Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lucas]

I shall speak to my Amendments 31 and 34 in this very diverse group. Amendment 31 proposes that,

“substantial freedom is given to the school to innovate”.

When I am going round schools I notice how hidebound they are by the restrictions that are placed on them in trying new things. Although the previous Government introduced an ability to innovate, it was subject to applications in triplicate to the Secretary of State and an extraordinarily cumbersome procedure. I hope we will now see a pronouncement in favour of innovation. I suggest that where a school does innovate it is merely necessary to inform the Secretary of State that this has happened—this becomes a risk factor for Ofsted in its decision on when and where to inspect—and that there is a requirement on the school to keep proper records so that the benefits or otherwise of the innovation can be judged in subsequent years. The whole tenor should be in favour of innovation. There are many good and experienced teachers out there who are capable of doing a great deal of good for the system if we let them have a go.

On Amendment 34, one of the good things to come out of the past 13 years of government was an increasing interest in schools co-operating with each other. Neighbouring schools will always be a little at loggerheads, but there are good examples—both those induced by the Government and those that have occurred privately—of schools forming networks to share problems and good practice and generally to get together and get beyond the confines of what is possible within a school, particularly a primary school. I am thinking particularly of the transition from primary to secondary and how schools can work together. There have been some excellent examples of that and I would not like the process of becoming an academy to be seen as an excuse to be isolated and a star on your own. It ought to be a process of becoming more co-operative and more linked into schools generally.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lady Garden and Lord Phillips of Sudbury and explain what is troubling me about academy orders.

Section 14 of the Education Act 2002 is incorporated into Clause 1(4), therefore enabling academies to be dealt with by what might be called the fast-track process of essentially calling into aid the powers given to the Secretary of State in that Act. The difference is that only very specific use was made of the power in Section 14; I do not think that it was intended to embrace a whole category of school in the way that will be possible under the Bill. My straightforward concern is that, where we are looking at the possibility of removing many statutory forms of consultation, virtually no restraint will be placed on the Secretary of State, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, said, and that he will be accountable to no one but himself. The combination of Section 14—the powers of the Secretary of State—being incorporated into the Bill with the fast-tracking of the academy orders means that an academy could be approved, or for that matter rejected, with the involvement of virtually no one but the Secretary of State. Within a democratic structure, that is not an acceptable way to go.

We must therefore look very closely at the amendments that have been tabled. They would bring academies back into the structure of the academy agreement—my noble friend Lady Garden referred to this—which would enable us to set conditions and requirements for the schools that have to be met under the academy agreement but that do not have to be met in the same way under an academy order.

I, too, would be very grateful for greater enlightenment from the Minister on what accountability there is in mind. For example, it might be possible to look at the report from the education department on the experience of academies, their standards, their meeting of the admissions orders and other requirements under the academy agreements. That would enable Parliament to debate how far those requirements and conditions had been met and to distinguish between the effects of academy orders and academy agreements.

Perhaps even more significant than the proposals that my noble friends and the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, have put forward is the need for this Committee to look closely at the level of accountability for academies and at academy orders under the Bill.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise to support Amendment 96 and Amendment 31, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I support the former because, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, rightly said, further education colleges can be particularly beneficial to disadvantaged cohorts of pupil. Children in public care may find themselves in a further education college earlier than their peers, meaning that they can carry on with an education that they might otherwise have been denied. The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, has been a strong advocate of equal treatment. I am very pleased to hear that there will be no threat to progress in that area.

The noble Lord, Lord Lucas, asks in Amendment 31 that substantial freedom be given to schools to innovate. He reminds me of the eminent American philosopher and educationalist, John Dewey, who died in the middle of the last century and was very much admired by Bertrand Russell. He moved our thinking on with regard to the gaining of knowledge. He said that we were not simply spectators: we learnt because we had a reason to learn and because there was some impulse to our learning. That is particularly relevant to children who are disillusioned with the mainstream system. Schools need to innovate and find ways of working that engage such children. For example, Lent Rise Combined School in Slough, which has a large Traveller population, works each year to enable young people to work with local businesses to design products and then attempt to sell them at an open day. Those sorts of innovative approaches where Traveller people can see the application of their learning are very helpful. That may be some of what was meant by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

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[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

The Minister has eloquently defended flexibility in relation to Amendments 124 and 125. As regards accountability, those amendments would create a statutory structure that could be questioned in Parliament. Will he say a little more about accountability, which for many of us is absolutely cardinal?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I was about to make a point that relates to the issue that the noble Baroness has raised. The Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee of this House, which has reported on the Bill, has made it clear that it does not consider it necessary or appropriate for these orders to be made by way of statutory instrument. It made that clear in its first report of this Session, published on 17 June.

