Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Baroness Barran Excerpts

Wednesday 10th September 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Twycross (Lab)]

Yes, we can do that.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Third time lucky, my Lords. I thank the Minister for her remarks and, in particular, her encouraging comments in relation to my amendment to Clause 39; I think that people will find them very reassuring. I hope that this may be a new trend, in the Government’s response, of accommodating our amendments. I will read Hansard very carefully.

To be honest, the Minister was obviously trying to be as speedy as possible. I know that the Committee appreciates that, but I did not follow fully her comments about the applicability of certain elements to the Bill to fee-paying schools only, which I know she talked about; I just need to make sure that we understand that. I also did not understand why 16-to-19 academies are still accepted institutions while wider academies, including all-through academies, are not, but I can pick up those points.

I am grateful to all noble Lords for their amendments in this group. The Minister gave some reassurance to my noble friends Lord Lexden and Lord Black of Brentwood in relation to their Amendment 433; I am grateful to the Minister on their behalf for that.

The Minister was clear that, in relation to illegal schools, the Government’s approach achieves the same as Amendments 432 and 434 in particular; that is what I have written her down as saying. However, as my noble friend Lady Spielman said, in her experience, it can be very hard to gather evidence. I remember that, in 2022, we spent a lot of time during the passage of the then schools Bill debating the merits of being able to inspect unregistered schools without a warrant. Therefore, there are points on which I hope the Minister will accept my noble friend Lord Lucas’ invitation to explore with the chief inspector.

We had a very good debate in relation to Amendments 430 and 436 in the name of my noble friend Lady Morgan of Cotes. Some valid questions were raised about the Independent Schools Inspectorate, both in terms of the value of having two inspectorates and the degree of independence of the ISI. It is crucial that all parents can have confidence in the judgments of the inspectorate for their schools, obviously, but I was pleased to hear the Minister say that the department continues to have confidence in the ISI.

With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment in my name.

Amendment 427BA withdrawn.

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[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this group includes a number of probing amendments to understand the Government’s thinking about MAT inspection and intervention. Over 80% of our secondary schools and over 40% of our primaries have become academies in England, with almost 1,200 multi-academy trusts or MATs and roughly another 1,000 single-academy trusts or SATs—the latter largely being secondary schools.

The amendments in this group, in the name of my noble friend Lady Spielman and I, aim to address and provide tentative answers to three main issues. The first, on which your Lordships have already touched, is that a sense of unfairness has developed, with a potential misalignment between autonomy and accountability, which are the two planks that have underpinned our school reforms over the last two decades or so. Accountability remains at the school rather than the trust level, while autonomy, particularly in more centralised trusts, rests with the trust rather than the school. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my amendments aim to address that misalignment.

My Amendment 436ZZA allows for a more straight- forward path for intervention in trusts where there is sustained academic underperformance in their schools. I agree, as ever, with my noble friend Lord Nash that we need to be looking at and worrying about outcomes for children before process.

The amendment excludes schools that have been recently sponsored, so that no disincentive is created for a strong trust to take on a weak school. Similarly, it adjusts for levels of deprivation—not in any way to dilute ambition, but to make sure that the approach is fair and feels fair—comparing trusts to groups of schools in their local area rather than to a national performance table.

Finally, the power would aim to avoid creating so-called “orphan schools” or multi-academy trusts that were not of an economic or effective size for the purposes of education. I know from my time in office that there were a handful of trusts that had schools that consistently and substantially underperformed their neighbours, and the department was genuinely constrained in its ability to intervene. We had planned to intervene in a very small number, but unfortunately the election got in the way. It was certainly not in the simplest or most streamlined way that any of us would have wanted.

Traditionally, and I think understandably, the department has been hesitant to intervene in a school or a trust without independent analysis—typically via an Ofsted report—before doing so. We did find a way to intervene via a failure of governance, but this amendment would make it more coherent, albeit we believe the power would be used rarely. Our proposal in the amendment is that the department would prepare an annual report, which would allow one to understand if there have been any patterns of failure and the scale of any problems in the system. We believe that, in practice, the power would not be used often, as intervention would send a clear message to other trusts that were underperforming that this needs to be addressed quickly in the interests of children.

