Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Lord Knight of Weymouth Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Spielman (Con)]

My Lords, first, I express my support for what the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, has put forward in his amendment. In many respects, the amendment that I am about to speak to and the twin amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Barran are an elaboration and development of the principle.

We have a long-established regulatory model focused at school level and a much more recently established regime for academies and academy trusts. As the noble Lord said, there was a separate regime for local authority school improvement work, which was abolished some years ago—perhaps a good idea, perhaps not. The noble Lord said that the underlying model evolved in the 1980s and was one of high autonomy for schools, balanced by strong accountability. It is interesting that few in English education even recognise that this comparatively high level of autonomy continues today, relative to other countries.

There has been constant pushback on accountability for decades, whatever form it takes, and there have been important changes in recent years. A powerful model of autonomous school group operation has emerged with academy trusts. In these groups, some decisions and activities can sit at the centre or in schools, depending on the model adopted. There is a wide range of models, from the very highly integrated through to the highly devolved. Much good has flowed from this model—as well as, inevitably, problems from time to time—but regulation and oversight have not quite caught up. Let us remember that, for an academy, the legal entity is the academy trust, so it is the trust that carries the legal responsibility and is properly held accountable at group level, not just at school level.

On the other hand, inspection has been constrained by government policy to school level. Bizarrely, school leaders are increasingly being held accountable for decisions and actions that actually sit elsewhere in a MAT. It is unsurprising that some school leaders feel that they are bearing a disproportionate share of the accountability burden relative to their bosses.

Of course, the DfE has been extending and elaborating its oversight model for trusts, but this remains heavily reliant on self-reported and outcome data, and perhaps lacks some of the insight that comes from expert scrutiny of MATs’ central operations and professional dialogue with MAT leaders.

It is widely acknowledged that there has to be more scrutiny of MATs. Outcome measures alone do not give enough assurance that MATs are using their freedoms well to provide education with real substance and integrity and the support that enables all children to grow into resilient and competent adults.

My Amendment 436ZZB and the immediately preceding amendment from my noble friend Lady Barran are intended to draw together a somewhat disparate set of provisions to help create a coherent regime for the regulation of academy trusts. This regime would set out clear purposes and priorities for the regulation of academy trusts, although the interests of children, and parents on behalf of children, should still come first. It would recognise the varying structures of trusts and the divisions of responsibilities within them and be flexible enough to respond appropriately. It would draw on expert insights and judgments in arriving at rigorous and well-evidenced decisions and keep the various bodies involved in education regulation in alignment. DfE, Ofsted, the admissions adjudicator and others each have their own sphere, but there is further to go in thinking systemically about how to make sure that those levers fit together in the most effective and efficient way.

Finally, it is very important that there is the right level of transparency on this work—something to which the amendment from my noble friend Lady Barran draws our attention. Confidence in the system depends on making sure that people can see what is being done and understand the basis for it. Those transparency provisions are, therefore, also really important, and I hope they will be taken on board.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak in support of Amendment 435 in the name of my noble friends, led by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett. In doing so, I remind the House of my interests, in particular as chair of the E-ACT multi-academy trust.

I have thought for some time that it is important that we bring forward the inspection of MATs. I was therefore delighted to see it as an election commitment from the Labour Party when it went into the last election, and I have been looking forward to the Government implementing it. It is right that the Bill is being used as an opportunity to introduce powers to do that. It would then be up to the department and the Government to do the necessary work with Ofsted to get ready for that, so that Ofsted has the expertise within its inspectorate on how MATs work—something that it currently does not consistently have. We therefore should not rush at this, and I have some nervousness about some of the other amendments that are arguing for a six-month implementation timeline. We should leave the timeline to the Government until they are confident that the expertise exists to do it.

I am also interested in whether we should define the proprietors of academies and local authorities as responsible bodies for schools, so that we can have a single inspection framework for both local authorities and academies in respect of their inspection and get more consistency across both forms of governance.

If we are inspecting those responsible bodies—MATs in this case—it is also interesting to look at whether there is an opportunity for rationalisation around inspection. Good, well-governed, well-run MATs have good school improvement capacity and good capacity to support the schools that are in their trusts financially, in procurement and in all the various aspects of running good schools. After Ofsted has carried out an effective inspection of the MAT, it then ought to be possible to use a risk-based approach to decide whether it needs to inspect all the schools in that trust. That rationalisation could then release capacity for more consistency within Ofsted. One of the main complaints about Ofsted in the school system is the consistency of the outcomes of inspections. I do not blame Ofsted; it has operated within considerable budgetary constraints and has had to take its fair share of resource cuts over the period, and that has an impact on the consistency of inspections. Anything we can do to increase capacity should be welcomed.

