My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 24 and 25 in this group and to whether Clause 9 should stand part.
Amendment 24 aims to bring some much-needed transparency to the process of selecting academy sponsors. There is an unanswerable case in general terms for consultation but there is also a case for consultation on this very specific issue. Local communities should not have sponsors imposed on them without having some say in the matter. Sponsors are not just interchangeable. They have particular approaches to managing schools and to the curriculum. They have very different records, in terms of both their effectiveness and their record in managing public money. Again, I urge the Minister to acknowledge the essential fact that public money is involved here—which ought to mean that transparency and accountability are guaranteed. It is public money, yet the Minister wants to cancel the public’s right to have any say locally as to how it is used in educating their children. It is unacceptable that a Minister can come to Parliament, propose such a fundamentally undemocratic measure and hope to get away with it.
Currently, there is absolutely no public quality control of would-be sponsors. On academisation, we know that Ministers are determined to press ahead at full speed and are thus required to find sponsors at all costs. We also know that regional schools commissioners are paid by results—that is, how many academies they can bring into being—and so they need to find sponsors at all costs. That is surely not a healthy situation. Someone, somewhere, needs to have the responsibility to say, “Wait a minute—these people are just not up to the task”. If that means that some schools cannot be
converted as quickly as had been intended, surely that is preferable to signing up sponsors who are inadequate. More needs to be done by government—in whose name we are told the regional schools commissioners act—to get the sponsors right, rather than to get them right now.
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Logically, of course, this role should be undertaken by Ofsted, and that brings me to Amendment 25. Why Ofsted should be written out of so much of this Bill is worrying because it reflects the clear determination of the Department for Education and its Ministers to ensure that as much as possible of all aspects of transfers from maintained status to academy status is removed from public scrutiny. I have to ask the question: why the secrecy? What does the Secretary of State and her department feel they have to hide? Presumably, it is something or some things that would not stand up to close examination, at least as regards how they are being carried out.
Ofsted should have the right of access so as to guard the public interest. If it were simply a question of resources—I think we all know that Ofsted is underresourced—that at least would be an issue that could be addressed. But it goes deeper than that. The Government are determined to ensure that we have a two-tier structure in public education. I say that because on our last day in Committee, the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Nash—declined to accept an invitation from my noble friend Lord Hunt to say that the Government intended to make every school an academy. Clearly, we are looking at a two-tier structure that will be there for some considerable time.
The Minister will no doubt argue that he and his appointees can be trusted in the matter of sponsors, as in all other matters relating to academisation. However, the facts suggest otherwise, because the performance of sponsors shows that some are simply not competent. Some have been found to have misused public money. Some, such as Prospects Academies Trust in 2014, have collapsed through incompetence, with all the consequent problems that causes for children, parents and teachers. Some have highly questionable international links, such as the Aurora Academies Trust, connected to one of the more dubious US schools chains with a record of failure and scandal in that country.
Earlier this year, we followed with increasing concern events surrounding the forced academisation of the Hewett School in Norwich. That brought up all sorts of questions relating to consultation and parental involvement in the process. I suspect that the fear of that being repeated is one of the main drivers of this anti-democratic Bill because I have no doubt that is exactly the kind of example that the Ministers will point to when lecturing us on why we cannot have people being asked for their views in case—heaven forfend—they are likely to want something other than academisation, and they might kick up a bit of a racket in doing so. I am sorry but that is the democratic process. There was a large march through the city of Norwich in protest at the Secretary of State’s academy order and a clear majority of those asked in a consultation exercise were opposed to it. There were dubious goings-on
between the company given the role of carrying out the consultation and the trust seeking to become the academy’s sponsor.
Did any of this trouble the Secretary of State? Not a bit of it—she rode roughshod over the views of parents and the local community and announced, in so many words, “You’re having an academy and that’s the end of it. Now, go away!”. It just so happens that the trust that is now the sponsor of the Hewett Academy is chaired by a major donor to the Conservative Party and the chair of the academy’s board of governors is the trust’s chief executive, a person lauded by the former Secretary of State, Mr Gove. Are these coincidences? Almost certainly not. So there is a serious need for proper, independent quality control of would-be sponsors. Why would Ministers not want that to be guaranteed? There is an urgent need for Ofsted to take on this role to bring transparency to areas where it seems the Government are determined that there should be none.
This clause is symptomatic of the general “we know best” approach of the Government throughout this Bill. We all share the aim of wanting our children and schools to perform as well as they possibly can, but we differ fundamentally with the Government on the means of bringing about these changes. Parents, school governors and local authorities all have long-established rights that enable them to have their say on matters affecting schools in their communities. Teaching unions, too, have the right to give their opinion, given that they are at the interface between children and their future careers. Yet in this clause we see that only certain categories of person are entitled to be consulted while everyone else, it seems, is insulted. Why should foundation or voluntary schools be treated differently from maintained schools? It is instructive that the appropriate religious body in faith schools merits consultation, but at the end of the day they can still be overruled by the Secretary of State on whether or not their school will be forced to become an academy, or who the sponsors will be. They may not even be of the same faith as the school itself.
Then, of course, there is the question of land. I made reference earlier to the Hewett Academy in Norwich, which sits on land estimated to be worth £60 million. That is £60 million of public funds—at least it was until recently. Now that tidy sum has simply been handed to a group of the Government’s friends and while at present they are saying that they have no plans to sell the ground and move to a new site—let us face it, they would have to be monumentally stupid to suggest anything else—there will be nothing to prevent that in future. The only certainty is that the public purse is £60 million lighter as a result of that deal.
If I were involved with a faith school, I would be very concerned as to the future of the land owned by my church because, ultimately, it can be taken by the Secretary of State from that church, which may have owned the land for centuries, and handed over to anybody approved as a sponsor to do with as he pleases. I suggest that that is a shocking state of affairs for a Government in a democracy to contemplate, far less legislate for.