Schools Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

10: After Clause 4, insert the following new Clause—
“Academies: local governing bodies(1) A proprietor of two or more Academies must establish a committee (“a local governing body”) for each Academy in its care.(2) A local governing body must comprise the following persons—(a) the headteacher of the Academy;(b) at least one person appointed by the proprietor of the Academy;(c) at least one person employed by the proprietor to work at the Academy, elected by those persons employed by the proprietor to work at that Academy;(d) at least one parent or guardian of a pupil registered at the Academy, elected by the parents and guardians of pupils registered at that Academy;(e) at least one person appointed by the local authority in England in which the Academy is located.(3) A local governing body may apply to the Secretary of State to transfer the Academy for which it is responsible to the care of a different proprietor.(4) Regulations may make further provision about the powers of a local governing body.(5) In this section “local authority in England” has the same meaning as in section 579 of the Education Act 1996 (general interpretation).”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment ensures that there is a governing body for each individual Academy with a role for parents and the local authority on each governing body.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall move Amendment 10 in my name and speak to my Amendment 43 in this group. I preface my remarks by commenting on the important points that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, made about schooling. He is absolutely right that it is the role of school to motivate children. It can do that with the best possible teachers and resources. As the noble Lord rightly said, children get only one chance, but I think he missed out leadership. Leadership is hugely important.

In this debate about academies, one of my concerns has been that we almost regard maintained schools as not very good and have forgotten them. I have rarely heard Ministers praise maintained schools that did a good job in turning themselves around. You have to look only at the area where I taught: there was a maintained secondary school called the Grange School, which had appalling results. Along came a new head teacher, with dynamic leadership, and the school blossomed and thrived in exactly the same way as the schools that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, talked about.

I hope we can stop this business of claiming that one type of school is better than another. I remember the constant “Well, academies’ results are better than those of the maintained sector.” We can all play that game, if we want to. The latest figures out now—I do not particularly want to dwell on this—say that the maintained sector is possibly performing better than the academies sector.

That does not matter now, because we know the Government’s direction of travel. We know that academies started during Tony Blair’s Government and developed during the coalition, with my party working alongside and supporting that development. Much to my regret, as I always thought there would be a dual track in the maintained sector, we saw that if there was a slight suggestion that any school was failing, it was immediately pushed into an academy. But we have moved past those days.

At Second Reading, I welcomed the fact that we are moving towards one system of schooling. It would not have been my choice of how we do it, but we are there now and, over the next 10 years, I think we will see all schools becoming academies and local authorities being given the opportunity to create multi-academy trusts. The amendment in the last group in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, and referred to by my noble friend Lord Addington, is one of the ingredients of a multi-academy trust that is hugely important. We will come back to that in future.

This group is about governance. I remind your Lordships of my major concern. If we look at the top 10 multi-academy trusts, we see that they have 70 or 80 schools. Take United Learning just as an example, with 75 schools which stretch from Barnsley to Stockport, Manchester, Oxford, Bognor Regis and all over the country. The trust and the trustees are headquartered in the south-east. I have concerns about that and about how the trustees of that multi-academy trust relate to local people and local communities. We have always agreed that the local community is an ingredient of a successful school, so we need to look at how we can recognise and develop community links and relate to the community and the locality.

--- Later in debate ---

I hope your Lordships will agree that it is important that the review runs its course before we make any decisions about legislation in this area. I therefore ask the noble Lord, Lord Storey, to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords not to press theirs.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I thank the Minister for her response. It is refreshing to have a Minister who listens and who is open-minded about issues and tries to resolve them. I had intended to push Amendment 10 to a vote, but that would be churlish given the Minister’s offer. I respect her for making it; it is the best way forward. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, it is important to get this right so that schools in multi-academy trusts that are not based in that locality can relate to a local community. I hope she might provide me with the opportunity to talk to her about some of the ideas we may have. I also very much support the important amendment from the noble Duke, the Duke of Wellington. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 10 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Mann (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I feel obliged to make a few comments on the question of what is and what is not religious education.

On Amendment 30 and the discussion of other religions, is the teaching of Judaism regarded as religious education or civics? I declare an interest as on the register as a trustee of a multi-academy trust. A major piece of work is already under way looking at how contemporary Jewish life could, in a very minimal but important way, be put into the curriculum of every school, and how contemporary anti-Semitism could be more than touched on and built into teaching in a timewise, modest way. That could be defined as a discussion of Judaism and classified as religious education.

From my perspective, in a sense, that does not matter. What matters is that somewhere within all secondary schools in the country, pupils get a glimpse of another community and its life, our history with the Jewish community—which has not been the proudest over the past 1,000 years—and some feeling and understanding of what it is like to be Jewish in this country.

I do not have a specific view on whether the amendment would work or not. The spirit of it is very interesting and useful. There is a challenge there and the more debate and discussion we have on the challenge of how other faiths, communities or both are fed into the school curriculum in this small but important way is vital to faith communities, education and the country.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I ought to declare an interest as a former head teacher of a Church of England school. We live in a multicultural, multifaith community, and we make that successful by respecting each and every one of us. I shall come back to that in a moment.

We on these Benches support Amendment 30. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, that you do not have to be a Christian to believe in Christian values, but the values of other faiths are also important. For example, my daughter went to a Jewish school, where she learned many values which were not, initially, her understanding. Because that Jewish school admitted children from different faiths, at 28 she still has lifelong friends from a whole range of different faiths: Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Hindu. She seems to constantly go to Hindu weddings for some reason.

