Clause 74
10:00 am
David Laws (Yeovil, Liberal Democrat)
It is highly unlikely that a local authority so incompetent that it cannot do anything about a failing school in its area is properly overseeing the other schools. Maybe the only reason the academy was established is that one of those schools had particularly awful results. But maybe if the local authority was doing a bad job on that school, it might also be similarly complacent on other schools, which, because they have a more affluent catchment area, have results that are above the national challenge level. There is an inconsistency in the Government’s belief that local authorities are competent enough to have oversight of the vast majority of schools, but not of an academy.