Education: Academies — House of Lords, 2016-05-09
Topic: Education
John Nash (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, for his comments about supporting the raising of standards in schools. I have no doubt that he supports that aim. Many people wanted to see more detail on our direction of travel for academies, so we provided it in the White Paper. However, as I have said, it is clear that the blanket power outlined in the White Paper created anxiety in the system. So we have listened—I am grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about that—to the concern of head teachers and teachers and removed those powers so that people can now take time to understand the benefits of becoming an academy or joining a multi-academy trust. I am confident that once people have had the opportunity to understand that, many more will come forward to convert, as schools are in record numbers at the moment. I hope that noble Lords across the House who have not had the opportunity of spending time with leaders of academies or multi-academy trusts or with the regional school commissions will take the time to do that over the next few months. I am happy to arrange visits or meetings. We will continue to listen and to have dialogue with the sector, parents, teachers, governors, unions and local authorities over the next few months The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to evidence, an issue we have discussed a great deal in this House. I said in answer to his question that schools that have chosen to convert to academies—that is, those that are high performing already—are obtaining better results. Despite their already high performance, they are improving their results and are more likely to be rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Secondary converters are performing 7 percentage points above the national average and results in primary-sponsored academies open for two years have improved on average by 10% since opening, more than double the rate of local authority maintained schools over the same period In answer to the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, in certain limited circumstances, high-performing schools may be obliged to become academies—that is, where they are in local authorities that are either performing poorly or are unviable. As I have said, we will be setting out more on that and consulting on what the viability test will be We make no apologies for the benefits of schools working in multi-academy trusts. There are particular benefits in relation to leadership development and CPD for teachers. People who work in multi-academy trusts talk often about the retention of staff benefits. They say that when they were running one school they tended to lose their rising stars because they could not offer them career development opportunities. They can now have rising stars programmes in place and retain their best staff. There are benefits such as the sharing of good practice and economies of scale, and many others. I invite noble Lords, when they meet with people from multi-academy trusts, to discuss this with them On accountability, as I have said before, academies are held to a higher standard of accountability than local authority maintained schools. They are obliged to publish annual third party-audited accounts, which local authority maintained schools are not; no one in a governance relationship with an academy can profit from that relationship, which can happen in a local authority maintained school; and they are also held to the standards of the Charity Commission and the Companies Act. As to leadership, the noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a good point about the capacity and leadership. We have £600 million available to develop this programme. We have invested in a leadership programme with future leaders and executive educators, and we are in discussions with a number of business schools about their developing leadership courses for people who work in academies and multi-academy trusts. I hope to say more about that in due course I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, for his comments about rural schools. I agree entirely about the importance of their being intimately engaged with their local communities. In answer to his last two questions, we will be publishing MAT performance tables based on this summer’s results. We have had extensive conversations with Ofsted, and agreed an arrangement whereby Ofsted will carry out batch inspections of schools in multi-academy trusts and look at the school improvement services provided by the head office. However, we do not think it appropriate for Ofsted inspectors to inspect the finances, governance and management arrangements of these organisations. We have discussed with Ofsted the idea that in certain circumstances, there may be joint inspections: Ofsted inspecting school improvement and the performance of the schools, and the EFA—possibly working with consultants—inspecting the head office, management, governance and financial arrangements of the trusts. We have also had discussions with Ofsted because we know that it has inspected weak performing multi-academy trusts. We hope that it will soon be inspecting some strong performing multi-academy trusts so that we can see what a really good chain looks like.