Baroness Barran (Con)

My Lords, I shall speak to the amendments in my name in this group and make the case that Clause 47 should not stand part of the Bill. There are three main reasons for our objection to Clause 47. The first is the wider point, which we have discussed in our debates on other groups, about the value of autonomy at a school or trust level combined with clear accountability. This clause removes the autonomy that academies have had over the curriculum while disregarding the safeguards that exist via both the public exam system and the 2019 Ofsted inspection framework. Without this autonomy, we risk stifling the innovation and creativity that we have seen in recent years, where leading trusts have developed high-quality curricula and shared them freely with other schools. My noble friend Lady Evans of Bowes Park gave some fantastic examples, including among some of our wonderful free schools. I am not suggesting that the Government want to see the stifling of creativity—I am sure that they want quite the reverse—but they need to explain how things will work in practice if this clause is to become law. I thank my noble friend Lord Sewell for his powerful intervention and for the extraordinary impact that he and others had on schools in Hackney; that is still being ably implemented by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton. Secondly, the Secretary of State has tremendous powers over the curriculum, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. A future Secretary of State could use those powers to be much more prescriptive in terms of not just what needs to be in the main elements of the national curriculum—English, maths and science, in particular—but how those elements are taught, which the previously Government intentionally avoided doing. Indeed, we wanted to give all schools space outside the core subjects of the national curriculum so that they could exercise their discretion. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Boycott, that I have definitely visited schools that are busy doing beekeeping and other things of which, I am sure, she would approve. So the Secretary of State has the power to expand the national curriculum. Thirdly, as for much of this Bill, as other noble Lords have said, we just do not see that there is a problem that needs solving in this way. My noble friend Lady Spielman was clear in her time as Ofsted’s chief inspector that some academies narrowed the curriculum too much. This was addressed by the inspectorate under the previous framework, so the system already has the checks and balances that it needs to make sure that schools cannot game the system. The picture that the noble Lord, Lord Storey, painted—that of academies teaching whatever they wanted—is not an accurate one, given that, as I said earlier, they enter public exams and are all inspected by Ofsted. I respectfully suggest to the Minister that this clause is not needed and risks doing more harm than good. As we will debate in a later group, we would much rather recognise the strengths of maintained schools and give their leaders greater flexibility. Further, a number of schools simply do not have the facilities needed to deliver certain parts of the curriculum, such as design and technology. Can the Minister confirm that, if this clause becomes law, the department will fund the necessary investment to address these gaps? I was very pleased to add my name to Amendment 443 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. He expertly set out the problems with the Henry VIII powers in this Bill. I know that time is short, so perhaps the Minister could write to the noble Lord—indeed, to all of your Lordships—setting out exactly the Government’s understanding of what these Henry VIII powers cover and how they could be used, not by the current Secretary of State but by a future Secretary of State, because I think that we need our legislation to protect us against all flavours of Secretary of State and government. I am concerned that Amendment 506D in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, does not reflect the reality that the Secretary of State can make all of these changes to the curriculum via regulation and can amend primary legislation. The amendments in the names of my noble friend Lord Agnew of Oulton and the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, would try to carve out exemptions for high-performing schools. I absolutely support the spirit of them. This debate comes at a time when, as the noble Baroness, Lady Fox, said, we are awaiting the recommendations of the curriculum and assessment review. As can be seen from many of the amendments in this group, there is pressure to introduce more and more subjects into the curriculum. Apparently, in 2018, the organisation Parents and Teachers for Excellence counted 213 topics that were recommended in that year for inclusion in the curriculum. The question remains: if the curriculum is expanded, what has to come out? Ministers in both Houses have sought to assure us that we do not need to worry about these changes, but the Minister will understand that the curriculum reforms led by the previous Government, which have contributed so significantly to our improvement in the global rankings in reading, maths and science, were hard won and hard fought. So, in addition to our principled objection to removing autonomy from school leaders rather than extending it to maintained schools, there is a deep-seated worry that the siren calls for a more progressive approach to the curriculum might gain traction despite the best efforts of the review team, which is ably led by Professor Becky Francis, for whom I have great respect. I close not with the words of Ernest Bevin but by quoting, as other noble Lords have done in our debate on this group, from a blog written by Mark McCourt, the chair of the Advantage Schools Trust. He speaks for many of us in terms of why we all feel so anxious that the Government get this curriculum review right. He writes: “To offer a demanding, powerful curriculum to every child is not elitist. It is egalitarian. It says to the child: you are worthy of this knowledge. You are capable of wrestling with complexity. You deserve access to the accumulated wisdom and accomplishments of those who came before you. This is your birthright and it is now yours to own and protect … We are not gatekeepers. We are door openers. And if we do not open those doors, especially for the children least likely to find them on their own, then we are complicit in keeping them shut”.