This goes to the importance of governance. When the noble Lord, Lord Gove—who is not in his place—was the Secretary of State and oversaw the rapid expansion of academies, to which my noble friend Lord Blunkett alluded, I do not think he properly appreciated that one of the core elements of the success of the academies that I oversaw when I was the Academies Minister under the previous Labour Government was around governance. It was from having individuals such as the noble Lords, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew, put their names to a multi-academy trust and their reputations on the line to ensure that the governance was strong. In those reforms from the noble Lord, Lord Gove, we had this rapid expansion without a serious focus on whether or not the governance was improving alongside it.

So I also encourage the Government, as part of thinking about this, to review the governance of multi-academy trusts to ensure that we have good consistency as we expand the number of MATs and seek to improve their improvement capacity. As part of that, I ask them to look at the appointment and term of office of the members of academies. The five members of E-ACT are wonderful people, and I thank them for their service, but they are self-appointed and appointed for as long as they want to do the job. It is a slightly odd arrangement in that they are the people I am accountable to as the chair of the trust, while their accountability—and to whom—is questionable.

I would be interested in a solution whereby the local authorities within which the MAT operates appoint the members, and then the trust board would be accountable through that route to the local authorities. In that way, the local authorities would not be operating schools through the trust, but the governance would be accountable to local authorities. That would bring better consistency and better accountability into the system. On that basis, I support my noble friend Lord Blunkett and his amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, I support the overall principle of this group. There are three interesting amendments, which are slightly different, and I am sure that Ministers, if they are ready to agree this—and it reflects what the Government committed to in their manifesto—will want to take it away. I think it is a sign of the maturity of the academy trust system that the governance of multi-academy trusts or the way that they are working should be inspected. Whether that is done when individual schools of the trust are inspected, when questions are asked about the running of the trust, is perhaps open for discussion, but I support the overall principle.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, said the buck stops here. In the last group I asked who is calling the shots. We were both making the same point about accountability. In all the conversations I have had with multi-academy trust leaders in preparation for proceedings on this Bill, they are confident about the education they are offering, the schools they are running and the standards they are setting. Whether we get to the group today or not, we will talk about school improvement, and the reality is that the capacity for school improvement in England sits with our multi-academy trusts. They know a lot about the education system and, therefore, I do not think that they would be put off by being inspected.

Of course, you will not want to cut across any other regulators that the multi-academy trusts are already governed by. Many of the multi-academy trusts are set up as companies and so they are regulated by Companies House; they will be producing accounts and will be accountable in that way. There is an opportunity for this legislation to be wary of creating regulatory burden creep, but it could ask the right questions.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, just raised an interesting question about local authorities. I think he was talking about the inspection of local authorities, as many of them are in the same positions as multi-academy trusts. Consistency of inspection is exactly what I was asking for in the last group, and I have to say that I am slightly disappointed, unsurprisingly, by the answer that I had from the Government Front Bench on that. Consistency in accountability, and in understanding who is really responsible for the education, is important.

I am very pleased to see the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I should be very interested to see how the Government take this overall principle forward. I am sure there will be debates about it and I am sure we will disagree with some of it, but it is an important principle. It is a sign of the maturity of the multi-academy trust system, which is to be welcomed and which we will debate in the next few groups.

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[Lord Lucas (Con)]

My noble friend of course runs a good academy trust. Where things are not so good, you can get a lot of variability between the schools that append themselves to a trust. So this has to be judged on the occasion: you cannot just say you we will inspect the middle and not the outside; if the middle is not functioning well, the outside can really be very up and down.

I will add a couple of thoughts. First, I do not like the idea from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, of local authorities appointing. The way you gather good people together is by having a few excellent people in the middle who want other excellent people around them. Then you have Ofsted, or whoever, saying “Is this working?”. Local authorities just tend to appoint anybody, and those people do not turn up or know enough. Where I have seen local authorities appointing boards, it has been uniformly a disaster.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I am not suggesting that local authorities appoint the boards; I am suggesting that local authorities appoint the members who, in effect, are the shareholders to whom the boards have to report on an annual basis at the annual general meeting.

[Lord Lucas (Con)]

Yes, but we still want responsive, interested and active people there—and that is not what you get in my experience.

