My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Brixton—indeed, he picked up on a point that was in my Amendment 21A about the involvement of pupils, and the follow-up question I asked the Minister. Perhaps we can work on that amendment on Report, because it is crucial and I do not think we have to keep it to voting age, or even 16. At some level, pupils should have a say in their education if we operate in a democracy.
I am aware that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, is not currently in his place, but I feel strongly that I need to respond to what he said about stars in education and star teachers. Underlying that is a real concern about importing traditional private sector approaches that have seen some executive head teachers receiving extremely high levels of pay. What we have to acknowledge, particularly in an educational setting, is that, ultimately, we are talking about a teacher who should be part of a team of teachers working together. Every teacher has something to offer and the idea that we hold up some people as stars and everyone else just has to follow what they do is a deeply damaging approach to education.
I also note the point the noble Lord made about curriculum resources. Of course we do not want every teacher to have to start from scratch, but there is also grave concern that this Bill talks about multi-academy trusts as proprietors. By law, they are not for profit, but if they are very large institutions buying curriculum resources and other supplies from commercial suppliers, we really have some questions to ask about where value for money and the right approach to public service are in that kind of structure.
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To respond to the noble Lord, Lord Knight, it is great to have parent governors on multi-academy trusts, but I suggest that the same problem you might have as a head of a multi-academy trust also applies to a couple of parent governors. With its geographical diversity, how on earth do those parent governors really represent every school and part of that broader trust? That is why I attached my name to Amendment 25 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, also backed by the noble Baroness, Lady Blower.
This debate has really convinced me that Amendments 24 to 27 inclusive are a complete set that we need in the Bill. While I do not agree with everything about the structure, Amendment 38 and its inclusion of the local authority is crucial. My Amendment 21A would have been better in this group; I will not repeat all the arguments I made on it about schools being civic institutions and part of their communities, but I set out in that amendment that that should be the general standard. How that standard is delivered is in these amendments.