As my noble friend Lady Spielman said, Amendment 436ZZB builds on Amendment 435 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but brings a very specific focus to MAT inspection. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, questioned the merit of putting details in the Bill and the prioritisation that was set out. I will say just a couple of things about that. It is important that we try to be clear about how MAT inspection and school inspection fit together. We do not want MAT inspection to duplicate or confuse school inspection. We tried to make it clear in this amendment what inspection could look at. It is, if you like, a starter for 10. Obviously, this requires a great deal of thought, but the amendment is trying to look at the effectiveness and value for money of MATs. It is not trying to say that one model is better than another.

On prioritisation, the noble Baroness talked about too much focus on schools that were significantly underperforming, but she will note that at proposed subsection (3)(a)—there is a typo in the Marshalled List; that is what I spend my time doing in the evenings, obviously, spotting typos. What should be proposed new subsection (3)(a) states that inspections must prioritise MATs

“which are seeking to enter into new partnerships with schools”.

That is a rather unclear way of saying MATs that want to grow. If you want to take on a new school, we need to be confident in your ability to manage that well. Then there are schools that are significantly under- performing and MATs which are not providing value for money.

I am sure that that wording could be improved on, and it feels like we have a great cross-party working group, if the Minister wants volunteers, to try to narrow this down. I know that officials have been thinking about this for some time, possibly since my noble friend Lord Agnew tried to introduce it almost 10 years ago. I think we have a bit of a starter in the definitions of what we are looking for in the work that we did on the strong trust framework, which sets out very clear expectations in relation to all aspects of running a good trust.

I look forward very much to the Minister’s reply. I hope she is as struck as I am by the tone of this debate, which feels slightly different from some that we have had. I agree with the call to action of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett: “Just do it now.” I know we are not allowed props in the Chamber, but I have Nick Gibb’s book beside me, because I thought he ought to be here in spirit, if not actually present. That book shows “Do it now, but keep doing it, do it well, stick at it and don’t let go”. I leave the Minister to comment on that.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)]

You always know that you are in for a good debate when you have a group in which four former Secretaries of State for Education contribute—in agreement with each other—accompanied by a positive bevy of Academies and Schools Ministers and a former chief inspector.

I thought that my noble friend Lord Blunkett’s setting in context of the history of how we got to this point was both enormously interesting and informative in identifying how we have arrived at this cross-party consensus about the need to bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system. That is why the Government set out in our manifesto that that was our intention, believing, as others have argued, that it will make the system fairer and more transparent and enable direct intervention to address failure when necessary.

On Amendment 435, tabled by my noble friend Lord Blunkett, Amendment 436ZZB, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, which seeks to introduce Ofsted inspections for multi-academy trusts, and Amendment 436ZZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, which seeks to bring in a related regime of intervention for multi-academy trusts, I am grateful to the noble Lords for tabling those amendments, as this is an important matter and, as we have heard in this debate, one on which there is a large amount of consensus. I am pleased to see that there is support on both sides of the Committee for bringing multi-academy trusts into scope for inspections.

As I say, we are committed to bringing forward legislation during this Parliament to introduce the inspection of multi-academy trusts and intervention where there is failure. The inspection regime should also highlight excellence and support the spreading of good practice between trusts. Taken together, those will help to raise standards in education and support all children to achieve and thrive.

I suppose my regret today is that I am playing the role of the force of conservatism in the face of the urging by noble Lords from across the Committee to just get on with it. But I will take noble Lords through the process, which is important here. The Government believe it is important that we bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system but also that we do it well. We want to work with the sector to get the detail right in the interests of pupils and the workforce.

There are a number of complex issues that we are working through, some of which have been raised in the debate, particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, to ensure that we bring forward a system that delivers for pupils and the workforce. For example, the inspection of multi-academy trusts must be delivered in a way, as several noble Lords have talked about, that works in harmony with school inspection—which is itself currently in the process of being reformed—in a way that avoids an excess burden on the school workforce and, as my noble friend Lord Knight helpfully identified, in a way that is effective but proportionate.

