Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

The point I am making is that we want to academies to be the solution where that is appropriate, and we need to overcome any obstacles to that. The only point I am making to the hon. Gentleman is that it is not just Labour authorities that are sometimes standing in the way of the academy solution. The Secretary of State has been very clear that academies are an important solution to the problems of educational underachievement. They are an important solution to some of problems we have seen when social deprivation and educational achievement remain linked despite the efforts that have been made, but they are not the only solution. That is the difference between us. The Conservatives see academies as a solution in every single situation—in every single secondary school and every single primary school—whereas we say that there may well be other solutions, including the national challenge trust. Locally, an academy might not be the best means of improving educational standards in an area, but we will pursue an academy solution if we believe that it is appropriate. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) mentioned local authorities. We might go to the local authority and ask it to come to agreements about educational transformation in its area and develop a strategy for change, perhaps using Building Schools for the Future money. It is up to the local authority to determine how to do that. The difference between us and the other parties is that we want local authorities to come forward and tell us what the solution is—and that may well be an academy, or it may well be a national challenge trust or another sort of federation. We will not tolerate, however, local authorities who will not come forward to grasp difficult issues, but we will work closely with local authorities on the school reform programme. We have introduced the YPLA simply because, as the hon. Member for Yeovil said, it simply is not sustainable for the Department to run academies from the centre and to become, in essence, a national local authority for hundreds and hundreds of them. If there were only a few academies, such an arrangement might be appropriate, but as we expect to have 400 of them in a couple of years' time, it simply is not in this case. Indeed, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton has said:"““There is a general consensus that the administration and oversight of academies should, because of the growing number of academies, be performed by some form of agency acting for the Secretary of State””.––[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 19 March 2009; c. 427.]" He may not accept the YPLA, but he accepts that some form of agency, aside from the central DCSF, would be the appropriate body and that suggests that he accepts the need for another body to help run the academy programme, rather than to have the whole programme run centrally.