Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Hill of Oareford Excerpts

Thursday 1st May 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford (Con)]

My Lords, 15 years ago, almost to the day, I had the privilege of standing at that Dispatch Box to introduce the then Academies Bill. I thought it might be helpful, as we think about this new Bill and what it will mean for academies in future, to set out what we were trying to achieve back in 2010.

First, and very much our starting point, we aimed to build on the foundations laid by the previous Government. We could not have been clearer at the time about the debt we owed to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and to many other noble Lords we have heard about today, reaching all the way back in the apostolic succession to my noble friend Lord Baker of Dorking. Secondly, we were trying to extend professional independence and give schools more freedom to run their affairs as they thought best. Thirdly, we were seeking to increase parental choice.

For at least 20 years, successive Governments have sought to defend and extend academy freedoms—freedoms that were entrenched in what were supposed to be legally binding funding agreements. By contrast, this Bill breaks that consensus. It sets out explicitly to reduce academy freedoms and professional independence, with less freedom over the hiring of staff, the curriculum and the expansion of popular schools.

That begs the question: why? What is the reason for this change of direction? Have some problems arisen from academy freedoms which the Government, quite properly, need to fix? For example, has the ability of academies to take on non-QTS teachers led to a drop in standards? Has the freedom for academies not to have to follow the national curriculum led to worse results? Have popular academies which chose to increase their numbers let down their pupils in some way? If they had, I feel sure that the Government would have told us. Perhaps I missed it, but I have not seen any explanation of the problems that these measures seek to address. Until we hear a convincing explanation of what the problems were and how removing these freedoms will put them right, doubt will remain as to what the motivation for these changes really is.

After all, whom do they benefit? They certainly do not benefit head teachers of academies or parents. They do not seem to benefit teachers in academies, and I cannot see how they benefit children. I can see only one group that will be pleased by these changes, and that is the unions—and there, perhaps, we find some of the rationale for these changes.

Surely we all agree that the only way to get lasting improvement in any public service is to increase professional independence. But this Bill deliberately sets out to reduce professional independence. Through the constraints on the expansion of popular schools, it will reduce parental choice. It breaks the consensus that many people in this House worked so hard and carefully to build up. After all the progress that we have made in schools in England over the past 20 years, this Bill, sadly, points us not forward but backward.