do not want to go back to it. I do not mind going back to it if the system being trialled turns out to be no better and more expensive, but we ought to know what the evaluation is.

Education Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords—

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I confess myself to be a little confused that the exigencies of the arrangements of this Room have led to my sitting on the government side, but I will do my very best to use this to illustrate the point that, in a perfect world, people can sit anywhere and have decently held points of view without being called nonsensical for them.

I also want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, that I will make it my resolution to work as hard as I possibly can to show the other face of Methodism for as long as we know each other. In response to my noble friend Lord Touhig—I must say that he is my noble friend, although he is sitting opposite me—I just want to mention that, although the first line of the hymn that he sang at the Baptist Sunday school anniversary is “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”, I happen to know that its last line is,

“You in your small corner, and I in mine”,

which is pretty much what this debate seems to be turning out to be like.

This is a terribly important debate and the points of view that I have been hearing are necessary and are to be engaged with, but I just feel uncertain that they sit comfortably within the scope of this Bill. I feel that this proposal would take a stance against the historic position. Let us remind ourselves that the 1944 Act, which brought this collective worship idea into being, was really an attempt to bring together the provision of schools by a variety of bodies, most of which were Christian. It is still the case that the Church of England has a significant stake in secondary education and a predominant stake in primary education. Therefore, we are talking really about history and culture—this is who we are and this is our identity—and I do not at all want to discount other religions or other points of view.

I listened to what was said by the noble Lord, although apparently I am not being listened to myself, but I just feel that the demonising of collective acts of worship is not consistent with my experience of actually performing them. In the hundreds of different kinds of school where I have led assemblies all over the world, I can promise you—perhaps I should not promise, as there are bishops here—that, in any school where I have been a governor or led a school assembly, I have never met antagonism, objection or dissent about what is being offered.

In the East End of London, one of the two schools for which I have responsibility attracts 60 per cent of its pupils from a Bengali population. People send their girls to the school because it has a religious basis and they want the structures that go with that; there is no proselytising and, if there were, the people doing it would be on the carpet. In the boys’ school where I lead collective acts of worship, I am conscious of the range of religions and I suppose that there are people of no religion. That does not worry me in the slightest. We can conjure up an idea, we can play with a thought and we can ground that thought in the traditional religious position, indicate that there are other ways of looking at it and then call for a silence—which is what I do—during which people can think their own thoughts according to their own inner light. There are ways of doing these things without us getting into this silly antagonistic position.

In response to my noble friend Lady Massey, who was my mentor in bringing me into the House of Lords—she wanted a religious person to see if it was all right, but now that we are sitting on opposite sides I am not so sure about that—I just feel honestly that we are making more of this than needs to be made. It is not a problem in the experience of the schools that I know about, and I know about lots and lots of schools. Let us have the debate another day. If a consensus emerges from a debate dedicated to this subject, then let us see what we have to do about that, but piggy-backing the subject on this Bill seems to me to be inappropriate.

Education Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

I agree with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Boswell, that says, “Let’s look at this every three years”. When the previous Government introduced the Apprenticeship Act, we had a lot of this advice in there but maybe it was just not robust enough in terms of coming back and checking how this was doing, because it is still a major problem.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I preface my remarks by asking for some agreement on definitions. It is the word “school” that interests me. In its broadest sense, and I think that we would all concur with this, it is a community of people focused on the well-being and the best interests of children and pupils. It has been used in a different way in this debate, though, and it is in that different way that I would like to use it, while remaining conscious of the base meaning that lies behind it.

We have been using the word “school” to mean those who govern our schools. Schools are expected to take independent advice, and new legislation is placing a duty on schools to achieve two objectives—just two examples from this very debate. I am interested in that definition of “school”, which I think amounts to “governing body and head teacher”, who are expected, in the way that things are developing, to achieve more and more than has been done elsewhere until now.

