My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I see the noble Lord’s three amendments as being essentially about the quality and standards of the academy chains being considered to take over individual schools. As a matter of principle, it does not seem unreasonable to require that information be available to those who make decisions and to parents and teachers about the record of that academy chain. I take the point that one does not want to write everything into primary legislation and to instruct Ofsted in everything that it should do. On the other hand, one of the themes through our debates is whether maintained schools are being treated on a level playing field with academies. The suspicion arises because the Government seem to convey the view “Academies are good; maintained schools are bad”. That is why some of us want to see something in the legislation to ensure that academies are dealt with equally, and looking at the past performance of the chain seems to me to be particularly important.
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On the issue of teaching assistants, I am not sure that I agree with the noble Lord. Surely the record shows that the employment of many teaching assistants has been beneficial; they have relieved some of the pressures on classroom teachers, who—goodness knows—are under huge pressure. The noble Lord asked whether in the NHS we would have a doctor or nurse purporting to treat patients without the right qualifications, and of course the answer can only be no. However, the NHS has good and bad examples. For instance, I do not think that healthcare assistants, much though they contribute to the health service, are a good example, because there is no national standard or curriculum or qualification that they can reach. Frankly, the demise of the state enrolled nurse and the eventual rise of the healthcare assistant has been a disaster, because not only has the previous role of the state enrolled nurse—who might not have had the academic qualification but certainly had the caring skills—been undermined but we have failed to develop and train sufficiently the healthcare assistants. On the other hand, in A&E departments or operating departments where nurse assistants are often appointed to help as practitioners, there are many examples there of people who, though not fully qualified in the primary professional function, have been well trained and are very experienced. To my mind, the experience of classroom assistants is that, in the main, they have done a very good job indeed.
However, the substantive point is surely that all this information is entirely relevant when considering whether an academy chain is fit to take over a school. The noble Lord is absolutely right to say that looking at issues such as the ratio of qualified teachers to unqualified teachers, absences and the record of the chain overall in Ofsted inspections of individual schools is entirely relevant. It may well be that the noble Lord may want to reflect on today’s debate between now and Report in terms of any amendment that he puts forward then.