As I have said, we are already engaging with the sector. I hope it will encourage noble Lords that we were also pleased that Ofsted secured funds from 2026 in the spending review to build on this with further research and piloting. Ofsted’s work will continue in parallel with the Government bringing forward legislation so that we meet the manifesto commitment to bring multi-academy trusts into the inspection system during this Parliament.

I recognise that this will not be quick enough for noble Lords around the Chamber. I hope, however, that when the noble Lords on that side of the House had the responsibility of actually delivering policy, frustrated though I am sure they were on various occasions, they also understood the importance of getting it right. There is no difference of objective here between the Government and those urging speed; there is just a responsibility on the Government to ensure that this is done properly, and I hope noble Lords will recognise that.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I hope it is not breaking confidences to say that the department had done a lot of thinking about this 18 months ago, so we are not starting from a standing start. If the Minister has not seen that thinking, I am sure it is sitting on a DfE shelf somewhere and could be rekindled.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sure that this will be part of what officials have been using, but I reiterate the point that there have been other, considerable changes to the Ofsted regime, many of which were announced this week. We must ensure that the work goes alongside that. We will very soon have a new White Paper on schools. That will lead to legislation that I am certain will help us to make progress on this important development, on which clearly there is consensus across the House.

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[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, is right: there is a crisis in the supply of teachers, not just the numbers but also, as he said, in specialism. There is also the great worry that we are seeing the lowest number of people wanting to go into teaching and the highest number of teachers leaving early. But his solution is not my solution.

I have said in this House on many occasions that the most important thing in a child’s life is the quality of their teacher. We do not, as a society, value teachers. Having a qualification does not make you a good teacher. We can remember that, in the 30s, 40s and maybe even the 50s, someone with a university degree would come out of university and think they could teach. You cannot always. Occasionally, they could do it. Those who could not do it at secondary modern schools quickly tried to transfer to grammar schools, where they thought it might be easier. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, rightly said, if you have in the playground or on the sports field some challenging pupils haring around and you do not have an understanding of child development or behaviour management, you cannot cope. You would not, for example, expect someone who has a law degree to suddenly step into a court; you just would not have it. We have to work out how on earth we can ensure that people want to become teachers.

It is not just about training to become a teacher; we have to support them when they are in teaching. It is not just about salary, although that helps. It is about continuous professional development. It is about the campaigns about workload that many of us have constantly gone on about. I think that is a simple thing to solve. Teachers have said to me any number of times, “If I could just get on with the job of teaching without having to do all these other tasks”.

That does not stop visitors coming into school. It does not stop experts who have a particular knowledge being linked to a school and coming in from time to time to talk to the children. By the way, high-level teaching assistants can teach in schools. Teaching assistants at level 2 can teach, as long as they are supervised by the teacher. Maybe we should be encouraging teaching assistants to go on to become qualified teachers. We cannot have in our schools a situation where qualified teachers are undervalued and where we increasingly think the answer is to bring in unqualified so-called experts.

Turning to my amendment on bullying, I am a bit surprised that it is in this group—I think that the issue is covered in one of the later groups as well. It is worrying that currently 35% of 10 to 15 year-olds have experienced bullying of some sort. In 2023, 1.5 million children suffered bullying. Bullying happens in all sorts of ways. It can be physical, it can be emotional, it can be verbal and it can be cyberbullying. We seem to think that the important thing is to sort out mobile phones, which will stop bullying and make pupils more attentive to learning. I have a great deal of sympathy with that, as we probably all do, and mobile phones can increasingly be used for bullying pupils as well.

