Baroness Longfield:

Moved by Baroness Longfield

450: Clause 53, page 115, line 26, at end insert—“85ZB Managed moves and the Fair Access Protocol(1) Before the initiation of any managed move of a registered pupil from one maintained school or Academy to another, the pupil must be considered under the local authority’s Fair Access Protocol.(2) The consideration under subsection (1) must include consultation with—(a) the current school,(b) the proposed receiving school, and(c) the parent or carer of the pupil, and where appropriate, the pupil.(3) The local authority must keep and maintain a record of all managed moves occurring to, from, or within its area.(4) Where a managed move results in the registration of a pupil at a school within the area of a different local authority, the responsibility for monitoring the educational outcomes and welfare of the pupil following the move shall transfer to that receiving local authority upon the pupil's registration at the new school.(5) The duty imposed by subsection (1) above does not apply—(a) in circumstances where the child of compulsory school age is removed from the roll of one school and registered at another school solely as a consequence of the child's change of ordinary residence, provided that—(i) the change of residence is documented and verified, and(ii) arrangements for re-registration at a new school are underway or have been made within a reasonable period.(6) A record under subsection (3) must include—(a) the reasons for the move,(b) the schools involved,(c) whether the move was voluntary or directed, and(d) the outcome for the pupil.(7) Each local authority must submit an annual report to the Secretary of State containing a summary of managed moves conducted under this section. (8) The Secretary of State may issue guidance to local authorities and schools on the implementation of this section, to which they must have regard.(9) In this section—“managed moves” means a permanent change of the pupil’s school registration, where a move is not a result of—(a) a permanent exclusion under Section 51A of the Education Act 1996;(b) a transfer to a special school pursuant to Section 42 of the Children and Families Act 2014;(c) a change of registration due to school closure;(d) movement between educational phases;(e) change in school type as a consequence of the Academy Act 2010.“school” has the same meaning as in Part 4 of the Education Act 1996.”

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 450 on managed moves, as well as Amendment 453, which is in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Storey.

The amendments concern a group of children who are literally moved between schools. At the moment, they are pretty much out of the spotlight and are not in any way accountable within the system. Mine is a very practical amendment: it seeks to provide a framework that is consistent, fair and transparent, so that we do not lose these children. It would ensure that we know where they are and that the moves are in their best interests. Managed moves relate to permanent changes of pupils on a school registration where the move is not the result of a permanent exclusion, transfer to a special school, school closure or movement between educational phases. They are currently unmonitored and unregulated in many areas.

While some local authorities have very strong protocols and partnerships that mean that managed moves operate well, the lack of appropriate guard-rails, to ensure moves between schools are in the best interests of the child, has allowed some problematic practices to emerge. In the current system, frequently neither the local authorities nor the Government know where, or even if, the child is being educated following a managed move. The Who is Losing Learning? report this year uncovered a deeply concerning trend: it estimated that, for every child that was permanently excluded, there were 10 more invisibly being moved around the system behind that. There are also reports that, sometimes, children can almost be traded between different schools and systems within this process. Some children will spend a lot of time out of school as a result, and others are moved time and time again.

The solution proposed in my amendment is very practical. It would bring managed moves in line with suspensions and exclusions. It proposes that they are put through the existing fair access protocol and that local authorities report on its use to the Department for Education. This would subject managed moves to a collaborative peer review and set out what knowledge and oversight the appropriate local authorities and the Department for Education have. It would be important that discussion of, and application to, the fair access protocol should happen before the move is initiated, to ensure that the child’s education does not get disrupted as a result.

We want local authorities to keep good records, as we must be clear on where responsibility lies for that child as they move between schools. We also want a stipulation that this does not apply to a child when they move from one school to another because of a change in the child’s residence. There is a real need for a definition of managed moves and for all those managed moves then to be reported back to the department, with an annual report on the numbers and nature of those moves.

There is an opportunity here to draw on the really good practice that occurs in many areas and to create a standardised approach that would be fair, transparent, accountable and, ultimately, in the best interests of the child. This speaks to the ambition that we all have for increasing opportunities for all children while also strengthening inclusion—that is what we all want to see. The provisions are practical and doable, and I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.