I do not flinch at that. I am a governor and chair of a foundation that runs two schools in the inner city here in London. We try our hardest as governors and head teachers in the area of career development, particularly because we see increasingly that, if we want to achieve excellence in the provision that we offer, partnership with other schools is increasingly going to be the way forward. I do not know how every school can produce an adequate and rich service in this area. In the Borough of Islington, for example, our school operates with others and we try to pool our best efforts and to make careers advice available in a richer and broader way.

In another initiative that perhaps I might report because it is of some interest, our inner city school co-operates with a school in the independent sector, the Leys School in Cambridge, and we cross-fertilise and attend each other’s careers festivals. I have to say that the independent sector provides a somewhat narrower focus for the range of careers that it seeks to interest people in, but, for all that, it is richly provided for by those who come and help people in conversation and all the rest of it.

We have not quite got reciprocity to the point where I would like to see it, with people from the independent sector coming to us for careers advice. We are situated on the edge of the City of London, and some quite extraordinary people come to us from City institutions to offer that kind of advice, which people from Cambridge could well benefit from. If we are envisaging that schools, in the way that I am defining them, will provide an adequate service across the land, with every school expected to provide excellence all the time in careers advice, we are just baying for the moon. Those are two initiatives that I can report now.

Throughout my contribution to the discussions of the Bill, I am afraid that I will drone on about the extra expectations that are coming the way of schools—that is, governing bodies and head teachers. During this afternoon's debate alone, the responsibility for shaping and focusing the curriculum has fallen to governors and head teachers. I am not saying that they should not do that, but more and more expectations of schools as independent and freestanding bodies are coming our way. There is the curriculum, now there is careers advice. Before we finish our discussion on the Bill, what else will be expected of governors? I am a governor. I attend, as regularly as I can, refresher courses offered by my local authority. I try to be up-to-date with seminars and other things that stretch your mind about new possibilities offered for all of us. I look around the table. I see some absent places where some very busy people are feeling increasingly deskilled and disempowered to do the tasks expected of them—all voluntarily, without a single penny coming our way. As we go down this path and pass more and more responsibility to the school, under the definition I have offered, we must bear in mind that implementation of these grand ideas will be left to people who will be under greater and greater burdens.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords—

Education Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I want to pick up the reference of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to professionalism. Over the past 25 years since 1986 we have seen a whole torrent of legislation on schools, which has had a cumulative effect of undermining the professionalism of teachers. In many ways, I see the Government trying to reclaim that ground. It seems to me that fundamental to any guidance on this issue is that we start from the position that teachers are professionals and that they use their judgment. The rest is a case of trying to fill that out, as it were, rather than tackling the matter the other way round, which subtly undermines the very professionalism that should be at the heart of education. I hope that in due course that approach will result in fewer education Acts.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

I wish to refer to a body of people who have not been mentioned in the debate thus far but are mentioned in the amendment. Since the thrust of the Bill as a whole seems to be pushing towards more free-standing governance of schools, we should consider what ought to be the remit of schools’ governing bodies in respect of this matter. We can all agree that we must pay tribute to teachers’ excellence and recognise the natural affinities that lead to physical contact at different times, which have been mentioned. However, if the governing body is to pick up tangible responsibility for interpreting and applying conduct in this area, not only must teachers be supported by senior members of staff and head teachers but the relationship with the governing body has to be addressed.

This can be a touchy business—sorry, that was not meant to be a pun—if there has been a recent incident in the locality and emotions can be highly charged. I have sat on governing bodies which have dealt not just with the case before us but with all the accumulated stuff that arises from a consideration, and often press reportage, of things that may have happened outside the remit of the school but in the locality. The systems devised in this Bill and in the previous Bill do not give enough attention to governing bodies. If we are to have more free-standing schools and academies, we must be sure that governance by the governing body is given adequate consideration.

I have been a governor for 30 years and am a chairman of trustees and know that even gathering the relevant skills round a table is difficult in the inner cities. Giving governors the remit and guidance on how to apply various aspects of their functions is difficult and will also be difficult in this area. To state on the face of the Bill that the governing body,

“may adapt and promulgate rules on physical contact”,

may be enough but governing bodies have to be equipped to apply that statement adequately and responsibly.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, perhaps I ought to say a brief word about that as president of the National Governors’ Association. Almost anything that we are discussing has a reference and an importance for governors. We have specific clauses later on where we can look at this in rather more detail but it is another illustration of the somewhat difficult sorting-out of whose responsibility everything will be in future.

