Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, this group includes a number of probing amendments to understand the Government’s thinking about MAT inspection and intervention. Over 80% of our secondary schools and over 40% of our primaries have become academies in England, with almost 1,200 multi-academy trusts or MATs and roughly another 1,000 single-academy trusts or SATs���the latter largely being secondary schools. The amendments in this group, in the name of my noble friend Lady Spielman and I, aim to address and provide tentative answers to three main issues. The first, on which your Lordships have already touched, is that a sense of unfairness has developed, with a potential misalignment between autonomy and accountability, which are the two planks that have underpinned our school reforms over the last two decades or so. Accountability remains at the school rather than the trust level, while autonomy, particularly in more centralised trusts, rests with the trust rather than the school. The amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and my amendments aim to address that misalignment. My Amendment 436ZZA allows for a more straight- forward path for intervention in trusts where there is sustained academic underperformance in their schools. I agree, as ever, with my noble friend Lord Nash that we need to be looking at and worrying about outcomes for children before process. The amendment excludes schools that have been recently sponsored, so that no disincentive is created for a strong trust to take on a weak school. Similarly, it adjusts for levels of deprivation—not in any way to dilute ambition, but to make sure that the approach is fair and feels fair—comparing trusts to groups of schools in their local area rather than to a national performance table. Finally, the power would aim to avoid creating so-called “orphan schools” or multi-academy trusts that were not of an economic or effective size for the purposes of education. I know from my time in office that there were a handful of trusts that had schools that consistently and substantially underperformed their neighbours, and the department was genuinely constrained in its ability to intervene. We had planned to intervene in a very small number, but unfortunately the election got in the way. It was certainly not in the simplest or most streamlined way that any of us would have wanted. Traditionally, and I think understandably, the department has been hesitant to intervene in a school or a trust without independent analysis—typically via an Ofsted report—before doing so. We did find a way to intervene via a failure of governance, but this amendment would make it more coherent, albeit we believe the power would be used rarely. Our proposal in the amendment is that the department would prepare an annual report, which would allow one to understand if there have been any patterns of failure and the scale of any problems in the system. We believe that, in practice, the power would not be used often, as intervention would send a clear message to other trusts that were underperforming that this needs to be addressed quickly in the interests of children. As my noble friend Lady Spielman said, Amendment 436ZZB builds on Amendment 435 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, but brings a very specific focus to MAT inspection. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, questioned the merit of putting details in the Bill and the prioritisation that was set out. I will say just a couple of things about that. It is important that we try to be clear about how MAT inspection and school inspection fit together. We do not want MAT inspection to duplicate or confuse school inspection. We tried to make it clear in this amendment what inspection could look at. It is, if you like, a starter for 10. Obviously, this requires a great deal of thought, but the amendment is trying to look at the effectiveness and value for money of MATs. It is not trying to say that one model is better than another. On prioritisation, the noble Baroness talked about too much focus on schools that were significantly underperforming, but she will note that at proposed subsection (3)(a)—there is a typo in the Marshalled List; that is what I spend my time doing in the evenings, obviously, spotting typos. What should be proposed new subsection (3)(a) states that inspections must prioritise MATs “which are seeking to enter into new partnerships with schools”. That is a rather unclear way of saying MATs that want to grow. If you want to take on a new school, we need to be confident in your ability to manage that well. Then there are schools that are significantly under- performing and MATs which are not providing value for money. I am sure that that wording could be improved on, and it feels like we have a great cross-party working group, if the Minister wants volunteers, to try to narrow this down. I know that officials have been thinking about this for some time, possibly since my noble friend Lord Agnew tried to introduce it almost 10 years ago. I think we have a bit of a starter in the definitions of what we are looking for in the work that we did on the strong trust framework, which sets out very clear expectations in relation to all aspects of running a good trust. I look forward very much to the Minister’s reply. I hope she is as struck as I am by the tone of this debate, which feels slightly different from some that we have had. I agree with the call to action of the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett: “Just do it now.” I know we are not allowed props in the Chamber, but I have Nick Gibb’s book beside me, because I thought he ought to be here in spirit, if not actually present. That book shows “Do it now, but keep doing it, do it well, stick at it and don’t let go”. I leave the Minister to comment on that.