When a pupil is bullied, a number of things happen. It is not just physical, where there might be bruising or whatever; it is also emotional, of course. It leads to increasing absence from school. Children are frightened to go to school, because the bully might be there, so that affects their school attendance and we have talked at length about how important school attendance is. It will affect their grades when they come to do their exams. They will not be handing in homework, and so it goes on. We have to ensure that we take the whole issue of bullying seriously, which I know the Government do, and the amendment spells out some of the things that we need to do. I hope, when we come back to this at a later stage, to be able to look at it in more detail.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, this group has elicited another excellent debate and, like other noble Lords, on these Benches we remain unclear what problem the Government are trying to solve. The Government’s own data shows that the percentage of teachers without a formal teaching qualification has been pretty stable in both primary and secondary schools for the past 10 years. It sits at about 1% in primary and between 1.5% and 2% in secondary, which is about 6,000 teachers out of a workforce of over 450,000. We are talking about tiny numbers, largely in specialist subjects, which has not changed over a very long time. I could not find—and I did look—any evidence that suggests that teachers without a formal teaching qualification provide lower-quality education.

That is not to disagree in any way with any noble Lord who has spoken already. We know that the quality of the teacher at the front of the classroom is the single biggest and most important influence on the education that a child receives. The Government have argued that one would not want to be seen by an unqualified lawyer or dentist. As other noble Lords have said, any of us, if asked, “Would you like your child to be taught by a qualified or unqualified teacher?”, would say, “A qualified teacher”. But as the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, said, if asked, “Would you like to be taught by someone with a physics degree and 10 years in the industry, or someone with a degree in English and QTS?”, I think, to be fair, the answers might be different. Amendments 437 and 437A in the names of my noble friends Lord Holmes of Richmond and Lord Agnew of Oulton have my support, because they just apply common sense, focusing on the combination of specific subject expertise at degree level, in the case of my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment, and demonstrable competence in teaching.

Now, having listened to the debate, I am beginning to wonder whether, given the tiny number of unqualified teachers in the system, this whole clause is not a bit of a red herring. We have a number of routes: there is the assessment-only route to get QTS, where a school or initial teacher training—SCITT—is able to award qualified teacher status to someone who has GCSEs in English and maths and a degree, and who demonstrates suitability; they obviously read my noble friend Lord Agnew’s amendment. If we have an assessment-only route, we have higher-level teaching assistants, which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, referred to, and we have teachers from FE colleges with QTLS, rather than QTS, who can currently teach in secondary schools—if all those routes are followed, maybe we can close what I argue is an inconsequential gap in a way that will allow the Government to say that everyone now has QTS, but it does not really change anything on the ground.

The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, who is not in his place, talked earlier about what the public care about. I think they care about Governments focusing on real issues rather than this, which feels like a slightly confected problem.

My amendments in this group follow a familiar pattern. By calling for the clause not to stand part of the Bill, I am offering the Government the logical, simple course of action. There just is no need for this clause, unless the Minister can give us evidence of the harm being done or the lower outcomes for children from teachers without QTS.

The other amendments seek to limit the damage done to schools from the clause as drafted, particularly the schools that we all care about, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, and my noble friend Lord Agnew talked about: schools in the most disadvantaged communities. My Amendment 436C would exempt shortage subjects from the constraints of the clause, and my Amendment 436B would give schools five years rather than one, in which time a teacher would have to achieve a teaching qualification. That is particularly important—I hope the Minister will comment on this—for special schools, where the percentage of teachers without a teaching qualification is often higher.

I have added my name to Amendment 436A in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, which limits this measure to core subjects in the national curriculum. The noble Baroness spoke with enormous experience and insight into the potential impacts of the measure, particularly in relation to technical and vocational qualifications.

The noble Lord, Lord Storey, gave the Government the answer to at least a start on reducing bullying in schools by introducing a smartphone ban, which I am hoping the Minister’s new ministerial colleague will persuade her of, because apparently in another life he thought it was a good idea.

The issue that the clause raises is a point of principle, again, about autonomy and accountability. Like all the others, it is easy to say that the clause on its own will not be too harmful; that may or may not be true, but, overall, the Bill is fundamentally centralising and will undo the ingredients that have improved English education so much over the past 14 years. We on these Benches deeply oppose the principle of clawing back the discretion that we have given to school and trust leaders. We remain baffled why the Government want to undo what has worked well and do not focus instead on areas that deserve their attention. We would rather see the expansion of freedoms to maintained schools than their withdrawal from academies.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, teaching is a profession and we are unapologetic about having a high bar for training and qualification. It is what parents, head teachers and the Government should rightly expect, which is why the Government committed to this measure in our manifesto. It will ensure that new teachers have the essential training and induction that they need to help children achieve.

