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Academies Bill [Lords]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her intervention and I share some of those concerns. I hope that, in this coming week, those on the Government Front Bench will be able to allay those concerns. Last week I visited an academy, called the Ashcroft technology academy. It has a centre it calls the ARC, which specialises in looking after children on the autistic spectrum, and an AWA—an academy within an academy—for children otherwise at risk of exclusion. By using those innovations, the academy has done a tremendous job of looking after those with special educational needs as well as intervening to ensure that there is not a higher than average number of exclusions from the school. Academies can be part of the answer and the innovation that they allow can improve the situation in the average school today.