Free Schools and Academies

Lord Nash Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as chair of Future Academies, a multi-academy trust with 10 schools in London and Hertfordshire, 7,000 pupils and a SCITT teacher-training facility. I support the child protection elements in the Bill and commend the Government for bringing them forward so swiftly, but I do not support the academy and free school elements.

I am a child of Labour. I owe my place in your Lordships’ House to the Labour Party as my wife and I, via the charity we established, were appointed in 2008 by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as sponsors of a failing school, Pimlico, just down the river. That drew me further and further into education. Since then, Future has made it its mission to take on failing schools and has set up a new outstanding primary school. We also have a particular emphasis on a very strong extracurricular programme—extra sport, music, drama, trips and residentials—and a very strong careers offer.

All our schools are now rated good or outstanding except one, which is acknowledged by Ofsted to be rapidly working its way towards “good” and one we took on only a few weeks ago. Our most recent success, Phoenix Academy in Hammersmith—in special measures when we took it over—has a 50% pupil premium cohort, largely drawn from the White City estate. It recently received “outstanding” from Ofsted in all grades and is now in the top 2% of schools by progress in the country.

All of this is thanks to our superb staff. Working in a MAT, our most effective school leaders can paint on a broader canvas, rather than just running one school, as was the case under the previous highly fragmented school system. We are also able to employ very well-qualified people in the centre on finance, HR, IT and estates. Our outstanding SCITT trains teachers in our pedagogy and knowledge-rich curriculum, and we can offer our staff excellent career development opportunities to work in different schools. Indeed, they often say that one of the best aspects of working in a MAT is having strong career development opportunities, which they could not have when they worked in a single school. Our heads often say that, when they ran one school, they used to lose all their best staff because they could not offer them those opportunities. We also have a curriculum centre that provides teacher resources and greatly assists our teachers’ workload.

Across the country, there are many MATs using their freedoms to dramatically improve the life chances of their children. The Labour Party should be rightly proud of this, as it started the programme. My grandmother used to say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. I look forward to the Minister giving us her evidence-based reasons why the Government seek to change the system. I am also concerned about the weak and optional nature of the intervention powers envisaged, which seem a licence for endless JRs. I say that as someone who was JR’d up to the Court of Appeal—and that was after the objectors broke into my office. Surely, we do not want to go back to those days.

The sector is in shock, confusion and worry about the proposed changes coming, as they do, without any consultation, ahead of both a new Ofsted framework and a curriculum and assessment review. This is leaving a total lack of clarity concerning accountability and intervention, described by one school leader to me as leaving them trying to put the tail on the donkey. I urge the Government to think again.

Lastly, Future Academies runs the Government’s Latin excellence programme, under which we have brought Latin to 40 schools not previously offering it and 8,000 pupils. Unhappily, the Government plan to curtail this programme next month, half way through the school year, leaving those schools stranded. Many schools will not be able to offer Latin going forward and pupils may not be able to complete their GCSEs. I have written to the Minister about this. I understand that a meeting with the Secretary of State is being organised and this may involve a number of high-profile figures who are very concerned about the matter. I would be grateful if the Minister could facilitate this meeting with the relevant school leaders from Future Academies as a matter of urgency.