My Lords, I remind the House that I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I thank those organisations and individuals that have been kind enough to send out briefings, particularly the NEU, Professor Anne West at the LSE and Dr David Wolfe. It is good to see the noble Lord, Lord Watson, here; his contribution on education in your Lordships’ House has been enormous, and I thank him for that.
Last Tuesday we debated the glorious speech—sorry, the gracious Speech, though it was probably glorious as well. Many Peers spoke on education, and this Second Reading gives us an opportunity to reconsider some of the excellent and important points raised then. I said that I wanted every pupil, no matter the type of school, to have the same educational opportunities and resources. I also said it was important that the parent voice was heard loud and clear in schools and that transparency, accountability and openness must prevail.
To my mind, transparency should be the hallmark of the Bill. Part 1 sets out a new framework for the regulation of multi-academy trusts. In launching the schools White Paper, the Government said they wanted all children to
“benefit from being taught in a school in, or in the process of joining, a strong multi-academy trust”.
Stand-alone schools in multi-academy trusts have no individual control over governance, admissions, finance and destiny, so let us remind ourselves that academies in MATs have no legal identity of their own.
These individual academies have precious little of the individual independence and decision-making that they were promised when the programme was first espoused. It is the MAT that has the legal status and it is the MAT that has the contract with the Secretary of State, which means the school has no automatic right to make decisions or policies relating to the running of the school; stand-alone academies and maintained schools do. The school becomes a satellite of the all-powerful centre, with head teachers and governing bodies virtually powerless. With some MATs having schools all over the country—say, from the north-east to the south-west—there is a real concern about how, for example, local circumstances and ethos are reflected.
Decisions in academies are often made without transparency by trustees whose appointment is opaque. Often, they have little or no experience in educational matters. Is this really the best way to run educational schools? School academies in MATs have no individual power over governance arrangements and are often locked into a contract that is no longer appropriate for the values and educational direction of staff, pupils and parents.
Finally, MATs, while having accounts signed off by an external auditor—who, by the way, they appoint themselves—do not have to provide detail of how public money is spent. Data published by the MAT can mask financial decisions regarding individual schools in the MAT. The lack of financial transparency leads to concerns about how public money is used. We see, for example, excessive salaries paid to trusts’ chief executives. It can also use public money to pay out compensation claims and non-disclosure agreements, all hidden from the public, whose money it is. We have seen how procurement contracts can be a murky area, with contracts going to family and friends without proper transparent arrangements. Maybe we should consider Ofsted, when it inspects academies, applying the same rules as it does to maintained schools and looking at the financial arrangements as well. We will be tabling a number of amendments to ensure that transparency is the order of the day.
I turn to the other important issue in the Bill: school funding and the national funding formula. We very much welcome these proposals but want to raise the issue of the funding of small village schools, which are the centre of many rural communities and of which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke during the Queen’s Speech. It is sad to reflect that between 2000 and 2019, 183 rural schools closed. We need, through the funding formula, to do all we can to support these rural schools and the communities they serve.
Similarly, this is an opportunity to look at transport for school students, an issue that has never been properly addressed. In Northumberland, for example, pupils have to travel long distances to get to an FE provider or sixth-form college. We think free transport should be extended to the age of 18. Community should be at the heart of educational change.
I hoped that the Bill would set out a clear role for local government and that a partnership could develop between local government and multi-academy trusts. There are a number of areas for which LAs are ideally placed, having local knowledge and expertise, including admissions, expulsion appeals, school place planning and working with Ofsted to tackle unregistered schools—an area where a partnership approach would be so beneficial. The 2016 White Paper proposed three roles for local authorities in an all-academy system:
“Ensuring every child has a school place … Ensuring the needs of vulnerable pupils are met … Acting as champions for all parents and families.”
It did not, however, propose any new powers to help them fulfil these roles. It is also vital that an element of local discretion is used in the national funding formula, allowing councils to take local priorities and the needs of their area into account.
I congratulate the Government on listening and being prepared to tackle the issue of unregistered schools. No child should be placed in a school where unacceptable practices bordering on indoctrination take place. We must liberate children from such dangers. Similarly, home schooling needs to be regularised. Home-school educators do a fantastic job, and we should pay tribute to their commitment, or the commitment they take on—by the way, with no financial support—but is it right and proper that home educators are not registered? Perhaps they need a light touch in terms of support as well. I have no doubt that your Lordships have faced a deluge of emails from the home-school educating lobby complaining of any changes, but it is not acceptable for hundreds of thousands of children that we have no idea where they are. Their safety and well-being are paramount, and I congratulate the Government on this simple measure.
Finally, I want to raise an issue which is very important to me: the issue of pupils who are permanently excluded from school. These are the most vulnerable children who need the most care and attention. They invariably have special needs, whether behavioural or emotional, and certainly have learning difficulties and often difficult family circumstances. If they are excluded from school, they might be lucky that there is a pupil referral unit on the school site, but in most cases it will be left to the local authority to find an educational placement for them. Because local authorities still have huge budgetary pressures, they often place these damaged young people with the cheapest provider they can find, and that provider will be unregistered. Some of the educational practices of these unregistered schools are frankly not acceptable. Because they are not registered, they do not have to be inspected by Ofsted, so we have no knowledge of what is going on. All excluded pupils should be placed with a registered provider so that they can get the best possible support and educational opportunity. Remember: some of these young people, as well as being sent to an unregistered
school, might also be with an unregistered care provider. My goodness, this is the 21st century and we are treating children in this way.
I was interested in the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, on the curriculum. Over the next eight years, when the Government hope to implement these proposals—of course, there will be a general election during that period too, and goodness knows what will happen then—we are going to have a system where some schools will have freedoms in the curriculum and others will not. I hope we will come together and start looking at ways to ensure that all schools have the same opportunities and freedoms, which can go together, and that way be better prepared if and when they become academies.
Covid has been a real shock to our schools and education service, with pupils missing huge amounts of schooling, falling further and further behind with their education, having increased mental health problems and Covid disproportionately affecting children from poorer families and communities. Boosting education, ensuring the resources and best teachers are there for all pupils, is the best way to level up.
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