Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I am sorry to return to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, but I believe that it is fundamentally unworkable. It is not a question of judgments having to be made about terminology in legislation; these judgments have to be made the whole time. The problem with his amendment is that there are deeply competing interpretations within the education world as to what the words he has used in his amendment would mean. Having been on the receiving end of representations about the setting up of new schools, including schools in the county from which the noble Lord hails, I can tell him that he is setting up a procedure that will see every proposal for a new school that does not have near universal local support end up in the courts being bitterly contested because of the imprecision of language that he proposes to impose on the Bill. Let me take the two specific terms he uses: that a new academy must meet ““public need”” before the Secretary of State is allowed to agree to it and that it should not, "““cause undue detriment to any neighbouring school””." King Lear got this right more than 400 years ago when he said: ““O, reason not the need! Our basest beggars Are in the poorest thing superfluous””. But when it comes to defining need in respect of new school places, two fundamentally competing views are held. One is that ““need”” should be defined as a numerical need for additional places, while another and essentially different interpretation is that ““need”” should be based on parental demand for a new type of place or, as alas is too often the case in local authorities with a large number of failing schools, for better places, which is what has driven so much of the academy movement. It is not that there have not been enough school places in a locality, but that they have not been of a quality that parents in good conscience wish their children to take up. The noble Lord owes it to the Committee to be frank and direct about which concept of need he has in mind. Is need to be defined simply as a numerical need for places or is it to be defined in terms of appreciable parental demand for a type of place—it could be for Montessori-type schools with a different educational philosophy—or better quality places than those on offer in the existing schools?