My Lords, I speak in support of my Amendments 452 and 454, on the control of admissions into schools. This is a fraught issue for parents trying to get their children into excellent schools that lack sufficient places, so rationing—that unpleasant word—has to apply. Where the shortage of places is structural, outstanding schools can be and are supported to expand their facilities. In my trust, we have an outstanding school that started out with us in special measures over 10 years ago. It has nearly doubled its cohort size over that time, and I am grateful to the local authority and indeed to the DfE for supporting that expansion in physical terms. This year, it was the highest-performing secondary school in Norfolk at GCSE, and I am incredibly proud of the staff who have achieved that. But, more relevant for this legislation, it shows that the system can work well and responsibly.

Where things get messy is where there is falling demand, either through demography or through weak schools operating with larger PANs—pupil admission numbers—than they can justify. Parents are not stupid and, once the reputation of a school starts to slide, the discriminating ones will be looking elsewhere. In my experience in Norfolk, too often these weak schools, in the primary phase particularly, are local authority schools. But, rather than face the necessary pain of reducing their size through limiting the PAN or even closing them, they follow the line of least resistance, asking good or outstanding schools to reduce their intake so that children in the catchment can be “spread around”. This is convenient for bureaucrats: no unseemly costs in closing useless schools. Instead, the problem is “solved” by clawing in children who could otherwise receive a good or outstanding education nearby. But if these good schools are choked off, the problem is quite “solved”.

It can work in the other direction too. A good school operating with an optimal PAN risks being forced by a local authority to widen it so that they have to accept children being permanently excluded from nearby schools. Those exclusions are very often required because of the failure of the expelling school in properly handling difficult children. A good local school is then forced to take these troubled children on. In that case, what should be happening is that the local authority, Ofsted and DfE should challenge the school that is getting rid of its difficult children, not dumping them up the road because they are not strong enough to deal with the issues themselves.

But these judgments, as I am sure noble Lords will know, are extremely nuanced. Often, expulsion is the only solution after other avenues have been exhausted. If it is a good school making those decisions, that child probably needs to go into some form of alternative or special school provision, because it takes only a couple of unruly children in a class to damage the education of all the others.

The point I am trying to make is that a blunderbuss power for the local authority to intervene in these areas is, in most cases, much more likely to do damage than to solve problems. Yes, go after the 2% or 3% of expedient or indeed unscrupulous heads who are abusing the admissions system, but do not make the job of the other 97% harder still. We have to rely on the judgment of our head teachers in these difficult situations. We heard from my noble friend Lord Addington, and he is right. These are very difficult situations, but they cannot be dealt with from a bureaucrat’s office.

As I said last week on the matter of teacher recruitment and qualifications, all the Government are doing with the Bill is making it harder in the areas of deprivation. We already have to cope with a vicious cycle of poor education in these places. Deprived areas have more poor schools with low attainment, and they have a higher proportion of permanent exclusions. Indeed, according to the IPPR, a think tank, children on free school meals are five times more likely to be permanently excluded. How will the Bill as it is currently worded, with its admissions changes, help those children?

Reducing the PAN of good schools in tough areas reduces those engines of social mobility, and widening them to accept disruptive children achieves the same dismal outcome through a different route. Putting local authorities in charge of admission is really akin to putting the fox into the chicken coop. They have an entrenched conflict of interest, particularly at the primary phase, and face virtually no consequences if they continue to preside over weak or failing schools under their control. My proposals seek to protect good schools from this arbitrary behaviour. They absolutely recognise that some academies have behaved in their own self-interest—namely, badly—and I do not for a second defend that. Nor am I obsessed with, “All things LA bad, and all things academy good”. In any walk of life you find a vast range—look at our politicians.

That is why my Amendment is carefully put together, using the help of people cleverer and more plugged in than me. It would provide local authorities with the ability to step in where existing admissions behaviour is not in the interests of children, but it would protect good schools from arbitrary interventions by the local authority. In my own trust, we were asked recently by the local authority to reduce the PAN of an “outstanding” rated primary school in Norwich to deal with its bureaucratic problem, as I outlined a moment ago. In Norwich there are around 24 primary schools but last year only five achieved national or better at key stage 2. That is the crisis, and the solution is not strangulating the few that are doing a good job.

