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Education and Inspections Bill

My Lords, I too strongly emphasise the importance of this apparently very minor amendment. It would bring city technology colleges and academies within the broad scope of local-authority responsibility and, in a sense, the Secretary of State’s responsibility. Clauses 15 to 17 and 56 to 70 are all about possible failures and the need for special measures, or about the need for improvement in the case of maintained schools. In Clause 56, maintained schools are defined very precisely as community schools, voluntary schools, voluntary and community special schools and nursery schools. It is clear that the group of schools addressed by my noble friend is excluded. She referred to the responsibility of local authorities for the well-being of children, which is an extremely important point. I shall not repeat what she said, but I wish to make a different point about the morale of community schools, which is where most children still go and, I suspect, will still go in five or 10 years’ time. Let us consider for a moment the way in which the Bill presents itself: it has a considerable expectation of failure in community schools. It makes almost no mention of academies and CTCs. We are told that they will be dealt with in funding agreements. But, as my noble friend has said, it is not at all clear how funding agreements will operate in the quite condign and powerful way that local authorities and the Secretary of State are empowered to do. Consider how far reaching those powers are; for example, the ability to name extra governors and which governor should be the chairman; the ability to compel devolved budgets to be dropped; and the ability, in certain cases, to close a school. There is a whole range of weapons or powers which would affect schools that are thought to need improvement or to be, effectively, failing schools. The former Secretary of State, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, said on the first day of Report that a ““generosity of spirit”” was needed to recognise the remarkable achievements of many community schools. Somehow, the Bill exudes the sense that community schools are lesser, require more intervention, are more likely to fail and have not done a particularly good job. In responding, the Minister said: "““I am not prepared to stand here and defend failure””.—[Official Report, 17/10/06; col. 674.]" Of course, in saying that he was right. But the assumption is that the schools associated with academies and CTCs are unlikely to fail and that there are no special provisions to deal with them if they do. I find that assumption very hard to justify. Earlier, I mentioned to the Minister that in the United States charter schools, in many ways, closely resemble trust schools and, even more, academies. They are self-governing, independent schools in which local school districts may not interfere; they have delegated powers over their own budgets and are allowed to bring in sponsors; and they have a range of the characteristics which are associated in this Bill with trust schools and have previously been associated with academies. Yet the latest information is that charter schools in the United States are doing less well than ordinary state schools, by a substantial margin in reading and mathematics. I will not go into detail on this, but I hope that at Third Reading we will discuss this in more detail. I am concerned about the demoralisation of those schools which are the great bulk of schools in this country. I believe that the Bill exudes a certain sense of discrimination between the two, which comes out most clearly in Part 4. I, for one, profoundly regret it. On the first day on Report, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, specifically said—I do not know whether the Minister would agree—that there has been a remarkable improvement in standards in schools in the past few years. She referred, of course, to community schools which are still the bulk of schools in the system. To be precise, will the Minister tell us in greater detail exactly what steps will be taken if a school, which is described as an academy or a city technology college, is found to be failing, or found, on a lesser criterion, to require improvement? How will the Minister discover that need? What will be the role of the Secretary of State in altering or changing the funding agreement in order to bring about changes that might be required? What steps would be taken to close a school that was failing? In the United States, after five years a charter school can be closed and replaced; there is nothing in this Bill of that kind. Finally, can he explain why these very condign measures all apply to community and voluntary schools, but do not appear to include the schools to which my noble friend referred? I would make a final point. Those who visit schools—I know that the Minister visits many of them as do my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Front Bench—will be aware that many teachers and head teachers in community schools feel somehow under attack. They feel they have to defend themselves because there have been so many indications that somehow they are not doing well. A minority of schools are not doing well; we all have to admit that. But that is the case in all categories of school. Even—dare I say it in this sacred Chamber?—independent schools have a tail of failing schools. The great thing to do would be to recognise that all schools can succeed or fail, but we should not single out particular categories as being more likely to fail or more likely to succeed. With great respect, the Bill strongly gives that impression.