My Lords, the fourth group of amendments today centres on the Government’s Amendment 20, which introduces the concept of communication with parents. I want to focus first on Amendment 17A,
This provision relates to a situation where the decision has been made on academisation. Not only has that decision been taken without any recourse to the local authority or the governors of the school but its implementation now becomes, at least in part, the responsibility of a local authority and the governing body. How perverse is that? The Government are saying to elected representatives, both councillors and governors, since many governors are elected by their peers: “This school has been deemed to be failing and we’re going to remove it from its current status and make it an academy. We’re not aware whether you want that to happen and frankly, we’re not interested because the regional schools commissioner and the local head teacher board have decided what’s best for you. But wait: we do, after all, have a role for you in this process because you, the local authority and the governing body of the school, are duty-bound not just to avoid impeding the conversion but actually to facilitate it”.
Clause 10 states that the duty of the local authority and the governing body includes,
“a duty to take all reasonable steps to facilitate the making of Academy arrangements with”,
the chosen sponsor. That sounds rather menacing. It is not at all clear what fate might await anyone or any organisation that defied the Secretary of State. Perhaps the Minister might enlighten us as to what sanctions he intends to bring to bear on those who decline to co-operate.
Our Amendment 17A would at least introduce a smidgen of involvement for one group directly affected by the decision: the parents. We heard in the Minister’s response to group 2 that the Government regard parents as, all too often, impediments to change. It goes without saying that a forced conversion would be likely to cause considerable anger and anguish among parents, who would demand to know the details and all the circumstances. At the very least they have a right to expect that, within the provisions of the Bill, they would be entitled to be fully informed of the steps to be taken. Given the Minister’s movement on the question of information being conveyed to parents, as contained in government Amendment 20, it is surely beyond peradventure that they will find it within themselves to accept Amendment 17A. If they do not, we may well need to test the opinion of the House.
Government Amendment 20 is to be welcomed, as far as it goes. The problem is that it simply does not go far enough. It is a nod in the direction of appreciating the need, at the very least, to let parents know what is to happen and who is going to make it happen, but it is no more than that. In the discussion that I had with the Minister last week, he certainly led me to believe that there would be a government amendment allowing parents to assess the plans of the proposed sponsor. The implication was that if the parents were not enamoured of them, another sponsor would be found.
That is a considerable distance from the wording of the Government’s amendment. For that reason, it came to me personally as a disappointment.
As I stated in debate on group 2, there is a world of difference between communication and consultation. Communication involves merely telling people what you intend to do; consultation involves saying to people, in what is surely a much healthier situation: “Here are our plans. What do you think of them? Can they be improved? Do they have the right emphasis? Do you believe that they will result in the school’s performance improving, and quickly?”. But none of that will happen because, as we heard in relation to the amendments in group 2 on consultation, the Government refuse to ask people their opinion for fear of receiving a “No, thanks” in reply. It does not wash to use children as the cloak to cover the determination to keep out any dissenting voices—if I was to be accurate, any voices will be kept out, dissenting or otherwise.
The amendment requires only that, once the regional schools commissioner has identified an academy sponsor to take over a school that is eligible for intervention, the sponsor must communicate to parents information about their plans to improve the school. However, in his letter to Peers, the Minister said that further information about,
“what this should typically look like in practice”,
will be put into the Schools Causing Concern guidance. We await that guidance but there are no requirements in the amendment for the sponsor to put in specific details about what it plans to do, so that offers an escape clause for sponsors which do not wish to be troubled by meeting the parents concerned. It would be appropriate to ask why any sponsors worth their salt would need to be told to communicate with parents in any case, but it seems there must be some of them.
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Clearly, keeping parents informed is no substitute for real consultation about the future of their child’s school. There is surely a real danger that some sponsors will be likely to treat this as a box-ticking exercise, and that there will be no mechanism for parents to hold an academy sponsor to account over the information it provides before it takes over a school.
It seems that the Ministers—the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Baroness, Lady Evans—have a mindset that meets almost with disbelief the very idea that any parent could possibly want their child’s school to stay in the maintained sector. That is certainly the impression given. In passing, I might also ask the Ministers why their requirements as outlined in Amendment 20 apply only to maintained schools. There is no indication as to what will happen when an academy has been taken out of the hands of one sponsor and transferred to another. This demonstrates, not for the first time in the Bill, a two-tier approach by the Government and I invite the Minister to let the House know why the parents of children in academies should not be entitled to the same facility, inadequate as it is, as those in maintained schools.
Clause 9 concerns consultation about the identity of sponsors in certain cases and states that the Secretary of State must consult over the identity of the sponsor
where a foundation, or a voluntary school with a foundation, is subject to an academy order due to alleged poor or coasting performance. So we find that the Government do, after all, understand the concept of consultation and have included it in the Bill, but only for such as those in the categories listed in Clause 9. There is of course no provision for consultation over the identity of the sponsor in other cases, and that is unacceptable. Having granted consultation to foundation and voluntary schools—part of the maintained sector —the Government really have no reason to reject Amendments 21, 22 and 23, which give their new clause the beef that it should have had from the start. I hope that the Minister will appreciate that this is what parents want, not simply a pat on the head and a “Now you know”-type letter.
Finally, Amendment 27 would introduce a sunset clause. The Bill remains something of an enigma, largely because of its limitations. I have no doubt whatever that the Government are determined that every maintained school shall become an academy at some point. Recent pronouncements by the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer have made the Government’s long-term plans plain and Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Schools also reached that conclusion in his recent report. It is now a given that the Bill is merely a staging post on the route to full academisation. We cannot know what will follow in legislation to bring that about—perhaps the Minister will reveal something of his and the Secretary of State’s plans in his response. In the absence of such an indication it is entirely appropriate that the Bill, when it becomes an Act, should be time-limited. I beg to move.