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Academies Bill [HL]

My Lords, I shall briefly give the coalition Government another opportunity to think again about the events that took place during the wash-up. The Committee will be well aware of the Labour Government’s commitment to deliver for parents and pupils a guarantee around the quality and style of education delivered to them through our schools around the country, so we now turn to the amendments in relation to the pupil-parent guarantee for academies. Amendments 60A and 170A would restore the guarantees that we on this side of the Committee aimed to provide for pupils and parents. Those guarantees were, sadly, blocked by the Conservative Party during the negotiations between our two parties on the legislation outstanding before Parliament in the run-up to the last election. Those guarantees would have given pupils and parents assurances of a decent education whatever school they attended, so that every local school would be a good school, delivering minimum standards for all. We set it out in statute that the guarantees should include: catch-up support in the three Rs for primary school pupils or for those starting secondary school who fall behind, which would have included one-to-one tuition and small group work; online information for parents on their child’s behaviour, progress and attainment; a named personal tutor for every secondary school pupil; guarantees on school behaviour through home-school agreements; the right to learn triple sciences at GCSE; a guarantee of regular sport and exercise; and the opportunity for every primary school pupil to learn a musical instrument—on which, if the Minister wants to see that as my contribution toward Amendment 68, then in the interests of time I am happy if he wants to come back to me on musical tuition in his response here. This is about giving parents and pupils the information and the awareness of what they can expect from their school system, so that no child should miss out and so that every school should be a good school. Now, we have heard a great deal from the coalition Government about the desire to empower parents and to give more power to communities. Of course, we very much want that, so I will be very interested to hear how the noble Lord can build on the work that we did in government to make sure that the best really is on offer for all our children in our schools.