Academies Bill [HL]

I have a certain sympathy with this amendment, although there are question marks about how it is phrased. I have most sympathy with what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has just described. We have got into a muddle with the role of Ofsted, of SIPs, of the YPLA—or before that, of the department—and where support starts and ends and inspection starts and ends. Rather too many people are going into schools, particularly schools in trouble, without being clear about who is doing what. I totally agree that Ofsted—or any inspection regime, in a sense—must have a lot more focus and not inspect the myriad things that it is inspecting at the moment. My personal experience is that you end up getting into a panic about whether the files are in order rather than rigorously checking and really improving education in the school. That cannot be right and has to be looked at. However, we have to be clear that Ofsted, or whatever inspection regime there is in the future, must be accountable to the community and to parents in particular. I therefore differ from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in that I would not want to go back to the somewhat gooey regime in which data did not really matter. Data really matter. Without them, there is a real danger of groups of children in a school being missed and not progressed properly. By all means, let us add real intelligence to schools and give them real support, but let us not go back to the days when whole sections of kids could be left behind because we did not notice that they were not progressing.