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[Baroness Boycott (CB)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502X, to which I have added my name and which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett. This is what the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, just described as a hobby-horse. I suspect that, into that description, she would put the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Sater, with which I could not agree more. What is education for if not to equip our children to deal with the world in the best possible way? Money certainly should be part of it.

My short amendment addresses food. Currently, 25% of five year-old kids are going into primary school overweight or obese, and the figure is between 40% and 45% for those coming out of primary school. We all have to eat and we all have to deal with the food system. A previous Government said many years ago that part of the education system would include children learning to cook five savoury dishes by the time they are 15. That barely happens in schools because they do not have kitchens and there is no requirement on them to do it, and therefore it falls by the wayside.

For 10 years, I ran the London Food Board. We set up a project called Capital Growth, which was linked to the Olympics. In that time, we created 2,500 community gardens in London, of which about 500 were in schools. They were in super weird places in schools—one was in a shopping trolley round the back of the sports hut. Nevertheless, people were growing potatoes, and the kids were amazed by it, because in one bang they got a sense of nature, wonder and growing, as well as a sense of patience, effort and doing something together. I went to one particularly inspirational school, where they had 43 basic first languages, and the headmaster explained how he used beans to teach people to do maths. He had nine beans, for example, and he said, “Make three rows”, and the children would say, “That’s three times three”. A whole range of things was possible in being able to swap cultures.

This could be described as a hobby-horse, in that I believe that this is very healthy and good for children, and we do not want our children being unwell—and yet that is what is happening. We are bringing up a generation of kids who are overweight; they do not do enough exercise, but, ultimately, they are eating terrible food. You can blame parents as much as you like, but at the moment parents are poor and healthier food is more expensive. Therefore, the school, I am afraid, has to be one of the places where children are taught about and encouraged to try different foods, to learn how to cook and to understand that the fuel they put in their bodies, just like the fuel you put in a car, is extremely important to their health outcomes. If they have lousy health outcomes, they will not get great jobs, they will not have a great life, they will have sick days and they will not be useful to this country or to themselves.

This is a fundamental element of life that needs to be incorporated into school curriculums, and not just as a hobby-horse. Obviously, the subject will differ, because it depends quite a bit on the passion of the teachers. However, most schools that I know that have done this have said that it has paid off massively. I would like to see whether the Minister can find some way to incorporate this kind of teaching into the schools of the future.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group and make the case that Clause 47 should not stand part of the Bill.

There are three main reasons for our objection to Clause 47. The first is the wider point, which we have discussed in our debates on other groups, about the value of autonomy at a school or trust level combined with clear accountability. This clause removes the autonomy that academies have had over the curriculum while disregarding the safeguards that exist via both the public exam system and the 2019 Ofsted inspection framework. Without this autonomy, we risk stifling the innovation and creativity that we have seen in recent years, where leading trusts have developed high-quality curricula and shared them freely with other schools. My noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park gave some fantastic examples, including among some of our wonderful free schools.

I am not suggesting that the Government want to see the stifling of creativity—I am sure that they want quite the reverse—but they need to explain how things will work in practice if this clause is to become law. I thank my noble friend Lord Sewell for his powerful intervention and for the extraordinary impact that he and others had on schools in Hackney; that is still being ably implemented by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton.

Secondly, the Secretary of State has tremendous powers over the curriculum, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. A future Secretary of State could use those powers to be much more prescriptive in terms of not just what needs to be in the main elements of the national curriculum—English, maths and science, in particular—but how those elements are taught, which the previously Government intentionally avoided doing. Indeed, we wanted to give all schools space outside the core subjects of the national curriculum so that they could exercise their discretion. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, that I have definitely visited schools that are busy doing beekeeping and other things of which, I am sure, she would approve. So the Secretary of State has the power to expand the national curriculum.

