10:30 am
Jim Knight: No. Let me deal with the two. In respect of the charge in the letter that we are watering things down and reducing independence, I disagree strongly and I think that the vast majority of sponsors and principals of academies would also disagree. That was reflected in the evidence we received from Dan Moynihan and Liz Reid. I know that unfortunately you had to join a Westminster Hall debate and were not able to attend that session. I am sure that in the assiduous way you work, you will have read Hansard and been frustrated at the lack of quotes you can knock back at me. We have good support for the moves that we are taking in legislation around behaviour partnerships, children’s trusts and the YPLA functions.
I was surprised by the letter from Mike Butler because his predecessor as chair of the IAA had also written to me saying:
“The IAA...welcome the plans to establish the YPLA and its proposed role in the administration and support of open academies”.
Dan Moynihan said:
“With the growth in the number of academies it seems reasonable to consider a dedicated support agency for open academies in order to provide first line support.”
When asked whether she was happy that academies would be administered by the YPLA, Liz Reid said:
“It makes absolute sense and, as the academies programme continues to grow, it would be anomalous and unusual for a Department of State to take direct responsibility for a very large number of schools.”——[Official Report, Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Public Bill Committee, 3 March 2009; c. 44, Q109.]
I agree with all of those comments. By the time the YPLA is properly up and running, there will be at least 300 academies on our current projections. I do not think it right that they should be run directly from my office. It would make us by far the largest education authority in the country. I already have to deal with a lot of issues in respect of open academies, and I do not think that is the best strategic use of a Minister’s and senior officials’ time.
Moving on to whether the YPLA is the right body to which to make that transfer, if you want to manage so many schools at arm’s length, we currently have somewhere around 20 officials in the Department who are working just on the funding of open academies—the funding agreements and so on. The YPLA is principally a funding agency. On the work that we would transfer over, transfer is probably the wrong word to use in legal terms because the YPLA would be acting as an agent of the Secretary of State. So I use the word “transfer” not in the legal sense of the word but for clarity’s sake. The majority of officials working on the functions that will move over deal with funding. The YPLA is principally a funding agency and, therefore, it seemed to make sense.
In terms of other work in respect of open academies, the YPLA by definition will have a strong presence regionally, and we want those who are doing that work and providing intelligence on how academies are performing back to the Secretary of State also to have a strong regional presence. So there seemed to be a really good fit, and a much better fit than anything else on the landscape.