Education and Adoption Bill

My Lords, I do not understand why the Government do not want to deal with the issue of maintained schools feeling that there is not a level playing field in the approach that the Government take to academies and take to them. The Minister is always quoting achievements in academies, but very rarely says anything about maintained schools. He knows there is a huge variation in the performances of both academies and maintained schools. I do not understand why the Bill has not been used to issue a proclamation, in a sense, that academies will be covered in the same way. He has clearly said, twice now, that there is a level playing field and that he expects the RSCs to intervene in coasting academies—at least I think he is saying there should be no difference. Why then are the Government so frightened to put that in the Bill? They could find a way to do it by relating the principle to the funding agreement. That would be very easy to draft—parliamentary counsel could do it in five minutes—and I do not understand why the Government do not want to do it. It would reassure the whole education system that there is a level playing field. At the moment, it does not think there is.