Thirdly, as for much of this Bill, as other noble Lords have said, we just do not see that there is a problem that needs solving in this way. My noble friend Lady Spielman was clear in her time as Ofsted’s chief inspector that some academies narrowed the curriculum too much. This was addressed by the inspectorate under the previous framework, so the system already has the checks and balances that it needs to make sure that schools cannot game the system. The picture that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, painted—that of academies teaching whatever they wanted—is not an accurate one, given that, as I said earlier, they enter public exams and are all inspected by Ofsted.

I respectfully suggest to the Minister that this clause is not needed and risks doing more harm than good. As we will debate in a later group, we would much rather recognise the strengths of maintained schools and give their leaders greater flexibility. Further, a number of schools simply do not have the facilities needed to deliver certain parts of the curriculum, such as design and technology. Can the Minister confirm that, if this clause becomes law, the department will fund the necessary investment to address these gaps?

I was very pleased to add my name to Amendment 443 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. He expertly set out the problems with the Henry VIII powers in this Bill. I know that time is short, so perhaps the Minister could write to the noble Lord—indeed, to all of your Lordships—setting out exactly the Government’s understanding of what these Henry VIII powers cover and how they could be used, not by the current Secretary of State but by a future Secretary of State, because I think that we need our legislation to protect us against all flavours of Secretary of State and government.

I am concerned that Amendment 506D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, does not reflect the reality that the Secretary of State can make all of these changes to the curriculum via regulation and can amend primary legislation.

The amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, would try to carve out exemptions for high-performing schools. I absolutely support the spirit of them.

This debate comes at a time when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, we are awaiting the recommendations of the curriculum and assessment review. As can be seen from many of the amendments in this group, there is pressure to introduce more and more subjects into the curriculum. Apparently, in 2018, the organisation Parents and Teachers for Excellence counted 213 topics that were recommended in that year for inclusion in the curriculum. The question remains: if the curriculum is expanded, what has to come out?

Ministers in both Houses have sought to assure us that we do not need to worry about these changes, but the Minister will understand that the curriculum reforms led by the previous Government, which have contributed so significantly to our improvement in the global rankings in reading, maths and science, were hard won and hard fought. So, in addition to our principled objection to removing autonomy from school leaders rather than extending it to maintained schools, there is a deep-seated worry that the siren calls for a more progressive approach to the curriculum might gain traction despite the best efforts of the review team, which is ably led by Professor Becky Francis, for whom I have great respect.

I close not with the words of Ernest Bevin but by quoting, as other noble Lords have done in our debate on this group, from a blog written by Mark McCourt, the chair of the Advantage Schools Trust. He speaks for many of us in terms of why we all feel so anxious that the Government get this curriculum review right. He writes:

“To offer a demanding, powerful curriculum to every child is not elitist. It is egalitarian. It says to the child: you are worthy of this knowledge. You are capable of wrestling with complexity. You deserve access to the accumulated wisdom and accomplishments of those who came before you. This is your birthright and it is now yours to own and protect … We are not gatekeepers. We are door openers. And if we do not open those doors, especially for the children least likely to find them on their own, then we are complicit in keeping them shut”.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

My Lords, an up-to-date, knowledge-rich curriculum is key to ensuring high and rising standards in schools, setting a clear minimum expectation of breadth for pupils. Parents have the right to expect that their child, regardless of their background, can access a consistent, high-quality core education that builds the knowledge and skills they need to thrive without the worry that some subjects may be dropped for ease.

The independent curriculum and assessment review is evaluating the existing national curriculum and statutory assessment system. Its final report will help us develop a rich, cutting-edge curriculum that secures a strong foundation in reading, writing and maths while providing breadth to give children a culturally rich education that prepares them for life, work and the future.

We want all children to benefit from that, which is why Clause 47 will require academies, which now teach more than half of all pupils, to teach that reformed curriculum alongside maintained schools. The point about the prevalence of academies is important for not just this debate but the debates that we will have on the coming groups. In this legislation, we are talking about the basic and appropriate requirements for a vast and growing majority of our schools. I have to say, a national curriculum that applies to a dwindling minority of schools is not a national curriculum.

This requirement provides a floor, but no ceiling. It will not force schools to teach in a certain way or prevent them innovating. Teachers will continue to have the flexibility to adapt to best meet the needs of their pupils.