My Lords, this amendment is an attempt to correct something that I see as rather an error in the Bill. We have this new condition of “coasting”, which is bad—I think that that is probably the great driver here—and we have a solution to coasting schools, which is that they become academies. We have heard a great deal in the Committee—and it is obvious to anyone who thinks about it for three seconds—that occasionally, at certain points in the future—let us not argue about frequency—academies will start to coast. It has already been agreed that they can fail. My amendment is an attempt to try to tie academies into the existing structure that could deal with an academy that has gone wrong.
I feel that we will have a great deal more fun arguing about exactly what the correct definition of “coasting” is. Indeed, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, looked, shall we say, a bit like a dog that had found a nice juicy scent when we talked about the academic definition before. That is something which any Minister should be very wary of. The fact of the matter is that we will have a definition, and no matter how you tweak it, occasionally an academy is going to fall within that definition. If coasting is wrong for one school it must, I hope, be wrong for any school. While, as always, the amendment is probing in nature, it is an attempt to bring such a school in.
Amendment 17 presents a slightly different way of basically removing the fur from this moggie. It would insert a new clause. One thing I like about it is that it goes back to nurse; it goes to Ofsted, a body that can take a look around, which knows the system and which can make a judgment. We should think about that because we know how Ofsted works and how its judgments go, and it is in place. Also, using Ofsted in conjunction with regional schools commissioners is probably quite a sensible idea. We have a body whose judgment we trust and which we have used. We should try to put something into the Bill for academies which are making mistakes and doing something wrong—there could be 1,001 problems. I think that Uplands Junior School in Leicester has lost half its teachers today and is to become an academy. Who knows what is going on there? The Minister is looking at me strangely, but it was reported only today so I understand why he may have missed it. It was brought to my attention very briefly.