I entirely confirm the brilliance of teachers, and everything else. I admire very much the skills that they possess and the attempts of the Government to get them even more skilled and better equipped. Nevertheless the whole business of who is responsible for which bits of it, and indeed of proper respect for each part of the establishment, needs quite a lot of examination. I hope we are going to be giving a lot of time to it a bit later. I am particularly glad to see that there is a growing number of people who have been governors, because under the previous Government there did not seem to be quite as many around who were available and wished to talk about the role and responsibility of governors, or indeed the composition of the governing body.

--- Later in debate ---

At heart, this issue boils down to a difference of approach between the Government and the party opposite. I accept that the Government are committed to greater local flexibility. We believe that schools and employers benefit from that and we want them to retain it. I understand the arguments that have been made. But in the light of that position, I would ask my noble friend Lady Walmsley to withdraw her amendment.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

If things happen as have just been described and responsibility for working out these arrangements passes, as in the most successful schools in the world, to local bodies, to schools, who exactly are we talking about? Is it school heads and human resources people within schools who devise, buy in, outsource or whatever, job descriptions and all the rest of it and then apply them? Who will form the checks and balances against inappropriate practice or perhaps deficient practice in that area? Will it be the governing board, about which I am terribly concerned? The skills and competences around our table are hard enough to put together already. Where will the staff come from? Who will do the controlling if it is passed to a local level? Our local authorities are being diminished and sidelined. More responsibilities are coming on the governing board. Are we now going to be in a position where we have to check on the way things like this are being settled in the workplace?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords—

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Perhaps I may respond to that point because we want to get on. We are proposing the perpetuation of the current situation. The people who are currently responsible, the local authorities and other bodies, would continue as now to be responsible. The legislative regulatory framework in terms of employment law, equality law and everything else remains in place. It is not the case that the proposed abolition of the SSSNB would change what we currently have going on. The change would have been if the SSSNB had gone ahead.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

With the change in role and the scope of responsibility being exercised by the local authority being radically revised, it will not be the same local authority that we will have to deal with and to which we will have to look. Where I live, we now have other bodies providing what has been provided in the past. Consequently, it is not just a return to the status quo. If this Bill goes through, the status quo is no more. In fact, it is not a status quo at all.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and to the Minister for his assurance that, as he understands it, a lot of this important work will continue. In the interest of making progress, I did not express my appreciation for the work done by support staff in schools but I certainly feel exactly that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, this is not about the good work that is done by the school support staff. It is all about their terms and conditions and the way in which that is negotiated. I had felt that allowing the organisation to continue and to finish some of its work would prove to be useful to employers. I, too, am very keen on flexibility and autonomy locally. I must admit I had not realised that the ASCL Act did not allow employers to take on board the relevant information. That is a pity as it reduces their flexibility. I accept what the Government have said. I hope that the work goes forward without a lot of equal pay cases being brought because I hope that there will be no need for them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Education Bill

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, what a pleasure to hear the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Edmiston, to this House. I look forward to many more such contributions. I am probably the only person in this Chamber who had a 100 per cent attendance record at school from the age of three and a half to 18 and a half—so that puts us on different sides of the House for a start. In 1974, when my wife and I came back from a period of service overseas and wanted to cash in our savings, which had been invested for us during our absence, what I hoped would be £6,000 because of the stock market at that time turned out to be about £1,000, which bought a three-piece suite, two beds and a roll of linoleum. Even if our business careers also started off on different trajectories, it is so nice to welcome the noble Lord to the House and to speak after him in this way.