I removed my proposal to oppose Clause 55 standing part of the Bill as a matter of good process, but Amendment 454 builds on Amendment 452 as it would give scope for schools to appeal against arbitrary decisions on admissions. What really matters is that the admissions authority—in most cases, the school—is a good centre of learning. Any decision to tamper with the judgment being made by those running that good school should be required to keep this principle at the centre of thinking.

My Lords, I oppose Amendment 452, which has just been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, which would limit local authorities’ interventions in admissions to situations where the admissions authority had failed to meet its admissions obligations or had behaved improperly.

Local authorities have a statutory responsibility under Section 14 of the Education Act 1996 to ensure that enough school places are available in their area for every child of compulsory school age. The provision in the Bill to create a duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to enable them to carry out their place-planning duties as required by law and to co-operate on SEND inclusion and school admissions is entirely necessary and reasonable. It ends the nonsense of academies being allowed to set their own pupil numbers without regard to the number of pupils in the catchment area.

Multi-academy trusts are no longer outliers; they run over 46% of primary schools and 83% of secondary schools. The Government have a duty to ensure that local authorities, on which the legal requirement to provide school places falls, are able to do so. This must require local authorities and multi-academy trusts to work together to ensure that place planning is done effectively and cost-effectively. That is particularly important now, as we are experiencing a decline in the birth rate which is affecting primary places and will affect secondary places. The sustained rise we have seen in pupil numbers since the early 2010s has now been reversed. The number of pupils in England’s school system overall decreased in January, dropping by more than 59,000. Primary numbers have been falling for several years now, but secondary numbers are due to peak in 2027 before falling as the population bulge moves out of compulsory education.

These pupil demographics require co-ordinated place planning. We cannot have a situation where local authorities are legally responsible for providing places for pupils but have no powers to direct the Majority of schools in their area, which are academies, to co-operate on place planning, admissions and exclusions. We cannot leave local authorities with the responsibility, but without the authority, to require co-operation on these legal duties.

My Lords, it is a delight to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted. She may be pleased to hear that I have advised my noble friend on the correct pronunciation of her name.

I did not hear very well when we were here last week, but the word “devil” was mentioned. Having checked Hansard, I see that the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, seemed to think that when we had some dealings in the Department for Education, I thought she was doing the devil’s work in working for unions. I could not possibly think that—I always found her the most charming person to deal with—and, as opposed to the devil’s work, I commend the unions on doing what seems to me the Lord’s work in their campaign on smartphones. I look forward to talking to them about that. I welcome the noble Baroness back from her sojourn in the Arctic this summer, and I hope she is finding the atmosphere in the Labour Party at the moment somewhat less glacial than she found it there—although in the current circumstances, maybe not very much so.

I rise to support the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. Life in the real world teaches one that the benefits of competition are that strong organisations survive and expand, and weak ones demise. While I accept that there may be remote communities where the availability of these schools is essential, as an overriding policy in schools, allowing competition has been proven to be a good thing. Take for instance the London Academy of Excellence in Stratford, which resulted in a rising tide lifting all boats. Apart from its own excellent performance, it has had a dramatic effect on the performance of the other sixth forms in the area. Good schools must be allowed to expand. To not allow this is to deprive children of their benefits, and they certainly should not be forced to shrink.

Turning to my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment, local authorities clearly have a conflict of interest under the proposed admission provisions. Surely there must be a right of appeal, as set out in his amendment. I also support my noble friend Lady Barran’s Amendment 502YC, as highly performing schools should be given the freedom her amendment asks for.

My Lords, I want to speak to the amendments in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, as the noble Lord, Lord Nash, has done. However, on managed moves, these are good things when done well, as they can prevent permanent exclusions. At their best they are in the best interests of the child.

I know Birmingham very well, and the size of Birmingham. Sometimes the managed moves are made on a consulting basis. I ask my noble friend Lady Longfield, who moved the Amendment, to reflect that if you make that more bureaucratic in terms of the local authorities’ overall role, it will put too much of an administrative burden on what is working very well in some parts of the city. I am not saying that it is working well everywhere, but where it is working well on a consulting basis, it would be a shame to add layers of bureaucracy. However, on the whole, managed moves based on the framework she suggests are very good.

