My Lords, this amendment takes us to Clause 7, which is about failing schools, not coasting schools. It makes academisation mandatory for all failing schools: those which on inspection are judged inadequate or in need of very significant improvements. We put forward this amendment at the behest of the Local Government Association which is worried about its responsibilities for finding sponsors for such schools. I shall quote the association’s briefing:
“We are concerned about the capacity of the pool of current and potential academy sponsors to take on large numbers of additional schools. Councils are also reporting difficulty in finding sponsors for new schools or schools found inadequate by Ofsted. The DfE itself has already halted the expansion of some of the largest academy chains in response to concerns that rapid expansion has affected standards and Ofsted has issued critical reports on the performance of some chains. Recent DfE figures show that only 15% of the largest chains perform above the national average on an ‘added value’ measure, compared to 44 per cent of councils”.
This picks up work that has been done by the Sutton Trust in the two reports it issued this year and last year on academy chains. Summing up its findings in the 2015 report, the trust said:
“Overall, in comparison with the national figures for all secondary schools and academies … the sponsored academies in this analysis have lower inspection grades and are twice as likely to be below the floor standard. In 2014, 44% of the academies in
the analysis group were below the government’s new ‘coasting level’ and 26 of the 34 chains that we have analysed had one or more schools in this group”.
It also noted that there were significant variations between chains and within chains with,
“a larger group of low-performing chains … achieving results that are not improving and may be harming the prospects of their disadvantaged pupils”.
It goes on:
“The contrast between the best and worst chains has increased in 2014. Some chains with high attainment for disadvantaged pupils have improved faster than the average for schools with similar 2012 attainment. In contrast, the lowest performing chains did significantly less well over the period 2012-14 than schools with similarly low 2012 attainment”
It is not surprising that the Sutton Trust’s main recommendation was that,
“the DfE and regional schools commissioners … should specify and operate clear, rigorous criteria for all sponsors”,
and that school-based federations and trusts should be expanded; that is, linking up well performing schools, sometimes perhaps in the local authority maintained sectors, with schools that are failing rather than necessarily making them into academies.
This is more or less precisely what this amendment is proposing. Subsection (1) suggests:
“In determining whether to make an Academy order in respect of a maintained school in England, the Secretary of State must consider the availability of a suitable sponsor with a value added measure above the national average”.
For example, the Harris Academy chain, which is very well regarded, would be regarded as a suitable sponsor. However, only 15%—quite a small group—of academy chains are in that category, although they are the larger academy chains.
The amendment goes on to provide that:
“If no suitable sponsor is available, the Secretary of State must appoint as a sponsor a willing council-maintained school or local authority with a value added measure above the national average”.
So the amendment picks up on the two proposals from the Sutton Trust report by saying on the one hand, “Look hard when you are choosing a sponsor—don’t just choose any old sponsor. Make sure that it is one with a very good record in coping with this sort of school”, while on the other hand it refers to where there is no local sponsor available.
It is certainly true that many academy chains concentrate on particular areas and that there are not always chains that are available and have schools locally. When you are part of an academy chain, it is quite important to be able to link up with other schools in the chain and be able to compare best practice. The school of which I am a governor is part of an academy chain, but no other local schools are part of it, and that poses problems. It means that we have to travel about 50 miles to go to a meeting—usually around the M25 at 6 o’clock in the evening, which is not the best thing to do—so as I say, there are problems with not having a local sponsor. Sometimes linking up with a strong local authority-maintained school is preferable, even if it is not itself an academy. Many local secondary schools are now academies and if you have a good, strong local academy, then putting the school under that umbrella is preferable to trying to link it up with a far-distant chain. I beg to move.