Secondly, I hope that inspection will look at the connection with parents, which can be hugely different across MATs. Some parents have a real connection with the school, and the school does that interface very well. With other, more distant MATs, anything that a parent is worried about just disappears into the fog and they never really know how to work with them. A good MAT will work well with parents, and Ofsted ought to look at that.

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Moved by

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

436ZA: Clause 45, page 108, line 13, at end insert “qualified,”
Member's explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to extend investigations to those qualified teachers currently teaching overseas. The effect being that should they return to the UK, or seek employment with employers who make a prohibition check with the Teaching Regulation Authority, incidents carried out overseas will be covered.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 436ZB in my name. I remind your Lordships of my education interests, particularly as the chair of the Council of British International Schools. I thank Emily Konstantas, chair of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition and CEO of the Safeguarding Alliance, for her assistance with these amendments. She has given me ample evidence of two safeguarding loopholes that we are seeking to close with these amendments.

First is the problem that under current legislation the Teaching Regulation Agency can act only where misconduct occurs in England. This means that it is not possible for a teacher qualified in England who then commits an offence overseas to have that included on the register. Indeed, our experience is that there is not even any means to report the offence to the TRA that the individual is a risk to children.

International schools routinely use prohibition checks upon recruitment of teachers, so this loophole is significant for them. If an individual has committed an offence in a school in one country and then goes to another, that offence is not picked up by the prohibition check. Therefore, as it stands, prohibited individuals can exploit international mobility to avoid scrutiny and teachers dismissed abroad for misconduct can return to England or elsewhere unchecked. With pupils placed at risk in this way, the integrity of the profession is undermined. My amendment simply applies the teacher misconduct regime to anyone who has at any time been qualified to teach in England and thus closes the loophole.

The second problem is the growing practice of prohibited individuals legally changing their names between organisations and across countries to evade scrutiny and justice. I am concerned about the scenario where an individual has been convicted for an offence and then changes their name. They may then train and qualify as a teacher under the new identity and with a teacher reference number attached to that name. My amendment seeks to insert reasonable efforts to investigate name changes when the Secretary of State investigates disciplinary cases. I hope that my noble friend the Minister—and I associate myself wholly with the comments just made by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, in respect of her reappointment—agrees that these loopholes must be closed and will amend the Bill accordingly. I beg to move.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendments 436ZA and 436ZB in this group, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. I declare my interest as honorary president of COBIS which, as the noble Lord said, is a member of the British International Schools Safeguarding Coalition.

As the noble Lord set out, these amendments would close an important safeguarding loophole by extending the jurisdiction of the Teaching Regulation Agency to accept referrals of misconduct committed by UK-qualified teachers working overseas, and strengthening prohibition checks to ensure that individuals cannot exploit name changes to evade detection.

Prohibition checks are essential to identify individuals banned from teaching due to misconduct, safeguarding concerns or professional incompetence, and yet none of these misdemeanours committed at international schools overseas can be referred to the TRA. Indeed, as the noble Lord stressed, the current system does not even provide an option for them to report such concerns to the TRA online, creating a clear gap in the information that it holds. The loopholes in the current system mean that a teacher who is returning to the UK, for instance, and should have been referred to the TRA due to potentially serious child welfare issues committed overseas cannot be reported and so no prohibition order can be made. As a result, the individual would pass the statutory check, which schools rely on as evidence that an individual is safe to work with children. In practice, that could mean a teacher dismissed for misconduct abroad would have a clear result on their prohibition check and could subsequently be hired by a school in England that had no idea of their previous behaviour and allow the teacher to resume teaching.

I am sure the Minister agrees that this situation is clearly unsatisfactory and should be addressed. I hope she is able to accept these sensible amendments, which are supported by the Safeguarding Alliance and six UK Government-recognised British school associations and would undoubtedly help further strengthen the UK’s reputation as a global leader in safeguarding.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend, particularly for the last sentiment in her wind-up on this small but perfectly formed debate on these amendments.

My noble friend referred to the reality that the Teaching Regulation Agency does not want to regulate all teachers overseas. That is true, but the system here in England regards it as the body that regulates those who are qualified to teach in this country. There still appears to be a loophole regarding teachers returning to this country to teach—and we should be encouraging people who have been attracted by teaching overseas to come home and teach in the English maintained sector, because we are short of teachers. Part of that must include the safeguarding arrangements to do so. I understand about enhanced certificates, criminal record checks and so on, but it is notoriously difficult, when teachers have a career across multiple jurisdictions, to ensure that you have absolute certainty that the records are complete in that respect.

