Indeed. I recently participated in an interesting Adjournment debate on this matter with Conservative Members. We know that a funding crisis is building up as we speak, and alongside the problems with teacher training and supply, these are creating a perfect storm. There are going to be real problems over the course of this Parliament, and I put on record that we are pointing that out and that the Government should be acting more urgently to deal with the problems that are going to emerge.
New clause 1 would mean that schools could not be blamed for problems that had been initiated by policies of the Secretary of State for Education that had led to a lack of teacher supply in their area. Teacher supply would be a reasonable factor to take into account, rather than simply looking at raw data that tell us nothing about the struggle that a school might be having to recruit high-quality, well-qualified teaching staff.
New clause 1 would also bring academies into the scope of the provision. The Government appear to believe that maintained schools that are experiencing difficulties need a fundamental change of structure, but that that does not apply to academies. They seem to think that academy status is right for failing maintained schools, but it is also right for failing academies. That seems to be the Government’s policy. The Secretary of State’s position is that if an academy fails, the obvious solution is to turn it into an academy. That simply makes no sense.