Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I very much support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Low as I follow his interest in special educational needs. I have tabled Amendment 24 in this group, and I intend throughout Committee to introduce amendments and to speak about a particular form of special educational needs: those of children who have grown up in severely disadvantaged and chaotic families and who so often end up being statemented with emotional and behavioural difficulties.

In that context, I ask who will govern these new academies. Who will make the decisions on the ground? I fully acknowledge that parents sponsoring and running a school may be a good idea, but I am not convinced that a whole or even a majority of the governing body composed of parents of children at the school is at all desirable. My own modest experience in the independent sector has certainly indicated that short-termism tends to dominate decisions that are taken when there are too many parents with children at a school. Parent governors will obviously want the best for their children and are right to do so. Indeed, we want the stimulus of parents who push to get the best for their child, but there is a real danger that, if we get the governance of academies wrong, they will end up with the same fate that has unfortunately befallen so many of the admirable Sure Start centres which the previous Government introduced. Money was put to serving the community, the community was encouraged to consider how it wanted the money to be spent and the money was then spent in that way. What has tended to happen is that the brighter, pushier and more intelligent parents have jumped on the bandwagon and got the kind of input and outcomes that they wanted, and the parents with disadvantaged children who have no experience of addressing leadership or influencing events—the hard-to-reach parents—have gone to the bottom of the pile and the funding that was intended to go to them, if it is not wasted, at least does not reach them.

What is the Government’s intention for governance? I refer to all the different kinds of school: free schools, parent-sponsored academies or academies sponsored by existing schools.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I am very pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Low, has set out the case for reconsidering special educational needs, as this is a very important and complex issue. I am also pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, mentioned governance, and that my noble friend Lady Morgan talked about standards, which are key. I understand that some academies have been allowed to opt out of publishing data on pupils’ achievement, which we will no doubt talk about later.

Amendments 2 and 3, in the names of my noble friend Lady Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, respectively, deal with consulting governors. I am a governor of a primary school in Wandsworth, and I think that school governors are important people in all this. I know that some later amendments deal with consultation, but for now I want to talk about governing bodies.

I understand that academies are required to have only one elected parent member on their governing body, while the existing principle is that a third of governing bodies should be parents. Parent governors are crucial. I am a governor at a school in a deprived area of Wandsworth, which attracts parent governors who are very helpful and useful to the school. This is particularly important in early years institutions if they are to become academies. Parents on those bodies will be essential. If parents are not involved in the early years, the children and the school suffer. I should like to ask the Minister about consultation with governing bodies. How is the future governance of schools foreseen?

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I am sure that none of us wishes to extend the debate any longer, but I feel strongly that the support being shown for the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, may be misplaced or perhaps misunderstood. I say that because I am disappointed that we should in any sense offer support to the idea that a governing body with a majority of parents is not a delightful and wonderful thing. I hope that the free schools will include those started by groups of parents because surely parents more than anyone else care about the welfare of their children and know what they want for them.

The commitment that you get from parents involved in the running of a school where their own children are present is one of the solid gold threads of education in this country. Many years ago I was involved in the early days of the pre-school playgroup movement. This was established entirely by mothers for their children and it was absolutely wonderful. The way in which the mothers organised themselves and their children—they wanted the absolute best playgroups and so set up training courses for themselves—is exactly what the big society is about. I hope that some of the free schools will generate that excitement again.

The idea that it is only sharp-elbowed, middle class parents who have this kind of excitement is extraordinary. Many of the pre-school playgroups were—

[Lord Northbourne]

Will the noble Baroness accept that I am prepared to withdraw the phrase “middle class”?

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I am grateful to the noble Lord for that because, certainly, many of the parents came from different backgrounds. I have seen pre-school playgroups on council estates organised by single mothers and so on which were inspiring. So perhaps we should reconsider the idea that a governing body composed of a majority of parents is not necessarily a good thing.

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I turn to Amendment 24. We will require through the model funding agreement with academies that the governing bodies have at least one parent governor. I know that there are those in the Chamber who feel strongly that that number is not enough. A number of later amendments will allow us to discuss that at greater length.

[Lord Northbourne]

Might the Minister perhaps think a little more about the composition of governing bodies and write to me and the Committee? Just to say that there will be more than one parent governor, but, apart from that, that it is a matter of chance, is not quite enough.

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[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, there seem to me to be two distinct issues. The first is that of good practice in the establishment of academies, which was rightly raised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool. It is clearly good practice that maximum efforts are made to engage the local community. Indeed, it is very unlikely that an academy proposal will be a success if it does not have a very wide measure of support from the parental body, the staff body and the wider community. As the right reverend Prelate rightly says, although the statutory consultation requirements are not present in the case of academies because very few statutory requirements apply in respect to academies, an elaborate process of consultation has taken place in relation to their establishment. In virtually every case consent has been given before an academy is established. I say “virtually” because, in the case of some failing schools, it is not possible to gain the consent of the parental body or sometimes even of the governing body. However, that is distinct from the precise provisions we propose to put in the law. As soon as you read Amendment 4A tabled by my noble friend Lady Morgan, you will see the difficulty of trying to put this into legislation. Having dealt with these issues at the Dispatch Box over a long period, I can say that they are only too clear to me. My noble friend’s amendment says that the groups to be consulted must include those it is perfectly reasonable to include, such as:

“(a) the parents of children of the school

(b) the children and young people of the school”.

I entirely agree with my noble friend Lady Massey about the importance of consulting pupils. One of the things the previous Government did which I think was a big step forward was strongly to encourage pupil engagement in schools, including with school councils, which were a very worthwhile development in schools in recent years. I would certainly expect to see school councils consulted before proposals of this kind came forward. However, paragraphs (f) and (g) of the amendment move into the land of the extremely subjective and difficult to determine. Paragraph (f) refers to,

“any local authority which sends a significant proportion of children to the school”.

What is “significant”? We shall be in the courts as soon as an application is challenged on the meaning of “significant”. Paragraph (g) refers to,

“the governing bodies of other schools in the area which might reasonably be considered to be affected by the arrangements”.

But who decides who might,

“reasonably be considered to be affected by the arrangements”?

Those who oppose proposals for schools to become academies will embark on months of litigation and will latch on to ambiguous wording in legislation that enables them to go to the courts.

While the spirit of these amendments is clearly correct and should be encouraged, as we want to see strong parental and community engagement in proposals for academies, I caution the Committee against seeking to put in primary legislation vague requirements which will open the floodgates to opponents to engage in litigation on the ground of ambiguous legal wording.

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I should like to set down a marker. If academies are required to accept children with special educational needs, those who understand the needs of those children should be consulted to find out what the effect of the academy would be on their well-being.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, it seems to me that there is a good deal to be said for consultation in this area, in accordance with the spirit of what was said in relation to the big society, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Liverpool has pointed out. I am sure that we very much support what the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said about the desirability of reducing the impact of litigation in this area, as that could at best produce only bitterness. Although it might provide rewards for some, it is not a particularly attractive process. Perhaps the consultation should be the responsibility of the Secretary of State rather than of one of the parties given that consultation originated by the Secretary of State, on an application being made to him or her, would be more likely to be regarded as proper consultation than would consultation initiated by the party making the application. Open-mindedness is implicit in the notion of consultation and I am not certain that a party wanting to make an application would necessarily have sufficient detachment to make the consultation effective.