The Minister, in the short time that he has been at his post, has won the affection and respect of noble Lords on all sides of the House. He is a good listener, which makes it all the more difficult to direct the kind of fire and brimstone that this legislation evokes against his person. He is an honourable man but behind him lurks a lean and hungry man who thinks too much. Such men are dangerous. We are on the verge of implementing measures that will change the educational landscape of our country for generations, and in a radical way. It is deeply ironic that this debate has been interrupted by the Statement on the NHS. Would that we could take two months out for consultation on these educational measures too. I am reasonably certain that, after appropriate consideration, we might well come back with as big a U-turn on this front as we have witnessed on the other. While we are not going to have that, it is a fond hope.

The money to pay for the various provisions described in this Bill, as I understand it, has been snatched from a number of pockets and there are serious consequences to expect from all of them. First, there was the abandonment of the Building Schools for the Future programme which, I remind your Lordships, was intended to renew or rebuild every secondary school in the land. I remember the long period of Conservative government in the 1980s and 1990s when a previous round of budget cuts and financial stringencies—all at a time when the North Sea was bringing us huge revenues that were largely squandered—led to the near-dereliction of school properties as well as a dereliction of duty on the part of many people in power. Now the BSF programme, intended to reverse these depredations, has been brought to an abrupt end and the money wrung from the wreckage has been poured into the measures before us.

Secondly, local authorities are being asset-stripped to finance the freedoms of the new academies. I fear that we will one day rue this emasculation of local and accountable government and I was delighted to hear a real exhortation of the role of local authorities in our contemporary world from the Benches over there by the noble Baroness, who is no longer in her place. I have witnessed too much inefficient and inappropriate activity on the part of local authorities during my years in public life for me to become a bland advocate for them. They need constant revitalisation to respond to local needs in effective ways but emptying their coffers is not a way to achieve it. Babies, or at least our schoolchildren, are as likely to be thrown out with the bathwater as anything else. For school governors, charged with ever-mounting responsibilities, the loss of this source of knowledge, wisdom and experience will weigh heavily on us. I am delighted to hear that we may have a government amendment that will perhaps correct some of my thinking on this area, but I became aware of it only at the beginning of this debate.

Thirdly, the drive to train teachers on the job is replete with danger. We already have a mixed economy in the area of training—why change it? There is plenty of research to show that teachers who are given a formation which combines theoretical and practical elements turn out to be the most rounded and suitable for the classroom. After all, a PGCE itself involves 18 weeks’ classroom experience. If the measures before us are implemented it will be to the detriment of universities and other institutions which have accumulated long experience in this area, constantly shaping the curriculum to the changing needs of our society and forging links with thousands of schools where they send their students and evaluate their work. Mention was made by the right reverend Prelate of the University of Roehampton, which I had a big part in helping to shape in its early years. I can bear witness to that story too. Money taken from this sector will of course be channelled towards those schools identified as training schools.

For the past 30 years, I have been a governor of schools of all kinds. Governors have not been mentioned enough in this debate so far but they are Britain’s “unsung heroes”, says the White Paper. So they are; but there is a real cause of concern. As schools take charge of their own activities and head teachers become chief executive officers—buying in services currently provided through local authorities, shaping the learning experience of their pupils and selling their product in the marketplace—so we governors will have to be a check and a balance on the way a quite considerable financial responsibility is exercised. We are all volunteers who have to go to courses and night school to refresh our ability to keep up to date with things. These are multi-million pound businesses but all of us come from various walks of life. In schools in poorer areas, such as the ones I help to look after, we are going to find it more and more difficult to gather the competences and skills necessary for managing these complex and increasingly autonomous enterprises. There are going to be casualties in this area.

As I prepared these remarks, I resolved that even if I were drawn 51st out of 51 speakers and even if the points that I wanted to make had already been made 51 times, I was going to repeat them anyway. This Bill marks a turning point in our national system of education and will have consequences that we will have to live with for a long time. I hope there will be scope in the remaining stages of the passage of this Bill to improve it and that the Government, like their Minister, will have a listening ear and a competence for change.

