Academies Bill [HL]

We begin today the first scrutiny in Committee of the first Bill from the new coalition Government. The Government have tried to present the Academies Bill now before us as non-controversial, as an extension of Labour policy on academies, and so as something that should be easy for reasonable people on this side of the House to support. It is to be a decentralising measure, devolving more power to local people to run their schools and making a contribution to improving the quality of teaching and learning in schools, with all the benefits to children’s life chances and to our wider society that that implies. This Bill is also being presented as a contribution to the big society—the idea which the Conservatives promoted a little in the general election. I suspect that we will hear less about that as we go forward, but nevertheless it is a very interesting idea. I believe that the Bill is nothing of the sort. We on this side recognise it for what it may well turn out to be—highly centralising, potentially damaging to children’s education, damaging to communities, and a device more to establish free schools by the back door. The Bill does not seek to improve our education system. Instead, it may well be shown that it seeks to make fundamental and damaging changes to it. The Government would not increase the number of Labour-designed academies, designed when we were in government; rather they seek to create a new class of school with a motive which is entirely different from the laudable aims behind the Labour academies. The schools that they would create are not necessarily appropriate to bear the name ““academy””. That is why we seek to deny that name to these schools. They should be called what they will be: direct maintained schools. Ministers have spent so many years attacking local government that they have forgotten something about which their own Conservative-controlled Local Government Association has reminded them: "““Councils don’t run schools and haven’t done for many years””." That is a quotation from an LGA Bill briefing. Schools run themselves, which is how it should be, but councils do have a range of statutory duties to protect the welfare of children in their area, including a duty to promote, "““the fulfilment by every child concerned of his educational potential””." Councils make sure that there are enough school places for all the children who need them, and their top priority is to make sure that the same high standards of education are offered to all students, whether they are taught in a community school or an academy. Councils make sure that the admissions process operates fairly so that every child gets a chance to go to a good local school. They oversee the distribution of funding in conjunction with local schools in a cost-effective way. They provide support for children with special educational needs, something I know that the Committee is concerned about, and they are the champions of children in care. Far from being non-contentious, there are many issues in the Bill which deserve full scrutiny by the Committee. As the Bill progresses through your Lordships’ House, I hope we will be able to demonstrate how potentially retrograde it could be. For now, this group of amendments concentrates on only one issue. It is not a superficial or symbolic point but a very substantive one—that the schools established under the Bill will not be academies but something else entirely, and what they are called should reflect that fact. The academy scheme put forward by this side of the Committee when we were in government was intended as a means by which schools which were failing too many pupils could be supported quickly, directly and effectively. Some Members of this Committee believe that the schools created under the provisions of the Bill will be comparable to Labour’s academies. Nothing could be further from the truth. We need a discussion on terminology in order to highlight what is proposed in the Bill. Is it so new? In reality, it could represent a return to something remarkably similar to the grant-maintained schools of the mid-1990s. So we must first establish what we mean by an academy. Academies are all-ability, state-funded schools which have sponsors from a wide range of backgrounds, including universities, colleges, educational trusts, charities, the business sector and faith communities. I pay tribute to the contribution that the sponsors have made; it has been absolutely key. Sponsors establish a charity trust which appoints the majority of governors to the academy governing body. The academy’s programme targets areas of inadequate educational attainment and opportunity. Most academies replace existing weak or underperforming schools, and others are brand new schools in areas which need extra school places. They were a key element of the national challenge and took us to a position—from a very low start—where only one in 12 schools fell below the 30 per cent grade A to C benchmark, which half of all schools failed to do under the previous Conservative Government. Academies are required by law to cater for children of all abilities. The school admissions code which came into force in 2007 applies to all maintained schools and academies when setting their admissions arrangements. Academies must also have regard to the SEN code of practice and statutory guidance on inclusion. An academy is established in collaboration, not confrontation, with the local authority as a means by which extra resources can be freed up to support the most disadvantaged and the weakest. Academies are given new leadership, and some of the best heads in the country have been attracted to run them. Outside expertise brought in new ideas, new ways