Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

2nd reading & Lords Hansard - Part one
Monday 23rd May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Baker. I listened to what my noble friend Lady Morris said about following our noble friend Lord Blunkett and, very strangely, I find myself in exactly the same position with the noble Lord, Lord Baker. It is quite odd.

I should remind the House of my interests in the register as an owner of Suklaa, which is an education consultancy, and in particular as chair of the trust board for E-ACT, a multi-academy trust of 28 schools around the country.

I say at the outset that I am happy with the measures in the Bill around attendance, the regulation of independent educational institutions, teacher misconduct and the home-school register. I join noble Lords who paid tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who unfortunately could not be with us today. I may be persuaded on the national funding formula as well. I remember, as a Dorset MP, consistent concern about how my political opponents in county hall were not passing on through the schools forum the amount of money that the more deprived schools in my consistency needed because they were spreading it evenly across the shire county.

However, like other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Baker, I have real concerns about Part 1 in respect of academy standards and regulation. The Government are trying to solve the right problem: the problem around academy agreements and the multitude of contracts between the Secretary of State and the academies and how confusing that is, the inability of Parliament to be able to easily legislate around what happens in academies, and the use of the academy handbook. For that to be regularised is the right problem for us to solve. However, the solution is jaw-dropping: making the Secretary of State effectively the chief education officer for 25,000 schools, and what is being proposed around standards, intervention and termination.

I understand that, if you are in the centre, you see when there are failures and you want to be able to use all those powers, but the problem—I say this quietly as far as my Front Bench is concerned but ask government Ministers to listen—is that, even if they think they will use these powers only when they need to and in the best possible taste, what about future Secretaries of State? They will not be in office for ever. Do they really want to give future Secretaries of State the power to do what on earth they like to schools in this country? That is what this Bill allows them to do. I do not think they really want that, or that the system that will implement this has the capacity to do so well.

The reality is that regional schools commissioners will have teams of officials who in the end will be going out to multi-academy trusts and telling them what to do. I like to think that they will all be of the calibre needed to be able to do that but, in the end, I am afraid that I do not believe it. Unfortunately, when the Bill talks about academy proprietors, it is silent on the difference between members and trustees. I want to be able to explore that in Committee because there are some real differences, for example around termination.

I did a bit of rough maths. If every school were to become part of a MAT, with 10 schools in a MAT and 10 trustees in each MAT, that would mean 25,000 trustees you have to be able to recruit. We have to work out whether a system in which you are dictated to on everything you have to do is the right environment for people to want to be trustees; I would question that. I see this as potentially the end of innovation in schools and the end of academy freedom. In particular, I ask the Minister whether this is the end of the curriculum freedoms that academies want to be able to enjoy.

This Bill doubles down on the direction of travel of the last 12 years, as my noble friend Lady Morris said. It is not empathetic. Will it help to recruit more and better MAT trustees? Will it help to get us more and better school leaders and teachers? It is understandable from the centre, but not in terms of incentivising us to be involved in the system. As others have said, we need a Bill that sets out a different vision for schools. There is a growing consensus for change in this country. The Government’s targets for education by 2030 will not be met unless we do things differently.

The noble Lord, Lord Altrincham, talked about mental health and well-being, as others have done. I read this weekend that 420,000 children are being treated every month in this country for mental health issues. That is a crisis. Josh MacAlister’s report on children’s social care and the need for a family health service in schools is out today. We need to be putting children first and designing a school system. It is a universal service for children that should think properly about how we help children, especially the most vulnerable, to have the breadth of knowledge, of skills and of behaviours that they need to thrive, emotionally, socially, environmentally and economically. Then, with that vision, I think we can all go forward together in this House.