Lord Storey (LD)

My Lords, I declare an interest as a governor of King’s Leadership Academy in Liverpool. Schools face two challenges, some might say crises. First, the shortage of staff is becoming quite a serious concern. Secondly, there are real pressures on school budgets. It was easy when all schools were local authority schools, because they all had the same framework and structures. We now have a very different landscape, which we all accept. There is no difference now in how we see that landscape. Half the schools are what I call maintained schools and the other half, with a preponderance towards secondary schools, are academies within large multi-academy trusts, which in a sense are bigger than the local authorities. The local authority where I worked for a number of years had 50 schools. There are multi-academy trusts with far more schools than that. We want a system that is fair to all our non-teaching staff. We do not want to see anybody seeing a cut in their salary. But we also have to recognise that you have to have a system that is not bureaucratic and gives the freedom to schools in both cases to be able to do what is best for their staff. I fear that that will not be the case if the Government have their way. I am hopeful that the Minister will give us real reassurance on this. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, that we have a more varied system, but I slightly disagreed with her when she said, “All schools, particularly the successful ones”. It is all schools, not just the successful ones, that will face difficulties.