of working and a new focus on the best ways to change the culture of learning. Importantly, a role for innovation was acknowledged and, for this reason, academies were obliged to follow the national curriculum only in core subjects such as English, maths, science and information technology. With academy status came a new ethos, perhaps with a renewed focus on discipline, a new uniform and new ways of organising the school day. New buildings frequently provided the focus for this change of ethos and helped to deliver excellent discipline and the best facilities. However, just as important, academies helped to deliver to children a sense of pride in their education; that they should be proud of themselves and proud of their school in return. The 63 academies which have been open long enough to produce results in both 2008 and 2009 have seen, at the end of key stage 4, an increase of 5 percentage points—up to 34.9 per cent—in pupils gaining five or more A* to C grades at GCSE and equivalent, including English and maths. On the five-plus A* to C measure, the 63 academies improved by 11.7 percentage points, compared with an improvement of 5.4 percentage points nationally. The Minister has recognised the importance of that achievement. A comparison of the 101 academies that had results in 2009 and predecessor results in 2001 shows a 16.4 percentage point improvement in the number of pupils achieving five-plus A* to C, including English and maths, from 17.8 per cent in 2001 to 34.2 per cent in 2009. This compares with an average 11.9 percentage point improvement nationally, from 38.8 per cent in 2001 to 50.7 per cent in 2009. The 101 academies and their predecessor schools have also more than doubled the percentage of pupils achieving five-plus A* to C, from 26.3 per cent in 2001 to 65.2 per cent in 2009. Nationally, the increase is 22 percentage points, from 47.8 per cent in 2001 to 69.8 per cent in 2009. It is important to put these figures on the record. We on this side of the Committee are proud of what was achieved through our academies programme, but to compare this with the free-for-all that is on the table is disingenuous and potentially misleading. The most significant difference between the approach of the current Government and that of the previous Government relates to which kinds of school are given the greatest support to become academies. As a group, compared with the average for all state schools, academies have nearly two and a half times the proportion of pupils known to be eligible for free school meals. Academies have had a higher incidence of pupils with English as an additional language than other state-funded schools. By contrast, the present Government propose to implement a reform aimed not at improvements for these schools but at improvements for the 20 per cent of schools already rated as outstanding by Ofsted. There are other key differences between these plans and Labour’s radical reforms aimed at turning schools around. The Bill offers no extra resources for schools bar a small contribution to the extra paperwork that the school will be required to carry out as a result of this process. It also makes it clear that schools that convert will have to make no changes whatever; they will have no requirement to bring in outside expertise in order to open themselves up to new ideas. They will simply be absolved of any responsibilities to co-operate with the schools around them through, for example, children’s trusts or behaviour partnerships, or any of the many other ways in which schools are entitled and encouraged to work together. There will be no requirement of the schools to contribute their fair share of education budgets towards the education of children with special needs or behavioural difficulties in their community. Indeed, the funding allocated to educate those children will be cut back to give the academies additional funds to do with as they please. Under the approach adopted by this side of the Committee when in government, an academy was open to all, accessible to all, and intended to challenge and educate those who were most in need of support. Selection was anathema to that system, but some schools, as selective, old-style grammar schools, will now be allowed to convert to academies. By definition, their pupils will be the least likely to need the shared services of the local authority, but will still be in receipt of their share of the funding allocated to their local authority to fund these services. That does not add up. I look forward to being convinced that I have misunderstood all of this. We on this side are proud of the achievements of academies. The class of school brought into being by the Bill would be free from ““local authority control””—since, as I said, LEAs do not control schools now—but free also from the obligations to their local communities that all schools should have. That is why we do not wish the Bill to use ““academies”” in its title; it is not as clear as it should be. If the Secretary of State would like to create and provide for thousands of schools that are independent of spirit and isolated in operation, he should find his own label for them. He should not use the name ““academy””. In our amendments, we have suggested that he should use the term ““direct maintained school””, because that is what he proposes to do—to maintain the schools directly. That is what is being proposed, and that—not academies—is an accurate description of these schools. These are not the type of school that we on these Benches made such a success. A significant and different approach has been used. That difference is significant and should be recognised in the name. I very much look forward to hearing the Minister's response.