On admissions, my starting point is the same as that of the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash. Why would you want to prevent a good school expanding? Also, if something is good, why would you not want more children to go to it? That is at the centre of what this is about, because it is true. However, life is not as simple as that. It is not only the interests of the school and the children who might go to it that are affected by the amendments.

I was reflecting back on both noble Lords. One of the best things they did as Ministers was to recognise the early mistakes made by the coalition Government in having stand-alone academies and not encouraging schools to work together. The work they did on multi-academy trusts was a very good step forward from what we had at the start of the coalition Government. Inherent in that is the understanding that schools do not stand alone. At their best, they work with each other, help each other, depend on each other—and the key point is that they do no harm to each other. They do not make life more difficult for the school down the road.

This goes further than multi-academy trusts. Take geographical areas such as Birmingham, Camden or Coventry, which I know reasonably well. There is something about those places that every school in the area has in common. For example, it does not matter whether they are an academy, a maintained school, a faith school, a free school or an independent school—they teach the children of Birmingham. What they hold in common is that they teach the children who go to school in that area. They owe the same obligation to each other that I have just praised in multi-academy trusts—do no harm, support each other, help each other, and compete. You want to get to the top of the table, but not at the expense of the school down the road, because we want all schools to thrive. The problem with the amendments is admissions. If they were to follow these amendments, it would harm other schools serving the same group of children. That is a problem, and that is why I oppose these amendments.

If numbers are rising and there must be an expansion of places, then I take the point: why not expand the good schools? I have often thought that that is not as simple as it is claimed to be, because sometimes the success of the school is the size of the school. You cannot put in two, three, five or six more children—it does not work. You end up putting in 30 more children per school year. You raise it by one form of entry, and over seven years you have more than 200 pupils. The change in the size of the school sometimes makes it different in nature and different in culture. It might damage its academic performance and its pastoral work. Expanding good schools is not done at no cost at all. There is something to pay.

If we accept that corporate responsibility for all children who go to schools in that area, one sure way of making sure that other schools fail is to take kids away from them. We operate a system of resources following children, and with every child who goes out of that school to a successful school, money goes away from the school, and it is really difficult for them to then get back on their feet. They then have a slow decline. Some poor children go through five years of education while numbers have been declining, and maybe the school closes at the end. However, it did not close to begin with because the department thinks that if it makes it an academy, then it might succeed, or a new housing estate may be being built, and it did not want to close the school in case it needed the places.

It is very complex, because schools have two responsibilities. First and foremost, they have a responsibility for the children they teach—that is the competition—and secondly, they have that joint responsibility for every child in that area. We go on about place; we now think it is important. If place matters, there has to be a body that looks at admissions over a geographical area. I cannot think of any body but the local authority. If anyone else can, I would be prepared to listen, but in the absence of that, the part of the Bill that the Government have brought forward is best.

My last point is that if you change the admissions arrangements, you can get to a situation in which some parents have no choice at all. The school nearest to them might be a single-sex or faith school, or they might not live close enough to get a place at the school that has been expanded. Therefore, they are left with no choice except to go to the school that was not strong to begin with, but which you are making life more difficult for by taking action over declining numbers.

This is not as easy as saying, “Let good schools expand”. If it was, Governments would have done it, because that is what every Government of every colour I have ever known say they will do. When you look at it, you see that it is far more complex. I hope the Minister will reflect on those comments in her response.

I will pick up that last point, which was very incisively made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. My primary school was a two-form entry primary school. It was a popular school, and we wanted to increase the size to three forms of entry. The local authority initially said, “No, because if you do that, you’ll take children from the two other primary schools in the locality, which will weaken those schools”. At the time, I was a bit miffed about this, but I thought, “Okay”. The local authority said, “What we need to do is to build up the numbers and the esteem of those two other primary schools”, which it did very successfully. Then, guess what: it agreed that my school could become a three-form entry school.

It is not just about size; it also about schools working together. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, quite rightly paid tribute to the role that the noble Lords, Lord Agnew and Lord Nash, played as Ministers in establishing multi-academy trusts. One area which has never worked, to my mind, is that you can have the headquarters of the multi-academy trust at the other end of the country. It has never worked for me that a multi-academy trust can have schools in Devon and Cornwall but also in the north-east. Where is that community feel about them?

