My Lords, the Government have been, and continue to be, supportive of the broad aims of partnership, collaboration and co-operation in education, as in other fields. I have been a long-standing supporter of the Co-operative movement and I was sorry to see its decline in the north of England over the last 30 or 40 years, just as I am glad to see that in many ways it is now reviving. I am a member and a
regular user of the excellent Co-op shop in Saltaire and I was on the point of considering moving to the Co-operative Bank before its recent sad problems.
We all recognise that mutuals are model forms of enterprise that we need to extend across a whole range of fields. As I deal with elderly relatives, I think that we all need to work much more actively to develop mutual models for care homes. As far as schools are concerned, we know that partnerships between schools can be a powerful tool in raising standards and improving educational achievements for all pupils and we place great value on that.
The academies programme continues to deliver examples of schools working together in multi-academy trusts, which help to ensure success for everybody in those partnerships. These trusts pull together schools across both phases of education to work effectively as a family of schools. There are currently 260 multi-academy trusts which have both primary and secondary provision, so it is not simply primary schools working with primary schools and secondary schools working with secondary schools. We are promoting collaboration across the sector and we see the benefits across the educational landscape.
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Outside the academies programme there are other examples of collaboration within the existing system, including sharing best practice in both teaching and school improvement strategies, and schools are able to share services and specialist provision. Therefore, we are very much in favour of the general principles attached.
Nursery schools are currently able to work with local partners and the wider community as well as to federate with other schools and early years providers, should they wish to do so. This sector has a diverse range of providers that facilitate parental choice and enjoy a high degree of autonomy. It is not clear to the Government what further educational benefits there would be in creating a separate category of nursery academy at this time. The vast majority of nurseries are not under local authority control. Local authority nursery schools are a relatively small part of that field.
Amendment 21 seeks to build on the existing opportunities open to schools to join and operate as co-operative trusts. Our continuing highest priority as a coalition is to ensure that all schools are good schools and we are keen to promote all aspects of good practice that support that, including the need for clear accountability. In particular, we want to ensure that schools have strong governance arrangements with clear accountability for educational standards. The current system allows a variety of school models to be established, including maintained co-operative schools and co-operative academies, which, as the noble Baroness stated, have been expanding in particular areas of the country, without weakening school accountability or adding complexity to an already complex system.