Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction. Although it was his maiden speech plus three days, I welcome him again. Just to be absolutely clear, it is a delight to respond to the Minister at Second Reading. Labour’s academies programme supported some of the most deprived communities and children in our country. The academies programme was targeted at schools which were failing their pupils and communities by not raising aspirations enough. When a school underwent a change to an academy, we usually insisted on a change of leadership and always on an injection of outside expertise from a sponsor. Sponsors that were not existing successful education providers or charities had to make a significant financial contribution. We were extremely grateful to those that did. We normally provided extra support in the form of additional resources to improve facilities and to drive up standards. It was a really significant programme of school improvement. We are very proud of the contribution of my noble friend Lord Adonis. This was about transforming failing schools, strengthening school leadership and creating hunger for success for some of our most deprived children. As the Government recognised, GCSE results in academies have risen faster than in their predecessor schools and faster than the national average. Some academies have not succeeded: that is true. We understand the challenge that many schools face. However, several academies, as the Minister pointed out, have been established in deeply deprived communities and have become some of the best-performing schools in our country. They deliver GCSE results on a par with—and sometimes better than—schools in much more affluent areas, showing that it is possible that the negative link between aspiration and deprivation can be broken. This is what the Labour academies programme was about. The Bill represents a new approach. It simply does not compare with the Labour academies programme and does not provide all the support that we used to give to deprived schools. We are very proud of what the programme has achieved. The programme at which we are looking does not represent a continuation of Labour’s programme. Labour is proud of the achievements of the pioneering academies. As the Minister rightly pointed out, when we were in government we committed to doubling the number of academies to 400. In so doing, we committed to create real benefits for the most disadvantaged children. However, I note that in the impact assessment for this Bill, the Government have struggled to demonstrate real benefit resulting from their policy of rolling out a scheme which was designed to transform failing schools to the highest performing schools in this country. There is a real issue there. I believe very strongly that there is a good argument, as the Minister stressed—and we should make no mistake about this—for successful schools to be given more autonomy and flexibility, provided that it is clearly on the basis of fair admissions and funding, and a recognition of, and commitment to, their wider social improvement responsibilities. When in government, we understood that to excel schools need to be interconnected with their communities and supported by their local authorities. It seems to me that unless robust safeguards are in place, there will be serious implications for local communities, local children’s services and, indeed, for the schools which are left behind. There are real issues about which the Minister needs to think carefully, as I know he will. The Minister must answer the question: will creating so many academies in already successful schools create a two-tier system? He tells us that it will not, but we need to know what the safeguards are to ensure that that is not the case. Funding for schools is allocated to local authorities on a formula, taking into account local costs, needs and deprivation. Some funding is retained by the local authority to pay for services centrally provided by it to those schools and their pupils. This includes such things as school travel, school meals, special needs, statementing, pupil referral units for children excluded from school, school library services, jointly provided sports, music facilities or teaching as well as advisory support for teachers and schools. These are very important services. The new academies will, in a similar way to the existing academies, receive all their per-pupil funding as well as their share of the local authority central funds. As the need for these services varies, and already outstanding schools are often less likely to need particular kinds of support than other schools, this could create funding shortfalls in support of the remaining local authority schools. A real issue needs to be thought through there. The per-pupil amount received by academy schools would, as a result of this, be greater than that for neighbouring schools. As the budget for centrally provided services will fall as a result, these other schools will lose important support. We need to understand where the Government are going with that. Under the existing academy scheme, this creates a transfer of extra funds to those schools most in need of extra support. However, under the new scheme, where most new academies will already be outstanding schools, resources will be shifted to those schools which are already performing well. This is the two-tier threat to which Dame Margaret Eaton referred when she voiced her concerns about a possible two-tier system and disadvantaged children losing out. At no point does the coalition explain the impact that this may have on other schools in the area. There must also be clarity on the impact on nursery education, and on care for three and four year-olds, because this is causing a great deal of concern outside your Lordships' House. As with funding, we need clarity on the admissions code. Local authorities are the admissions authorities for all schools except academies. There is a great deal to be said about academy agreements, which I do not have time to go into here. Greatly increasing the number of academies will have implications for admissions planning. The Government must be clear about how they will respond to this. There are implications particularly for children in care who currently have priority. Will that be maintained with a much greater number of academies? There are implications, too, for disabled children and those with special needs. How will they be catered for by the new model? For example, parents of children with autism are already reporting problems with the admissions arrangements for current academies. How will this translate across the system? In their manifesto, the Liberal Democrats were particularly concerned about fair admissions and said that they would replace academies entirely with sponsor-managed schools accountable to local authorities and not to Whitehall. I would be interested to know the Liberal Democrat view. I know that they want to position themselves separately, as well as being part of the coalition. Our academy programme was one part of a national approach designed to ensure that every school in this country was a good school. This approach led to a significant fall in the number of schools failing to achieve the 30 per cent benchmark that we set of five good GCSE results. That number has gone from thousands in 1997 to hundreds now. It is a significant improvement, and I am glad that the Minister acknowledges the achievement. The Government have also said that schools under Ofsted special measures for a year or more will be converted to academy status if they do not improve. This represents fewer schools than those that were covered by Labour's National Challenge programme, in which schools were supported and challenged to improve or faced intervention, including the possibility of conversion to an academy or a national challenge trust. If this is the extent of the coalition’s school improvement programme—I am sure the noble Lord will tell me that a lot more is going on—we should know. We should know in much greater detail how the new academies will be expected to fulfil their responsibilities to partners in their community and to promote school improvement. I agreed with my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley when she said that it is the quality of teaching that makes the most difference to children from poor backgrounds and disadvantaged areas. I am glad that the Minister, too, liked that contribution. Like my noble friend, I look forward to hearing much more from the coalition Government about the policies that will help with that. When in government, our aim was to make teaching a masters-level profession, with time off to train and a new teaching masters qualification. We enshrined in our Children, Schools and Families Bill a licence to teach that incorporated both time off for continuous professional development and an ongoing assessment of teacher training and development; but sadly, the Conservatives objected to that in wash-up. This is not part of what I would see as a progressive education policy. I recognise that the Bill is permissive and not coercive; but, as ever, it will be what is not in it that will give greatest cause for concern. It has not enshrined the aspirations that we had in government for a progressive academies programme; and it does not represent a good place to start the coalition Government’s programme. If the teaching unions, Matrix Chambers, early-years specialists, local government leaders and parents’ groups are to be believed, the Bill will need an awful lot of attention in your Lordships’ House. We shall need to work really hard to get it into the kind of shape that it needs to be in before we can comfortably send it down to the other end. With my noble friends Lady Royall and Lady Crawley and our Back-Benchers, I look forward very much to working with the Government to get the Bill into a much better shape.