The trouble with expanding schools is that you can get to a situation in which schools just want to grow and grow, because they get more money. They can get too large for the existing children and families. I think of the school that my wife worked at, a seven-form entry comprehensive which was allowed to increase its size to 11. It became completely unmanageable. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, rightly said, by taking children from one school, in many cases you are almost putting a close notice on that school. The way to deal with it is not by moving children or allowing schools to grow but by providing the resources and expertise and making that school popular, putting in real expertise to change its character and educational purpose.

I put my name to the Amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Longfield, and I have also put an amendment down myself. Let us first understand the definition of a managed move. It is a permanent move of a child from one school to another for reasons not related to family relocation. It is important to put that into context and to remind ourselves that currently 1.49 million children are persistently absent from school and 171,000 children are severely absent from school.

The Who is Losing Learning? report of 2025 uncovered a deeply concerning trend; that

“for every child that is permanently excluded, 10 more invisibly move” between schools or are off rolled entirely. These moves are unregulated and unmonitored, meaning that too often even the Department for Education does not know where or even if those children are being educated following a managed move.

Managed moves, when done correctly, can have great success for both the pupil and the school. That is why these two amendments, which are very similar, are so important. We need a fair access protocol to make sure that, when we carry out those managed moves between schools, we know how it is happening. I like the notion that the local authority should perhaps report on this—not creating more bureaucracy but just giving confidence to the system. I hope the Minister when she replies will tell us how important it is to get this right.

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Barran’s amendments to Clause 56 and my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454. I have heard much around the Committee this afternoon that is extremely important, but I think there are some wider points to make.

There are many romantic expectations of school admissions—that there is a perfect world in which every child will go to the school that they and their parents choose, in which every mainstream school can provide well for every child no matter how extreme their needs, and in which no child will ever cause harm to any other child or adult in a school. In this perfect world, the romantics expect children to be distributed perfectly evenly between schools on any measure by which we choose to analyse the population. But this is a dream, and chasing dreams rarely improves children’s experiences in the real world. Sadly, it is entirely possible that the extended powers to direct admissions will backfire, especially with policy pressure on local authorities to keep even the worst behaved children in mainstream schools irrespective of the consequences.

Consider a child for whom an LA is trying to find a managed move. If several schools decline to accept the child, it may mean that they are all shirking their responsibilities, or it may mean that they have correctly assessed that the child’s needs are too great for that school or any mainstream school to manage the child safely. One shocking case I saw as chief inspector related to a girl who was raped by a boy who had come to her school on a managed move and, worse, the receiving school had not been informed by either the LA or the sending school of the boy’s known history of serious sexual misconduct. No school should be levered into putting other children at risk in this way.

If the LA directs the child to one of its own schools, it still has direct responsibility for the child, but if it can direct the child to an academy, it has offloaded the problem, at least in part. There is an obvious incentive for local authorities to use this power to offload the most difficult children and leave academies to shoulder a disproportionate responsibility for the most difficult and even dangerous children, and to inflict the greatest risk on the other children and staff in those academies.

Let us also consider the point that, while a decision will relate to a single child, good schools also have to consider how many children with behavioural problems they can manage and support properly without destroying the very strengths that make them able to work effectively with such children. I have seen already how difficult this is for local authorities in the context of SEND. Local authorities control EHCPs, which name a school to which that child should be admitted. In theory, it is parents who choose that school, but in practice, local authorities have significant influence over those parent choices, and some local authorities have perhaps on occasion found it convenient to encourage parents to choose academies rather than maintained schools, or at the very least to not discourage them from doing so.

As a result, some popular and successful academies have at times found themselves facing real difficulties. I know of cases where local authorities expected a school to fill more than one-third of its year 7 places with children requiring intensive individual support, many of them for behavioural problems. This would have turned those schools into de facto special schools without the wider infrastructure and support that we expect of special schools.

It is in fact extraordinarily difficult for local authorities to be impartial between mainstream schools and academies. For this reason, I strongly support my noble friend’s Amendment 452ZA, requiring local authorities to act impartially between maintained schools and academies. It will still be difficult in practice, but the principle should be explicit in the Act.

