Education: Multi Academy Trusts Debate

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Department: Department for Education

Education: Multi Academy Trusts

Lord Storey Excerpts
Wednesday 6th April 2022

(1 year, 11 months ago)

Grand Committee
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Lord Storey Portrait Lord Storey (LD)
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My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, for securing this debate. We note the growth of multi-academy trusts in the school system and the ways in which strong MATs can demonstrate an impact on the education of young people, although it depends on what we mean by “impact”—I will come to that in a moment. I declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association, and I particularly thank the NEU and Professor Anne West for her briefing.

I have always said, “It’s not structure, stupid”—it is about good-quality teachers and the importance of the leadership of any school. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, on that—it is good to see her again talking about education in person, as opposed to looking at her on a screen. As politicians, we talk all the time about structures and the types of schools that we want. One of the reasons that I continued in local politics was that I saw a rather extreme council in Liverpool which decided in the 1980s that all secondary schools would be co-ed and community based and have seven forms of entry, and decided their curriculum. Very good schools and good schools which did not fit into that model—single-sex schools, former grammar schools and small schools—were ruthlessly closed down. Again, we think about structures and not teachers. If we invested in proper training in leadership qualities and proper remuneration and reward for teachers, and if we allowed only good teachers to teach in our schools—I remember Michael Gove always talking about Finland, and I wish we had followed the Finnish model—we would be in a much better place.

Of course, as we have heard, academies were started by Labour as the city academies in 2000, and our very own noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who was then a Downing Street education adviser, is widely credited with the idea and their development. We hear that education is central to the Government’s levelling-up agenda—quite rightly—but, in levelling up, we surely want fairness and equal opportunities for all children and, of course, we want transparency. As the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, said, there is a huge difference between the original stand-alone academies and the schools now in multi-academy trusts. As the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, reminded us, individual academies in multi-academy trusts have no legal identity of their own and have precious little independence; decision-making and the ability to be free from central control, which were promised and espoused by successive Ministers, have gone. Many of them find themselves straitjacketed by the multi-academy trust itself.

It is the MAT, rather than individual schools, that has the legal status and holds a contract with the Secretary of State. This means that schools in MATs have no automatic freedom or ability to make decisions relating to their running and policies, as individual stand-alone academies and maintained schools currently still do. It is like “Back to the Future”: in the past, local councils appointed the head teachers and deputy head teachers, told their schools what they could or could not do, decided what the curriculum would be, et cetera. We have almost got to that stage again, and we want that original view that all our schools should be free to innovate.

I was really heartened to hear the noble Baroness, Lady Fleet, talk about creative subjects in MATs. I was delighted to hear what she said and want to have a conversation with her some time about it, but I am sorry to disagree slightly: if we look at MATs as a whole, the success story in creative subjects that she speaks about is just not there, for all sorts of reasons, particularly in music. Music, which she cares passionately about, is declining. If individual schools had that freedom, it might be that music and other creative subjects would blossom once more.

As they have no individual legal identity, academies in MATs cannot extract themselves from the MAT to exist as an independent entity or to join another MAT. This can leave good, ambitious academies bound to low-performing MAT schools. We know that in maintained schools the governing body sets the ethos, vision and direction and appoints the headteacher. Its composition is set by statute, governors must have the skills to govern and meetings must be reported. We now find MATs without governing bodies, in which governing bodies are seen to get in the way a bit. If you have MATs with individual schools all over the country in them, it is surely crucial that governing bodies exist.

However, in academies, decisions are often taken without transparency by trustees whose appointment is opaque and who may have little, if any, educational expertise or experience. Many academies in MATs have no individual power over governance arrangements and in some cases have been locked into contracts that are no longer appropriate to the values and direction of the staff and pupils. High-performing academies are forced into a MAT on the basis of a single, historic Ofsted report.

Admissions policies for the academies in MATs are overseen by the MAT, with some very questionable admission arrangements. That was raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower. The Government say that academies are free to choose the curriculum for their pupils. This is a complete fallacy because in the MAT there is less flexibility, with the centre often deciding the curriculum. I heard of a school in a very strong ethnic community which had no black studies as part of its curriculum. If it were an individual school, it might have the freedom to decide not to do what the MAT or chief executive told it to do and to have a curriculum unit on black studies.

The lack of transparency in the financial arrangements of MATs has caused real concern. MATs are using public money to pay excessive salaries beyond the boundaries of the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions framework that governs maintained schools. It has also allowed MATs to pay compensation costs without setting out how much public money was used to cover them by using opaque reporting practices to hide payments. Just by chance, the Answer to my Question on excessive salaries for chief executives of MATs came to me today. I am grateful to the Minister for the reply. The noble Baroness, Lady Barran, rightly says:

“It is … essential that we have the best people to lead our schools if we are to raise standards.”


That is absolutely right. She also says—I am grateful for this comment—in her final paragraph:

“The department continues to challenge high pay where it is neither proportionate nor directly linked to improving pupil outcomes.”


This is the crucial line, and we will see what happens:

“We have been reviewing our current approach to challenging high pay and will start engaging trusts on our findings”,


because currently trusts can pay what they like, and many pay their chief executive more than our Prime Minister. Surely that cannot be right.

The procurement practices of academy trusts, as we also heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Blower, are a real concern. Related-party transactions, which are business arrangements between the MAT and a body with which those responsible for the governance of the academy have a personal connection, were worth £120 million in 2015-16 and numbered 3,000 transactions. It cannot be right that lucrative contracts go to companies owned by the chief executive of the MAT. There are numerous examples of where chief executives have got contracts from their business connections.

There should be a common rulebook for all state-funded schools to establish coherence across the system and deliver equality of opportunity for all pupils. The admissions processes should be transparent for all schools and administered by local authorities on behalf of all schools to ensure fairness for all parents and children. All academies should have their legal status restored. MAT accounts should show how all public money is spent and be subject to Ofsted inspection. We have a golden opportunity now. The forthcoming education Bill will give us an opportunity to highlight these issues and, where necessary, to put down amendments to make this happen.