My Lords, I did not want to stand up again, but I need to respond quickly to my noble friend, just to defend the record of some multi-academy trusts. In doing so, I do not want to attack any local authorities. Local authorities do and have done a great job. Some individual schools were being failed when the first academies were set up by my noble friend Lord Adonis, and it was the right thing to do to intervene after generations of failure. But just within the multi-academy trust that I am so lucky to chair, I refer my noble friend to an Ofsted report that has just been published about DSLV, which is an all-through school in Daventry. It has gone from being in a very poor state to having an excellent report
that we received this week. I could point to a number, just to say that there is a balance to the argument. I hope that he is willing to listen to it, in the same way that I am willing to listen to the argument around local authorities in London and elsewhere.
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