Education and Adoption Bill (First sitting)

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I want to fit in one more question.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Q 103 I declare that I am a governor of Berwick academy.

The question of the Bill being aimed at maintained schools, not academy schools, has been mentioned a lot. Is it your view that the existing regional schools commissioner framework is already working well enough to manage academy schools? We are obviously looking to send a lot more schools into that framework to manage the coasting or inadequacy issues within the academy framework.

Dr Coulson: The regional structure we have had for the past year has begun to address that, but we need to go further. The focus on coasting schools will give us an additional focus on coasting academies as well as on coasting maintained schools. We have more to live up to on coasting schools. The focus to date has probably been more on the inadequate academies, but we do have the mechanisms to focus on coasting academies.

Lee Elliot Major: Again, I have no evidence, but my gut instinct is that you will need more capacity—I cannot see it any other way. If you are going to look at how academies are performing as well as at coasting schools, you need good people and more of them, in a regional capacity.

Zoe Carr: We need to work through the system leaders we have to mobilise more of the school education system. If our school-led system is to work effectively, it is not only about the few who are supporting others, but about getting more and more of our outstanding headteachers into this agenda to get them to spread out and build small, multi-academy trusts in local proximity to one another. I think that that is how the system will move forward effectively.

[The Chair]

I will give the last word to the Minister. You have one minute.