Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, this is an important Bill which I look forward to supporting. The direction of travel is right. It is a further extension on the journey from the city technology colleges of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, through the changes that have been achieved over the years to complement the work of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and I pay tribute to them both.

I make two initial points in welcoming the Bill. First, I was delighted, perhaps even a little surprised, to find the Minister exhibiting just a touch of humility—we have not heard an awful lot of that from the Front Benches—in saying that it was important to manage expectations, which is absolutely right. No legislation that I have seen in a comparatively short time in this House can ever achieve what it is often alleged to be able to achieve. That is as true of this Bill as any other. Legislation can take you so far, but, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, stressed in a magnificent speech—I have to say that I did not agree with all of it, but it was magnificent none the less—it is the quality of teaching and school leadership that carry you the rest of the way. This is an enabling Bill. We should have just a touch of modesty about what it will achieve, while making sure that we have the support in place to make it work for at least some of those in the system who needed support most clearly.

Secondly, the Bill is part of a one-wheeled tandem. In the Minister’s speech in the debate on the Address last week, we were promised further legislation on standards, dealing effectively with regulation and accountability. These are not add-ons; they are absolutely essential. It would be good to have seen the whole picture. We have not, but I am happy to proceed in the expectation that we will have a considered legislative programme put before us that deals with standards, accountability and regulation. That has been stressed by other speakers in your Lordships' House.

One other minor surprise about the speeches so far is that both Front Benches seem to share an assumption that there is something out there called a two-tier system that is either to be resisted or will inevitably follow the implementation of the legislation. We have a two-tier system—or, even more realistically, a multi-tier system—already in place. There are schools that do the most that they possibly can—most schools do that—but have high achievement for a whole variety of reasons, in the end to do with the quality of teaching and leadership; and there are schools that fail our pupils. We have heard the statistics—I shall not repeat them—about those who leave primary school without an adequate grasp of reading. That is a handicap the importance of which we can hardly assess, sitting as we are on these privileged Benches. There are pupils who leave school—they are no longer children—not having picked up the basics of what is essential for playing a strong and important part in employment, family and community, all of which we would normally expect to follow. We have at least a two-tier system.

It used to be very clear and straightforward. When I first came to London in the mid-1970s, I had young children, all at primary school stage, and they went to the local primary school. We then inquired about secondary schooling. We were from a privileged community, a small town in Scotland, where there was one secondary school which was terrific. That was not true of what we found in south-east London. We got the message that there were the private schools for which you paid, that there were the rest which had a very rigid banding system, A, B and C—your may remember this from the days of Ken Livingstone—and then that there was a tiny silver lining for some which I used to think of as the Holland Park syndrome: those who could afford to buy a house in that educationally favoured part of town. We have had two- and three-tier systems; we have got them now. It is not a question of whether the Bill will create a further one; it is whether it will move us forward and erode some of the differences that we all deplore in the schools of this city and of this country. I have to say that the same is true in Scotland, despite its traditional reputation in this area.

A second criticism that has been made of the Bill in principle is that it will weaken the power and role of local authorities and reduce their capacity to afford to provide common services. To that, I say that there is a risk. A very interesting proposal was made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, about giving specific functions to local authorities dealing with children with special educational needs—that idea should bear very close scrutiny. There may well be other functions which a local authority, alive to the shape of the local community—language difficulties is an obvious one—is given. One sees across the schools in this city and elsewhere specific problems—they are not the problems of Walsall or of parts of the north of England and central Scotland—to do with the fact that, in many a school, 40, 50 or 60 languages are spoken at home which are not English. That creates specific educational problems. We need to address that issue with the same attention as properly as we have begun to pay to special educational needs. I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I have visited some of his schools—I should not call them his schools, but some of the schools which he has been instrumental in helping and enabling to flourish. These schools are working as consortia and groups. They have sharing capacities, and we have heard about the sixth forms. But there are other capacities that they share that make it possible for schools not directly linked to the local authority as now to begin to plan for the future and share common problems as well as common capacities. This is one way forward.

I go back to one of my early points. A significant number of schools will become academies; the fact that 1,000 have expressed interest is reason enough to go ahead with the Bill. If no one was interested, I would hear the siren calls and say, “Drop it”. But if 1,000 schools think that this is worth looking at, it is worth looking at. These are the teachers and head teachers, the parents and the governing bodies, which will be able to debate locally whether it is the right thing for them.

In passing, I should say that many of those schools are primary schools, which may be quite small in some cases. So they will need partners; they will not have the capacity to take the leadership on matters of property or salary—the whole range of matters about which some noble Lords know a great deal more than I do. The capacity to run a school at that level is like running elements of a small or medium-sized business. Small primary schools will not have that capacity and will need help and co-operation and those who can support them. No single structural or legislative change will solve the problem that we have had as long as we have been able to measure ability and outcomes, nor will it solve all the problems, not even this one. But if it can move us forward, that is immensely important and we must take it on board.

The Bill is largely permissive, as has been stressed, rather than coercive. Schools doing well are invited to express an interest. However, one element of possible coercion or compulsion is complicit in the Bill. Underperforming or failing schools can be required to step out from under the guise of local authorities and possibly to become academies. I would not object—indeed, I think that it is very important—to that capacity. I stand before noble Lords as the person who signed the first order declaring a school in England to be failing, many years ago when I helped to set up Ofsted. It was a considered and difficult decision, but there are such schools, and the pupils in them have to be rescued and helped. I refer noble Lords to an article in today’s Times by Libby Purves. But there may be complex reasons for why a school is not delivering; there may be a definition of what it is to deliver that is not quite adequate or right for the context of the school. All I ask is that the Secretary of State and Ministers show pragmatism and empiricism in deciding what to do about these schools and do not follow an ideology that may develop, because that would be the death of the importance of this particular approach. This is a pragmatic and empirical way in which to help to improve schools.

Finally, if we are to move in this direction—and we will—there are some measures that we must put in place to deal with those schools that are not doing so well. First, the Secretary of State must have the power to intervene and require special measures, including the possibility of academy status. Secondly, the public commitment given in the speech last week that there would be further legislation on accountability, regulation and standards must be brought forward as soon as possible. Thirdly, the commitment to pupil premiums is very important. I confess an interest: I chair the Goldsmiths’ Company Education Committee, an education charity. One of the main things that we do, which has been successful, is to give small sums of money up to £6,000 a year to head teachers of schools in difficult areas—most of them in this city, but some in Walsall, which I have already mentioned. We give them this money, which they welcome not only because it is cash but because it is money without a tag attached. The inventiveness and imagination that they show in applying it to the most needy corners of the school means that there is clear to us a huge, untapped reservoir of ability if we allow the professionals to have a proper part in the process.