My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Communication and consultation can only be positive, and significantly improve the process of schools’ conversion to academy status.
There is another perfectly legitimate reason why parents have a right to be involved in the decision. As we have heard, there is a stark variation between the performances of academy chains. Parents, teachers, local authorities and the school community could be handing a school over to a chain that might perform markedly worse than the existing maintained school.
In a report that is as detailed and comprehensive as any could be found, the much-respected Sutton Trust demonstrated that sponsored academies are twice as likely to be below the floor standards as other mainstream schools. Half the chains examined by the trust did less well than the mainstream school average. Indeed, in 2014, 44% of the academies in the analysis group covered in the report were below the Government’s new “coasting level”.
Our education system must be a collaborative effort between parents, pupils and schools, and Labour Members believe that it is the right of parents to have a substantial say in how their children are educated. The Conservative Education Act 1996 set out in law the general principle that
“pupils are to be educated in accordance with the wishes of their parents”.
That has been a principle in law since school attendance became compulsory more than a century ago.
It is strange that the Government’s talk of localism and involving service users in decisions does not apply to schools. After the election, the Chancellor of the Exchequer remarked in a speech on devolution that “the old model” of running things from London
“made people feel remote from the decisions that affect their lives. It’s not good for our prosperity or for our democracy.”
He will find some agreement among Members on both sides of the House on that general point, but perhaps the Education Secretary failed to get the memo, as she
removed the right of parents and the local school community to have a say in the future of their schools. I ask once again, why are the Government so afraid of the voices of parents and the school communities?
My new clause would go a small way towards repairing the democratic deficit that is opening up as a result of a Bill that puts too much power in the hands of the Secretary of State, and far too little in the hands of our school communities.