Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Murphy of Torfaen Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Wednesday 15th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the arguments just made by the noble Duke about maths schools. I am not sure what the Minister will say—maybe she will solve the problem. I am not arguing that they need to be more independent than any others; the argument about the MAT is about the nature of the partnership the school is going into. I value partnerships—they are really important—but I can see the argument that maths schools need different partnerships from other secondary comprehensive schools that might go into MATs.

This is because we are not likely to have a whole host of these maths schools throughout the country. They are few in number, a bit like the music and ballet schools. Whatever you think of them, their aim is to take the most able children in that subject and support them to reach as high a level as possible. We will never aim to have thousands of them, so I worry that, if you make their key partnership in future—if you do not want them to stand by themselves—to be part of a MAT, you give the ownership of that scarce resource to that MAT. Just as we have competition between stand-alone schools, I am absolutely certain, because it exists at the moment, that we will have competition between MATs. They will not all share their resources; they will compete with each other. That is what they are doing now and will do in future. I am just not confident that the competitive environment in which MATs exist—trying to get more kids and the best results—will lead to them sharing the special skills in the maths schools in the way they should.

The maths schools have a different set of partnerships. Unlike the MATs, they have very good relationships with universities and business. Progress-wise, they look up. So I am not fearful that they will fall prey to the problems of standing alone. I do not think they stand alone; they have a different set of relationships in their partnership. To take them out of that partnership and make them a legal part of the ownership of one MAT would make it far more difficult for them to share their skill across a geographical area. I can just bet which MAT they will end up going into—the one that already has the most high-performing children, because it will think that it can use them better than anyone else.

Go for the partnership, as they already have existing ones, but be really wary of treating them the same as any other academy, as they were never set up in that way. I hope that complements what the noble Duke said about independence; the nature of the partnership needs a great deal of thought.

[Lord Murphy of Torfaen (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham’s amendments, so ably spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester. I do not have an awful lot of experience of academies; we do not have them in Wales. I suppose we are a bit old-fashioned, but the system seems to work quite well. However, I have nothing against them. They were introduced by the Government of which I used to be a member and I wish them well.

It is particularly important that church and state schools should have the same opportunities as academies. There is no reason in this wide world why a Church of England school or a Roman Catholic school—I am a Catholic—should not have the same opportunities as a state school. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester rightly referred to the fact that, in England, one in three schools is a church school. Ten per cent of all schools in England are Catholic schools, and 850,000 pupils go to them. Both Church of England and Catholic schools do a tremendous job in very deprived areas all over England—and, indeed, although it does not apply in this debate, in Wales.

There is a very strong case for ensuring that church schools have equal status in the Bill; handbooks and various bits of guidance from the Department for Education are okay, but they are not enough. If there is to be proper equality between church schools and state schools, that has to be recognised in law. Those issues revolve around governance structures, appointments, religious education and collective worship. I know that the Catholic authorities, all dioceses in England and the Catholic Education Service warmly support the amendments spoken to by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester, as I do. I wish them well.