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[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

Foundation schools, both Anglican and Catholic, are allowed to appoint a majority of governors, and those schools in turn have the right to be admissions authorities for their own schools if they are voluntary aided. It is a very important power that currently exists. It is not clear from the Bill—perhaps the Minister can tell us—whether the foundation retains the right to appoint a majority of governors. Does it retain the right, if it is a voluntary aided school, to be involved in the admissions process? Can he tell us broadly whether that situation is expected to continue?

[Baroness Murphy]

I support the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, although he has not yet spoken to them. I also support the amendment of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Garden and Lady Sharp.

We have not yet addressed this fundamental problem relating to faith schools. My questions at Second Reading about the status of faith schools, and the Government’s approach to encouraging the development of faith schools, have not been responded to. Does the Minister have the teeniest anxiety that a quarter of academies are presently faith schools and that the Bill will encourage more?

I shall recount a tale of two schools. I am delighted to see the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor, in his place, because I am going to talk about Brockdish primary school. He and I are probably the only two people in this Chamber who know where Brockdish is. It is my local school, serving the entire community of Brockdish. It is a Church of England school that has received an outstanding report and will be in the running to become an academy. It is an extraordinarily good school. I love it dearly and hope very much that it does become one, for all those reasons.

It was established in 1843 in the parish workhouse for the children of paupers. The curriculum then was the Catechism and the Ten Commandments for half the day. In the other half of the day, when they were not at work—they had to do some work in the fields as well—they did the three Rs. That was 160 years ago. During the past 160 years, the curriculum at Brockdish Church of England Voluntary Controlled Primary School has changed dramatically. As it is the only school in the village, it is entirely inclusive. If you ask people in Brockdish about the school, they will say that they do not really think of it as a religious school. Its teachers come from all faiths or none; it has a non-denominational assembly; and it gives the most brilliant education.

However, according the Bill as far as I understand it, the school has two choices when it becomes an academy. The first is that it could become more religious and more faith-based, which would be an imposition on our local community. The Minister looks puzzled. The school might have to stay with the religious denomination which it has adopted historically but from which it has gradually been moving away. Under the Bill it would have to stay like that and would have no option to become a more generalist school. There would be no choice for those of us who live in the community because the other schools are too far away. It is our local school. It is a good one and we would like it to stay as it is.

Now take the case of the Ebrahim Academy in Whitechapel, an academy school for boys. It is highly selective and employs only male Islamic teachers. The school day is, again, just like 160 years ago in Brockdish primary school, divided into two sections. The school day begins with Tahfeez, which is reciting the Koran and getting the pronunciation right, which takes up half the day. Then the national curriculum takes up the second half of the day. It is a state-funded, tax-funded madrassah for the Islamic faith.

Perhaps that is an extreme example, but there are many such faith schools. I stress that I have no objection to Sunday schools—I was a Sunday school teacher. Noble Lords might be amazed to hear it, but it is possible to deliver good Sunday school teaching without any faith whatever. I suspect that it is like the approach of the noble Lord, Lord Baker, to Anglicanism. It was possible for me to do that and I enjoyed it greatly.

I have no objection to families teaching their faith in their own time and making sure that every child has an understanding of all religions. But is the Minister not the teeniest, weeniest bit worried about the creation of more faith schools under the freedoms that we are providing today? What reassurances can he give to those of us who do not like these divisive, incohesive schools that they will not further separate a divided community?

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[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, on state boarding schools. It is my experience that, for children with emotional and behavioural difficulties, the boarding school solution can very often be the only one that works.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I support very strongly the arguments made by my noble friend Lord Greaves on removing primaries from the present list of schools that can become academies. I will very quickly provide a few additional arguments in support of his well-argued speech.

