Academies Bill [Lords]

Coming from my background, having worked for 25 years in education and particularly in special educational needs, I am used to making decisions about children and young people based upon what works for them and what is in their best interests, not upon ideology or my own philosophical beliefs. I am therefore concerned about the speed with which the Bill is being rushed through the House and the impact that that will have on children with special educational needs. I ask the Secretary of State, although he has left the Chamber, to think carefully about that matter. Having examined the Bill in some detail, I do not believe that there has been any detailed analysis of its impact on vulnerable children, particularly those with special educational needs. I am particularly concerned about two things, based on what we know about the small number of academies that currently exist. First, we know that that group of children has not had a good deal in admissions, accountability and exclusion. I am concerned that if we increase the number of academies massively without considering in detail the impact that it will have on that vulnerable group of children, we will simply make the problem much greater. We know that the educational achievement of vulnerable children—those with SEN, those living in care and those living in poverty—is lower than the average in the school population. Local authority managers of services such as admissions at least try to ensure that those children are not systematically disadvantaged when it comes to admission to good schools. By taking admissions out of the hands of local authorities and handing them over to academies to administer on their own behalf, we run the risk of taking any pretence of fairness out of the system and systematically disadvantaging the already disadvantaged. Currently, local authorities have no power to name an academy on a statement of special educational needs, even when a parent particularly wants it and the local authority that has assessed the needs of the child in question believes that the academy can meet that child's needs. I have come across that a number of times as an assistant director, when I have looked carefully at a child's assessment and believed that an academy can meet their needs, and when the parent particularly wants their child to go to that academy, but the academy simply refuses to consider the point.