I have a question for the Minister to which she might not know the answer, so perhaps she could respond in writing. I understood that we had SACREs, Standing Advisory Committees on Religious Education; each local authority had to establish a SACRE, which determined the religious syllabus for the schools in its district or city. I do not know how that works now. I was the chair of a SACRE for a couple of years, a long time ago. I do not know how that relates to the previous debate on academies, current religious education in schools or the amendment. If we agree to this amendment, which I hope we do, how does a SACRE get involved? Can it say that it is not in favour of doing this or that? If the Minister does not know or cannot get those in the Box to tell her, perhaps she could write to me. That would be very helpful.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said that RE must be safeguarded in all our schools, and here is the problem. The problem is not religious education; it is the quality of its teaching. I have been in non-faith schools and been appalled at how religious education is taught. Nobody is qualified—it can be the person who is least qualified who does it and, frankly, it would be better not to do it.

I was always a great believer in school assemblies. The law of the land said—I think it was under the Blair Government—that every school had to have a daily act of collective worship. I do not think that happens in most non-aided schools. At one stage, Ofsted used to report if it was not happening. A school assembly can be a wonderful way to celebrate people of faith or no faith—it can bring the school community together. But some schools just go through the motions and try to squeeze 500 pupils into a hall to tick the box that they have had an assembly. Frankly, I would rather that they did not do it than try to fulfil the letter of the law.

I hope the Minister will look kindly on this amendment, because it is very important. On the comments of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, if we agree the amendment, it does not prevent those discussions taking place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, my amendment is based on discussions with the Local Government Association—although, unlike almost every other noble Lord in your Lordships’ Chamber, I am not a vice-president of the LGA, despite years of endless work as a local government councillor.

My amendment, to which the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, has kindly added his name, would enable the Secretary of State to lay regulations to delegate responsibility for calculating and administering aspects of school funding to local authorities, should future government consultations on the direct national funding formula conclude that local authorities would be best placed to do so. Concerns were raised in Committee about the Government’s plan to set more than 24,000 schools’ budgets centrally from Whitehall and remove input from local authorities. School funding is complex, and local education authorities that work closely with maintained schools are very well placed to understand the unique circumstances of each school.

The Government’s own fact sheet on the implementation of the direct national funding formula recognises that there may be some instances where the Government are not able to set school budget allocations at the national level—

“for example, where this is related to specific roles and duties of local authorities, or where local authorities have better access to information that would allow them to determine the funding more accurately.”

The document goes on to say that councils may be better placed to determine certain aspects of school funding, such as additional funding for PFI schools and funding for schools with growing or falling school rolls. The approach to those aspects of funding will be consulted on in the second-stage consultation on the direct national funding formula, which is set to close in September.

As schools’ local point of contact, naturally councils have access to local education data and can work more agilely to respond to changing local circumstances than can be done from the centre. None us should underestimate the huge work involved in having a national system of funding when you are dealing with thousands upon thousands of schools. I wonder at the Government’s nous in taking on that responsibility, but of course this change means that Ministers are accountable to this House and the other place for anything to do with school funding.

I hope the Government will reconsider this measure and that, when they come to consider the results of the second-stage consultation, they will see local authorities as being a partner in the whole funding of local schools. At the very least, if the Government’s ongoing consultation concludes that councils are indeed best placed to deliver certain aspects of school funding, surely the appropriate power should be delegated to councils in order to avoid causing schools unnecessary financial difficulties as the direct national funding formula is implemented. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for reminding me that I should declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

I have three amendments in this group. I think Amendment 59 is pretty self-explanatory: it would increase the pupil premium in 2023-24 by £160 per primary pupil and £127 per secondary pupil from 2022-23 levels, before pegging it to inflation. That is clear.

Amendment 60 is about alternative education. Members will have heard me going on about that for some time, but it really is important that we look at ensuring that when the most vulnerable pupils—often with special educational needs and often from poorer backgrounds—end up in alternative provision, the financing is transferred swiftly along with their education, health and care plans.

That brings me to Amendment 58, which is the one that I really want to concentrate on. This issue is important. Yesterday I sat in on the child vulnerability debate, which was as a result of the Public Services Committee report. During that debate, I heard our Minister say:

“As your Lordships have reflected, the real test of any society is how it treats those who are most vulnerable within it”.—[Official Report, 11/7/22; col. 1350.]


She went on to say, quite rightly, that the priority of her department is to support the most vulnerable children. Who could be more vulnerable than the 800,000 children that the Child Poverty Action Group has found live in relative poverty and do not qualify for a free school meal?

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Storey]

58: After Clause 39, insert the following new Clause—
“Provision of free school lunches to all pupils in households in receipt of universal credit(1) In section 512ZB of the Education Act 1996 (provision of free school lunches and milk)—(a) in subsection (4)(a)(ai), omit “in such circumstances as may be prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph”;(b) in subsection (4)(b)(ai), omit “in such circumstances as may be prescribed for the purposes of this paragraph”.(2) In the Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018 (S.I. 2018/148), omit regulations 2 to 4.(3) The Secretary of State must ensure that funding to maintained schools and Academies is sufficient to provide school lunches free of charge to pupils in receipt of, or whose parents are in receipt of, universal credit.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment extends the provision of free school meals to all children whose parents are in receipt of universal credit, and places a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure that sufficient funding is available to schools to provide this.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to test the opinion of the House.