Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I wish particularly to support Amendment 20 in this group, the direction of which seems to be just and fair for future academies and for schools choosing to remain under the direction of local authorities. Any clarification that the Minister can give us would be very helpful.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support the thrust of these amendments, which are about the concern that, under the new pattern of arrangements, funding for essential services to schools will be depleted. This morning, at a meeting on child protection, the head teacher of a large secondary school in north London said that he would like to have a social work team attached to his school because it would make the world of difference. But he cannot get access to that resource. I have heard of other schools with similar resources, which they find extremely beneficial. It would simply take the strain off teachers who could pass that responsibility to social workers who have the relevant expertise and know-how to connect with the necessary services for the child. I hope that in this process we do not lose the push towards proper partnership with all the services which are working to improve the protection and safeguarding of children.

At the same meeting, the director for quality management of Ofsted said that his research at Ofsted indicated that a very important factor in improving the protection of children is seeing that there is a close partnership between schools, social care and all the services, including health, in the area. It is not just about tackling the problem when children are clearly in need. It is about ensuring that the mainstream services are thoroughly connected together and are all working in partnership to promote the welfare of children.

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I almost feel that I should declare an interest. As the daughter of a primary school head, I feel my mother’s ire rising in my bones, particularly when the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the lack of managerial capacity in primary schools. That may well be true in some small primary schools. However, not only are there are many which have extremely intelligent, competent and well educated heads and deputy heads in charge, but even a small primary school has a governing body. Exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, many of these primary schools, particularly in rural communities, are at the heart of the community and can attract very senior and experienced businesspeople and professionals from the community to their governing bodies and the chairmanship of those bodies. Therefore, they do not lack that kind of hard-edged business experience in running their affairs. The right reverend Prelate mentioned the primary schools in his own diocese. I have had two meetings in the past two weeks with church primary schools, both of which are very keen to become academies quickly. I also met their chairmen of governors, who were very competent and in both cases well able to cope with the business affairs that would be involved in running an academy. We should not underestimate the importance of governors in this whole pattern.

The right reverend Prelate’s final point about the one-third of primary schools that are church schools seems important. They have a diocesan board of education; they are a natural federation to start with. At one of the meetings that I referred to, the diocesan director of education was present. She outlined the various ways in which she could support schools in the diocese that become academies. There will be a natural leadership in the diocese, coming from the diocesan board, which in many cases replicates the sort of support—perhaps not financially, but in other ways—which a local authority has previously given to schools.

Finally, in urging that we write delay into the Bill, it seems that we totally forget that any application to become an academy goes to the Secretary of State and his civil servants. He has the power to delay an application, to turn it down entirely or to tell somebody to come back. If a primary school with 23 pupils says that it would like to be an academy, I imagine that the department would perhaps say, “No, unless you come back in a federation with five or six other schools and proper arrangements in place”. The Secretary of State is a wise and intelligent person, with wise and intelligent civil servants, who will make sure that approval is given only to those primary schools—as to all schools—which can convince him and his civil servants that they are able, in all sorts of ways, to take on the responsibilities of becoming an academy. It is already in the Bill that the Secretary of State will be in charge of that approval. We do not need to write in delay. The Secretary of State has the power to enforce delay on those that are not fit.

I do not think that these amendments are necessary. There are already many ways in which the safeguards that we all seek for the primary school academies are built into the structure.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, two important points weigh with me in considering these amendments. The first is the principle of whether primary schools should have a place as academies in the future. I assent to that: I think that they should have the option of becoming academies. The second is the practical point of whether all primary schools are capable of operating under such a system. The answer is clearly no. I made that point at Second Reading. Then the question is—this was put by my noble friend Lady Perry—whether we deny that opportunity now through legislation or look seriously at the fact that there is a double lock on this door. The first lock is whether the head teacher and governing body are prepared to apply for such status. If they apply mistakenly, because they have 23 pupils, perhaps the judgment will be made against them. The second lock is that of the Secretary of State giving assent. We should stress to Secretaries of State—some of them are exceptionally good, although I shall not name names—that they are taking responsibility for this and will be judged on the decisions that they make on primary schools. As has been pointed out around the House, some primary schools may well be in difficulty. The Secretary of State will be judged on the decisions that are made but we should not rule out having this option in legislation.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt in respect of primary schools becoming academies. We wrestled with this question in the three years that I was Schools Minister in the old Department for Children, Schools and Families. In discussions on this issue with my noble friend Lord Adonis, it was necessary to go back to first principles about why we were having academies in the first place.

Many people think that the secret of academies lies simply in their freedoms from the constraints of the national curriculum, teachers’ pay and conditions and other matters. Freedoms are a part of it, but it is a question of how they are used. It is important to have the leadership capacity, supported by strong governors, to deploy those freedoms effectively to improve children’s education. Academies also offer opportunities for innovation. However, I do not believe that 23,000 independent schools—that is the implication of primary schools becoming academies—are sustainable on the ground of the capacity for consistently strong leadership.

England has some of the greatest state schools in the world but we also have some weak schools. Our problem is variability, not the overall standard. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that we have some wonderful leaders in our primary schools and some great governing bodies, but I say with the greatest respect to her that we also have some slightly less good leaders and less good governing bodies. We have to be cautious about how we design a system that is dependent on them all being excellent. I advocate—I did so as a Minister—that we pursue primaries becoming academies as part of all-through academies. I greatly encouraged all-through academies when I was a Minister and we are starting to see more of them spring up.

I am not completely against the notion that there might be circumstances where groups of primaries could become academies, but that needs further consideration. I was interested in the arguments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in respect of Amendment 5, but my caution about groups of academies in some ways relates to what the right reverend Prelate said about the religious foundation of schools. The obvious form of a group of primaries would be on a geographical basis, but then you start to lose choice and diversity. My experience of dealing with various diocesan boards is that they are very nervous about joint governance of academies—for example, between the Anglican Church and the Catholic Church. In the communities that I represented in Dorset, we could not get boards to agree to single primary schools entering such arrangements because of the importance of their being able to preserve the tenets of their faith and wanting to represent that in the school. Parents also value that choice and diversity in being able to send their children to a school with the sort of foundations that they value.