Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, we have given careful thought to the whole issue of primary schools, and I am grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, had to say about it, with which I very much agree. Primary schools have about them a number of characteristics that are simply nothing like as typical of secondary schools. Many of them are relatively small schools in rural areas, and 25 per cent of the population of primary school children in England and Wales attend 75 per cent of the number of schools. In other words, there are a great many very small schools in small towns in rural areas, which no less than 25 per cent of all our schoolchildren attend between the primary school ages. Secondly, of this group of schools no less than one-third are either church voluntary or church-controlled schools, mainly Anglican but some Roman Catholic and others of other denominations. That is a factor about primary schools that is far more significant than would be the case with secondary schools. Furthermore, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, implied—and we have tried to indicate on this side of the House that we share his view—primary schools are often at the heart of the community, the centre of civic life and the place where people meet to discuss things, where they feel themselves drawn to support the school. At a time when schools will need more support—among other ways, financially—that is a very crucial asset that should not be easily put at risk. I suspect that many noble Lords other than myself spend a certain amount of time attending school fetes and competitions and this and that, which all help to contribute some money to the financial needs of the school. In addition, as briefly said by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, primary schools are peculiarly dependent on local authority support, whether for SEN, management issues, financial issues or simply to deal with a very difficult governor or parent. As chairman of the judges of the Teaching Awards, which I declare as an interest, I have repeatedly been approached by primary school heads who talk about the support of their local authority and say how important it has been to them. That is not something that I have tried to elicit from them; it is something that they freely mention themselves, over and again. That is even truer if the school is small, isolated or on its own. My noble friend Lady Walmsley has pointed to what some of the solutions may be in future for over 17,000 primary schools. One possible solution is to group them together. Geographically that may be almost impossible in some areas, such as the Pennines or Northumberland, but in other areas it is conceivable to bring together a group of schools, possibly under a single head, to form one grouping that can offer rather wider choices to children than one could on its own. In some cases a federation of schools, which might be associated with a single good secondary school or academy, could be brought together and be a very important unit to be considered on its own. All these developments have occurred a little, but development has frankly not gone very far. That is one reason why I believe that in this area it is crucial to have more time than the Bill gives us. The Minister will know that I have tried to argue this point to him—successfully, I hope. My amendment has two parts to it. The first part is that there should be no move at the moment by schools with under 500 children to put forward a suggestion that they should become academies. The figure of 500 broadly takes in most primary schools but not all; some are bigger or are linked to secondary schools. The second part is that there should be a two-year delay before consideration is given to accepting any primary schools for academy status. Despite what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, three months, with the summer holidays intervening, is not going to be long enough except for a tiny handful of schools. The issues here are extremely difficult. In many cases there are more authorities than simply the local authority, including the whole diocesan and church authority structure for the one-third of schools in the controlled and aided status group, which I have already referred to. My amendment therefore proposes that there should be a two-year hiatus, not least because we could learn a great deal from what happens to secondary schools in terms of how one achieves and what the problems of academy status are. As someone who deeply believes in the idea of trial periods and pilot schemes, I think that might be the best possible answer to this difficult situation.