My Lords, the Bill removes the right of the school to make any representations against the issuing of a warning notice. The consequences of a warning notice are now much more significant than they have been, because they open the door to possible—perhaps that should be likely—academisation.
To deny school governors the right to make any kind of appeal against such a semi-judicial decision is, I suggest, nothing less than a denial of natural justice. The amendment provides a procedure for a school to appeal against a warning notice.
I must say that I chuckled at the Minister’s reference to devolution, not least devolution max, which in Scotland of course means something slightly different. The Bill is about centralisation. It is about the Government taking a grip. Whether it is really central—in London—or in the regions, it is government control. It tells anybody who does not happen to share that vision—some might say, political philosophy—to shut up and go away, because the Government have made their decision and that is that. That is very much the impression that was given about the Bill when it was in another place—when all those amendments were submitted and discussed and none was successful. This afternoon, apart from one small, but very welcome, concession by the Minister, we are doing the same here. I hope that that is not going to be how we will proceed in the remaining two days in Committee, because noble Lords are putting forward serious points to try to improve the Bill, which some of them have grave concerns about. I hope that they will be taken seriously and that the Minister will at least agree to think about some of them.
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I suspect that the Minister is going to tell the Committee again that he is unwilling to tolerate people who are seeking, in his view, to obstruct the will of the Government because it is in the interests of pupils, which must come first. I think we have established that the interests of the pupils must come first, but at the same time, governors of schools are there for a reason. Part of that reason is to look after the interests of the
children. If they are not allowed to do that, what is the purpose of governors? The Minister will be well aware that there is a shortage of governors: many schools do not get enough people to fill the positions. For instance, my wife is a governor of a school in London, and even when the governor positions are filled, in some cases it is difficult to get them to turn up to meetings. This casting aside of views of the importance of governors is not going to do anything for the management of schools or oversight of the way in which schools are run.
Yes, the Government have the right to implement their manifesto. At the same time, they have to be willing to accept that there are different views about the way they do that. Surely, there is a balance to strike. In a democratic society people have the right to challenge government actions and, unless the stakes are extremely high, governments have to put up with it, listen and, at least on occasion, accept what is said to them. I would say that that was a lesson that the Chancellor of the Exchequer learned in your Lordships’ House last week and it seems that, to his credit, he has thus far taken it on board.
There surely cannot be any suggestion that the procedure outlined in Amendment 13 would be too time-consuming or burdensome or would disrupt the process, either in terms of Ministers achieving their aim of getting as many schools as possible to academy status or, indeed, of the tribunal system itself.
I have a question for the noble Lord. I see that he is taking advice at the moment, so perhaps the noble Baroness can help me. I think I am right in saying that in the previous debate in 2014, the noble Lord said that 58 formal notices had been issued by regional schools commissioners to academies and free schools trusts. Will he clarify whether he was talking about the same warning notices? I did my research, and came across a figure that only 12 had ever been issued to academies by the DfE. That may have been before the regional schools commissioners were established; I do not know. It does not matter that much, because it does not deflect me from my argument that between 2010 and 2014, local authorities issued 221 warning notices to maintained schools. If we aggregate the figures of 58 and 12, that is still out of proportion with the number of academies in special measures, which is twice that of maintained schools. As I mentioned on Amendment 10, there are more pupils in inadequate academies than in inadequate maintained schools. As the Minister said, a third of local authorities did not issue any warning notices between 2010 and 2014; but, equally, there is no evidence that the performance of schools overall in those local authority areas is any different from those that have issued notices. That is not to say that that is not an issue: warning notices are there for a purpose and I believe that they should be used where appropriate.
As noble Lords may recall, Labour revised all the administrative non-judicial tribunals some time ago to bring them within a single system. In education, appeals on education, health and care plans go to the First-Tier Tribunal, as do some appeals on the suitability of staff to work with children, particularly childcare. It is telling that parents can now appeal—following, let it
be noted, a Government amendment to the Childcare Bill—to the First-Tier Tribunal on access to the additional 15 hours of free childcare a week that they are to become entitled to. If that is the case, then I say to the Minister: why should governors be denied the option of appealing against a warning notice, on which the very future of their school might depend? I suggest that that is not right on a number of levels and I hope that the Minister might be persuaded to say that she will reconsider this issue and return with a proposal on it at Report. I beg to move.