Building Schools for the Future

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am afraid I have to agree with my noble friend Lord King of Bridgwater that that was indeed the case. I fear that it is part of a broader picture. I understand why the party opposite will, perfectly properly, question spending decisions and cuts that this Government are having to make but hope that they can see the reason we are having to make those decisions and cuts. I do not enjoy finding myself in the situation of going around the country having to turn down all kinds of applications for school capital. It is because we inherited a situation in which we had no capital.

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, first, I should express a possible conflict of interest as the vice-chairman of an educational foundation that underwrites two schools, or at least collaborates with the Government in that, in the East End of London. The Minister may remember that almost before he had drawn his first breath as a Minister, before the Recess last summer, I asked questions about the status of one of those schools in the borough of Tower Hamlets that had made a great deal of effort to get itself into the right position to have its Better Schools for the Future programme agreed. At that time, despite my asking him on two separate occasions, the Minister was not able to answer my questions because, as he honestly said—he is a man who always says what he honestly feels—he did not know the answer.

That was last summer. I expressed on that occasion anxiety that the foundation of which I am vice-chair had already incurred £5 million-worth of expenditure to acquire a piece of land and was incurring significant legal costs as it sought to process the application. Everything was on hold; everything went into abeyance; nobody knew what was happening through the autumn. We worked through the Christmas holidays with lawyers—our legal fees have now accumulated to nearly £500,000—and, just last week, I signed off an agreement with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets for it to hold £7.4 million on behalf of our trust against the day when, or if, the Government allow the £13 million that we still hope to get from the Building Schools for the Future programme because we were one of the schools that was in the end spared last summer.

Is the Minister able at this stage to enlighten me as to whether we can go ahead, because we still do not know? Will he agree that the word used of the BSF by the Government to describe it, inefficient, happens to be exactly the word that the trust of which I am vice-chair thinks applies to the Government to describe the way in which they have handled this matter?

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Griffiths of Burry Port Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I felt as if I was hearing the winding-up speech there—and I wanted to defend local authorities against the charges laid against them, governing bodies against the charge of idiocy levelled against them and the Church of England against just about every charge made against it. As the provider of faith schools, the Church of England, by law established, should be recognised as being in a different category from other faith schools, since it is legally obliged to make provision for all and sundry who come its way. Let a Methodist minister say that because the Bishops may feel a bit more reluctant to do so. However, I look forward to the Minister’s second winding-up speech later.

I have gotten the feeling from various comments in the debate thus far that this is a kind of fill-up-an-empty-week sort of Bill. It has 16 clauses, but I have heard lawyers say that it is poorly drafted, a field day—therefore, a financially profitable field day—for them, and that it leaves more unsaid than said. We have to get through this week; the people backstage have to make their legislative programme in greater detail, and they need more time to do so. I just got the feeling that this was a kind of quickie to fill in time. However, I worry about some of the consequences, intended or unintended, of such legislation if it is passed in its crude form.

For the past 30 years I have been a school governor of secondary schools—grant and voluntary-aided schools, schools in the public sector and even an independent school. Before that I was deputy head of a large lycée in Haiti. I am proud to bring that into my little CV at this point. I have held senior positions in the governance of Roehampton University, and before that I was a lecturer in the University of Wales. Education is in my DNA. I declare my interest because I definitely have an interest to declare—a great interest in the way that we provide for the education of our children. I was the product of free school meals, free transport, national assistance benefit, tons of support from our local community and fantastic teachers. Soon we will be inviting a school friend of mine to join us on the Benches opposite—Michael Howard. We were great pals in the sixth form but his life took him one way and mine brought me another, but great pals we have remained. All of the advantages that I got through my education gave me the possibility of breaking out of the straitjacket of poverty and into worlds that I previously knew nothing about.

I approached this Bill, as I approached its several predecessors, with only one question: will it enhance the opportunities of all children, in the words of an old-fashioned hymn, to,

“lay hold on life, and it shall be thy joy and crown eternally”?

As a Methodist, I almost sang it for you, just to lighten things up at the end of this debate.