Similarly, my noble friend’s Amendment 453A to Clause 56 and Amendments 457A and 457B seek to ensure that changes to school admission numbers are made in the interests of children and parents, rather than the administrative convenience of the local authority. Again, these decisions will always be hard and will never please everyone, but it is right and important that children’s needs are explicitly put first: otherwise, it is sadly all too certain that, with the shrinking birth cohort, some excellent schools will see their admissions restricted while mediocre schools carry on. My noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 454 gives some protection to this principle. I hope the Government will see how unfortunate this would be and will take steps to guard against it.

My Lords, Clause 53 covers the role of schools in general and academies in particular in relation to pupil place planning. As we know, in the vast Majority of cases, academies co-operate and fulfil their role in helping the local authority to meet its sufficiency duties, as the Bill says, so far as is reasonable. Clause 54 gives the local authority new powers to direct admission of individual pupils, despite the fact that those powers already exist for the Secretary of State to use within the funding agreement for all academies.

The policy notes say, slightly quaintly:

“Schools and local authorities’ interests may not always be aligned, and they are not expected to agree on all admissions and place planning matters. However, it is expected that they will behave reasonably and collaboratively, for example, considering the other party’s views, being willing to meet and discuss differences, and sharing information in a timely manner”.

All this is fine, but presumably the point of the clause is to get quicker decisions and to address a problem of academies apparently unreasonably refusing to accept these pupils. But where is the evidence that that is true? In the academic year 2023-24, there were just under 11,000 exclusions. Looking at the data on the department’s website for exclusions and suspensions, including repeat suspensions, one sees incredible differences, in the rates of permanent exclusion in particular, even in neighbouring local authorities. This is true for local authorities where almost all the secondaries are academies and for those where there are predominantly maintained schools.

I understand that, with 85% of exclusions happening in secondary schools and with the vast majority of secondary schools being academies, we need to ensure that those pupils who can continue in mainstream schools do so and that those who cannot are placed in high-quality alternative provision. However, I have been unable to find the data on the number of pupils both where an academy has refused to accept them and where the Secretary of State has required the academy to do so. It is important that we understand both these figures, the first to give a sense of the scale of the issue and the second to quantify how many pupils are impacted by what might be defined as “unreasonable refusal” on the part of the academy. If the Minister does not have that data with her today, could she write to me with it? Ideally, we would also want to know how stable the placements of these pupils are and how many are excluded again.

Even without this data, we are worried about the principle of overriding the funding agreement powers, which we discussed in earlier groups, and about the potential or real conflict of interest of the local authority both running schools and having the power to place more challenging children in particular schools. My Amendment 452ZA seeks to get clarity that the legal status of the school will not have any bearing on where a child is placed. The Minister will be aware that concerns were expressed in evidence given to the Public Bill Committee in the other place around having large numbers of children who perhaps have already moved schools several times and been excluded—my noble friend Lady Spielman just gave the example of a third of children in year 7. What impact does that have on the perception of that school in the local authority? It is important that this legislation is fair and feels fair, so it is important that the Minister explains how this apparent conflict of interest with the local authority—in my words, as poacher and gamekeeper or, in the words of my noble friend Lord Agnew, as fox and chicken coop—will be resolved.

My noble friend has offered an alternative to Clause 54. Amendment 452 makes it clear that the local authority should be directing an academy to admit children only when the trust has failed to meet its obligations or where there is clear evidence of disadvantage or unfair treatment. It would also require the local authority making the direction to provide evidence and carry out a consultation with the admission authority before doing so. All this seems like common sense to me and brings a sense of balance to the desire to expedite the placement of children who are in need of a school place. I support my noble friend’s amendment 100% and I think it really does address the points raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Bousted, about not in any way interfering with the local authority’s duties.

My noble friend Lord Agnew has also highlighted some of the potential problems with Clause 55, which gives the local authority the power to direct admission of an individual child. I know the Government have argued that this is no real change in academy freedoms but simply a transfer of power from the Secretary of State to the local authority, but this is happening in the context of mainstream schools being asked to take children who, arguably, should be in either specialist or alternative provision. Of course they need certainty about where they will be educated, but the pressures to be inclusive need to be weighed against the needs of the other children in a classroom.

