Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I, too, welcome the Minister to his new post and look forward to working with him on this and other legislation. Your Lordships’ House has a duty to scrutinise legislation and on these Benches we shall continue to carry out that scrutiny while conscious of the different responsibilities that come with being partners in the coalition Government. After the monumental Bills in the previous Session, it is something of a comfort to have only 16 clauses to consider, although that may be a false comfort, as there are many broad areas in the Bill where the devil will be in the detail. It is to be hoped that these will be clarified during debate and that we shall have time to consider the advantages and sort out any unintended consequences of implementing this major piece of legislation. The rationale behind the Bill is to implement the academy model in order to achieve school improvement and higher attainment. There have been some great successes among academies set up under the old model, which involved sponsors and setting up the schools in disadvantaged areas, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, set out. These are new types of academies and I share concerns that the speed of implementation leaves little time for consultation with stakeholders, including parents and governors. We welcome measures that free schools from centralised bureaucracy and allow teachers to use their professional skills and judgment about what works best for the pupils in their schools. Every class has a different dynamic as pupils respond and learn in a variety of ways. Teachers have to adapt and improvise in order to encourage the potential of each individual class and child. All that diversity has to be guided towards achievement against national standards, leading to nationally recognised certification. The Bill brings forward proposals for a new type of school to try to find the balance between freedom and accountability. With new ideas in education, it can pay dividends to start with a pilot, with a small enough number of schools participating to enable progress to be monitored, evaluated and improved before the measures are rolled out more widely. Change is disruptive in the short term, even when it turns out to be of long-term benefit, and each generation of schoolchildren has only one opportunity of primary and secondary education. Little would be lost and much could be gained by starting with fewer schools as volunteer guinea pigs in order to ensure that the template was truly fit for the majority of schools. Perhaps the Minister will say whether thought was given to opening this academy status initially to a more restrictive number of schools so that lessons could be learnt from their experience. We shall be discussing the role of parents in the academies. The Explanatory Notes state that parents will not lose any rights that they currently have, but we know that existing academies tend to have fewer parent governors than other schools. It is not clear whether parents will have any say over a school becoming an academy. We hope that there will be reassurances on parents’ involvement with academies. I follow the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in wishing to explore in more detail provision for pupils with special educational needs. Questions need to be raised, including whether the SEN statutory framework will apply to the new academies, how the new admissions policy will work for children with SEN and whether all academies will be required to have trained SEN staff. I listened with interest to what the noble Lord, Lord Baker, said about that. Currently the local authorities have an important role in co-ordinating the needs of those with SEN. Who will be responsible for that co-operative working in the academy structure? We know that children with autism, for instance, are more at risk of exclusion because their behaviour may be difficult to manage. What measures will be put in place to ensure that they are not disproportionately affected by exclusions from academies? Who will be responsible for arranging and funding SEN transport? Some local authorities have extensive—and, indeed, expensive—systems for ensuring that pupils can access the most suitable schools in the area. There is a danger that services currently supplied at regional level will be fragmented if academies operate independently. Both primary and special schools tend to be smaller than secondary schools, with smaller administrative resource. As they take on academy status, it is not only SEN tasks that will fall to them but a range of other responsibilities, including property management, admissions policy, staff employment and health and safety. These duties may well require additional training. What provision will be in place to enable them to cope with such responsibilities? There is expertise within local authorities, and academies may wish to contract back a range of services to the local authority, but these are matters that they will need to discuss, negotiate and agree on. In many parts of the country, schools have strong partnership relationships. It would be valuable to maintain such collaboration, but it may not be straightforward in the more competitive world of academies. Perhaps I, too, may touch on the charitable status of academies, which the noble Baroness raised. The Bill provides for academies to have exempt charity status and thus not to be regulated by the Charity Commission. They would not need to provide accounts, public benefit reports or any other information to be displayed on the public register of charities. We would welcome clarification of the rationale for this. May we assume that charitable status, among other things, would carry with it a duty to share facilities with other schools in the area, where that would benefit less advantaged pupils? There are enthusiastic supporters of academies. The coalition Government are committed to tackling educational inequality and giving greater powers to parents and pupils to choose a good school, with the ultimate aim, surely, that all schools should be good schools. As we proceed to Committee stage, we shall work co-operatively to ensure that the new academies open opportunities to all and that the choice of a good school does not become the preserve of the more articulate but is extended, with fairness and responsibility, to disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils. We look forward to the detailed scrutiny ahead.