A lot has been said which I have no desire to repeat except in a bullet point sort of way, because these are the questions that we want answered. Proper recognition has been made of the virtues and achievements of existing academies, but we also recognise that the existing academies have been set up in a particular way, in particular places and for particular reasons. I need to hear what will happen to the idea and the model when it is expanded outwards to regions for which it was never intended at the time of its creation. We await the Minister’s reply to that. The Minister has been asked serious questions, which I shall not repeat, about all kinds of things, including special needs provision and the role of the local authorities.

My noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley made a speech and what a speech it was. Who needs to say anything more? She said everything that needed to be said. When she finished, I wanted the Minister to get to his feet there and then. I wanted him to be rooted to his place—nailed to his place—until he had answered every one of her questions to her satisfaction. That is the agenda. Those are the questions. That is what we need to hear about how things will go forward.

So much has been said and I have no desire to repeat it. However, I do have two concerns which I shall share very quickly. The first is school governors. I am a school governor, and sometimes I am an idiot, but most of the time I am not. The people I work with are not idiots; they work very hard. They give time sacrificially. They give up working days to attend to the needs of governing schools. In the independent sector, to which the noble Lord who preceded me referred, there may be idiots. I do not know, because I am limited to working in the public sector—the government-supported sector—where the governors are fantastically self-sacrificial.

In the years that I have been a governor, I have noticed a steady accumulation of responsibilities and duties coming our way. Large budgets have to be managed. Health and safety regulations are only some of the welter of regulations which we have to attend to and monitor. Teaching and learning inputs and outputs have to be carefully noted and myriad directives, policy documents, guidelines and orders have to be kept track of. I am not a fool. I know that the previous Government, on whose Benches I sit, have sent a fair few of them my way.

Our governing boards in Islington and Tower Hamlets have somehow kept up to speed. We value the contribution of parent governors and would not want that to be lost in the way that these new academies are governed. The involvement of local authorities is bringing a wider breadth of understanding. Local authorities must not be demonised in our discussion of how education should be provided. Without them, we governors may well have turned out to be idiots. Perhaps governors who are not subject to their healthy support are the ones who turn out to be idiots. I do not know. All I know is that we have been able to draw governors from the wider community—from the worlds of business and the church and from various aspects of culture—to help with the running of schools in disadvantaged London boroughs. I also notice that every new vacancy seems harder to fill. Islington and Tower Hamlets are poor boroughs and it is increasingly difficult to find governors because of the kind of skill set required. I promise you that it was much easier to find governors in the leafy suburbs where I once lived. It was also much easier when I was governor of an independent school.

My questions arising from that are simple. First, how will the governance of these new academies be established? What new duties will accrue as a result of this Bill reaching the statute book? Will the contribution currently made by local authorities now become the responsibility of governors? Will that come our way as well? We are voluntary; we are not paid; there is no expenses scandal in the realm of school governors. We do it for nothing, and it is harder and harder to find appropriately skilled people with the time to do it. As for a separation of powers, the head teacher will be given a chance as the CEO to run the business—but how will we countermand and in some way modify the absolutism of that position? Governors are on the front line of the checks and balances to be provided. We must give scrupulous attention to the way in which we work this aspect out.

Secondly, I am vice-chairman of a foundation that supports two schools—the Central Foundation Schools of London, which are distant relatives of the body so ably chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Turnbull, who spoke earlier. We have to try to get our Central Foundation Girls’ School through the hoops established by Building Schools for the Future, which was set up by the previous Government when they were trying to get a new school built under that programme. As part of preparing ourselves for the new era which we are about to enter, the foundation has put a quarter of a million pounds into paying professional fees. The foundation has committed £7.1 million of its own resources, in addition to government resources, to accomplishing this end. However, I am worried that the BSF programme will not happen and that the money dedicated to it will be siphoned off to fuel the new academies we are discussing. I should like an answer to that question. We have people waiting on us, and not just at the school where I am a governor but also at others. What is happening to the BSF programme? Please give the same diligence and speed to answering that question as was given to the writing of letters to head teachers urging them to become academies.

There is lots to do, and there will be lots of fun. I look forward to it.