I will willingly take up the Minister’s offer to meet her or whoever the Minister in the department is for safeguarding and the TRA. If I could bring along Emily from the Safeguarding Alliance, who has the expertise, so that we can discuss it, I would be very grateful. On that basis I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 436ZA withdrawn.

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The final problem is that of inconsistent provision. Teacher training and support for PE varies widely across different schools, reflecting different priorities, teacher expertise and available funding. Despite targeted funding, such as the PE and sport premium, financial limitations and high workloads often mean that resources are not used efficiently to develop teacher skills. Funding is sometimes spent on external coaches instead of upskilling permanent staff. It is for these reasons that I support the amendments of my noble friend Lord Holmes of Richmond, which of course cover additional subjects.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly on this group of amendments in the same vein as have my noble friends Lady Morris and Lady Bousted, and emphasise that we need qualified teachers, particularly for the most disadvantaged pupils in our country.

Some years ago, prior to the pandemic, I was for seven years a senior executive at TES—the Times Educational Supplement, as it once was. During that tenure, I set up the Tes Institute, which was a teacher training institute. It is now the fifth-largest qualifier of teachers in England. The main route that we opened up through the Tes Institute was something that we branded “straight to teaching”: in essence, it was the opportunity for people who were working as instructors, who had instructor grades of pay but had experience of teaching, to be assessed for how close to the teaching standards they would be; then a bespoke professional development programme could be devised for them so that they could reach that set of standards and get QTS.

Incidentally—I say this to the noble Lord, Lord Agnew—I was surprised to learn that a PGCE did not qualify you to teach; there is not an equivalence between the two. Qualified teacher status is a separate thing, but there is an assumption within the system that a PGCE equals qualified teacher status.

The process of developing Straight to Teaching taught me that there are plenty of people who are working as instructors in our schools in this country, in effect, and who could be taken through to become qualified teachers on the job while carrying on being paid and using their experience. That could apply to those in vocational settings as well as in more academic settings; it says to me that there are routes.

Teaching apprenticeships are now being opened up for those people who have the sorts of qualifications and experience that have been discussed in this debate to be hired by schools and then, within a reasonable time, to be taken into qualified teacher status. That is something we should grab because it is important to value pedagogic training as well as subject knowledge. It is also important to value training in bullying, to which Amendment 439 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, refers. It is important that people should understand and be trained around special educational needs. It is important that they should be trained around physical literacy, as was explored by the noble Baronesses, Lady Grey-Thompson and Lady Sater, in their important speeches. Having training programmes to achieve qualified teacher status for those people who are brought into classrooms to teach as instructors is something that we should expect as part of the move towards every teacher becoming qualified.

Finally, I support Amendment 495, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, has added her name and which was spoken to by the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson. I support it in the terms that they set out around the importance of sport and physical literacy. Like them, I was a member of your Lordships’ National Plan for Sport and Recreation Committee. I hope that we will have a chance to revisit what we recommended then to see whether it remains valid for a new Government to take forward.

I also support Amendment 495 on the basis of some of the other things that are listed around a review of ITT, such as financial literacy, AI literacy and media literacy. These have become increasingly important but are currently neglected in initial teacher training. Once the curriculum and assessment review has reported, it will be timely for there to be a review of whether we need to change aspects of initial teacher training in order to take account of that review.

[Lord Hampton (CB)]

My Lords, as a secondary school teacher, I admit that I am conflicted by this group of amendments. Noble Lords have highlighted the benefits of getting industry experts to teach in schools. At our school, we use architects to teach the architecture programme. I recently went to a UTC that gets employers to come in and set projects for students. The employers then regularly come in to look at the projects so that the students get real-world, real-industry training. It is unrealistic to expect these employers to get teaching qualifications.

I am afraid that I cannot let Amendment 438 go. I have admired the optimism and creativity of the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Wei, and I acknowledge the sterling work that the elective home-schooling community is doing. Like many in this Committee, I have undertaken formal teacher training. I have QTS, which does not appear to be the gold standard any more, I am afraid. I had one disastrous attempt at home-schooling during lockdown, when I tried to teach my primary school-aged daughter maths. She is still shouting at me even now.

To say that somebody who has experienced only home-schooling can go from that to teaching 32 boisterous students in the last period on a Friday, without any formal training, and impart any knowledge at all is optimistic at best. The noble Lord, who is sadly not in his place, unwittingly belittles two years of pretty intense training for mainstream teachers.