First, primary schools are in many ways the fundamental building blocks of community throughout the country. Sometimes they are Church of England primary schools, sometimes they are not, but in almost every town or village where they exist that is what they are seen to be by the populations of those areas. They are therefore not only educational institutions; in many ways, they are crucial social institutions that help to hold communities together. In fact, more and more, the local primary school is at the heart of whether a village survives as a village or becomes in effect another suburb.

Secondly—my noble friend Lord Greaves implied this, but I want to underpin his arguments—primary schools are heavily dependent on local authority advice services, whether in relation to special educational needs, staff relationships or legal matters. They very often simply cannot afford to buy in advice or get advice from a private source because they are too small, as my noble friend argued, and often too isolated to be able to master that advice. However, they need it, and, for a very small primary school, getting that advice can make disproportionate demands on the school budget. Primary schools simply cannot sustain these services easily—and special educational needs are one of the most central—if the local authority advice services disappear. One question for the Minister is this: if one gets to the point at which those advisory services are mostly disappearing because such a large proportion of the schools that are served by them have chosen to become academies, will he look at the possibility of some sort of residual advisory service for small schools that simply cannot afford to sustain such advice themselves?

In addition, primary schools often require assistance on matters such as appeals and dealing with children who, for one reason or another, have disciplinary problems and are likely to be excluded. It is too much to ask primary school heads too often to take difficult decisions that require legal advice on their own—a position in which some primary school heads find themselves.

Thirdly, primary schools could suffer from a talent drain if they had to battle against a small, or perhaps even substantial, number of primary school academies in which, say, teachers of mathematics or teachers with special abilities with SEN children are very much in demand. In that case, primary schools would come at the very bottom of the pecking order.

Last of all, primary schools—at least in my view—require the support of their local community to a greater extent than secondary schools do, so the argument for having governing bodies that sustain and include members of the local community is particularly strong.

What does that add up to? As my noble friend has argued, it adds up to treating primary schools at least as a more distant case for becoming academies than secondary schools are treated. It would be very easy to disrupt the primary school system if one is not careful, and, once a proportion of primary schools become academies, it begins to become virtually impossible to decide strategically how to meet the needs of all children in an area. I therefore suggest to the Minister that serious consideration should be given to the possibility of considering primary schools at a later stage and to permitting a few primary schools to go ahead with becoming academies as part of a pilot scheme. If the new politics means anything, it means that we must be able to look at experiments without insisting that they are universalised before we know whether they work. For the reasons that I have given, the argument for considering primary schools at a later stage, if at any stage, should be made very strongly in our discussions, because they are different, they are dependent on the local authority, they are central to their local communities and they are in a different position from that of secondary schools.

[Lord James of Blackheath]

I interject on behalf of the SEN pupils of boarding schools with a word of caution, and I speak, as I have said before, as probably the House’s only representative of SEN students in my day. In one term alone, there were eight suicides from a student base of 45 at a boarding school for SEN children in 1947. This was a good school, and there was no abuse—indeed, the teachers showed very great kindness and consideration—but it is very dangerous to take struggling young people away and put them together in a school in which they have to cope with their recognition of their total inability to study effectively and have no home life at the same time. Please do not put SEN children into public boarding schools.

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[Lord Adonis]

The noble Lord does his noble friend Lady Williams a disservice. It was she who abolished them.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

That is also untrue. They were abolished by my predecessor, Mr Fred Mulley.

[Lord Greaves]

One thing about the House of Lords is that we are all so old that somebody at least knows the truth about these matters.

At the time, we all thought that that was absolutely right; in retrospect, we see that it was a mistake, because it drove most of the schools into the independent sector. Most of them are now fully fee-paying schools, yet they are not boarding schools or the classic kind of independent school. They probably serve a wider community than the immediate area as defined in the Bill. Nevertheless, some Government, some time, ought to get a grip on finding ways to provide greater integration of at least some of these schools—on a voluntary basis, obviously—with the state sector. They are almost all highly performing schools and if you cannot afford to go there, you cannot go there. A few of them have foundation scholarships and so forth but real efforts should be made to integrate these schools.

Certainly, in the north of England, these schools—Bradford Grammar School, Wakefield Grammar School and Manchester Grammar School—represent their wider communities. Modification of an academy model might be attractive to some of them. If that could be done it would be worth while.