Clause 56 introduces a power for the Schools Adjudicator to determine school admission numbers as a result of upholding an objection or referral. The Explanatory Notes to the Bill say that

“the government intends to amend these regulations to enable local authorities to also submit an objection where the admission number has been increased or maintained at the same level as the previous year”.

Currently, the Schools Adjudicator can consider objections only where the admission authority has decreased its public published admission numbers—PAN. The change presented by the Government will mean that the adjudicator can consider objections where a school is seeking to retain or increase its pupil numbers, and the adjudicator’s decision will determine the PAN, which the school must adopt. We think this clause needs rethinking, and my amendments offer the Government different ways of improving on it, as well as arguing that Clause 56 should not stand part of the Bill.

The Government’s impact assessment is clear that they want local authorities

“to have more influence over the PANs for schools in their area”.

This is happening at a time when it is well known that pupil numbers are falling, particularly in London. The impact assessment also says that

“this would include scenarios where ... a school’s PAN is set at a level which creates viability issues for another local school”.

This point was reinforced by Rachael Wardell, the new president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, in an interview with Schools Week in April, when she said that schools needed to be

“where the children are. So it’s not helpful to have one particular school of any type expand beyond its local community in a way that causes lots of children to seek to travel”.

She went on:

“It’s better to invest resource and attention in improving the school where it is to serve the community that it’s based in”.

I understand the pressure on a local authority when a school becomes unviable and potentially has to close—I spent many hours deliberating these things when I was in the department. However, we cannot allow a situation where good schools are forced to reduce in size to protect a less popular and usually underperforming school. This damages the opportunities for children and cuts across parental choice. To quote the Government again:

“If a school is required to lower their PAN, some pupils who would have otherwise been admitted will be unable to attend the school. This will negatively impact on parental preference, especially if the school was the parent’s first choice”.

My Amendments 453A and 457A seek to ensure, first, that the adjudicator takes into account the performance and popularity of the school, and, secondly, that the adjudicator can receive objections only in relation to cuts in PAN. Amendment 457B would allow high-performing schools to increase their PAN. To be clear, we are not wedded to the exact educational metrics in that amendment, but we think that there is an important point of principle at stake here.

Amendment 453B would remove the regulation-making powers in the Bill. As ever, we would like to limit the regulation-making powers in legislation, and I am not convinced that the criteria that the adjudicator will use to make a determination will change so frequently. Can the Minister explain why the Government need this flexibility? Could some of the criteria not be put in the Bill, as was done in relation to the definition of full-time education in an earlier clause?

There are real concerns about the role of the adjudicator in this context. Amendment 454, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, would give admissions authorities the right to appeal. Surely this is a sensible addition.

To be clear, unless the Government accept at least my Amendment 457B, they are saying that they are prioritising the financial stability of an underperforming school over quality of education and parental choice—and, as my noble friend Lady Spielman said, potentially the safety of other pupils. We on these Benches are clear that this is the wrong choice.

I will speak briefly to my Amendment 502YC. If the Minister is wondering why this amendment is in this group, it is because I overlooked that it should have been in an earlier group, for which I apologise to the Committee. This amendment seeks to implement part of the Education Act 2002 that was passed under the previous Labour Government. For reasons that I do not fully understand, this section was never implemented, but it goes to the heart of the issue about how we create a self-improving school system. I hope that the Minister will take the amendment in the spirit that it is intended and not spend any time pointing out how definitions and inspection regimes have changed over time.

We want to create a self-improving system; a system for our schools that has new creative and intellectual energy, that is curious and wants to learn, that respects and listens to the evidence and that feels it has the agency to make change and the accountability to drive improvement. My amendment would achieve the Government’s goal of consistency in the way in which academies and maintained schools are treated, but would give the same freedoms to both high-performing academies and high-performing maintained schools. I think I am right in saying that this is the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, when she was Secretary of State, and my amendment gives the Government the chance to complete her work.

It would achieve that goal by increasing autonomy, rather than increasing central control. Our nation and our Government face a huge challenge in improving public services, and I urge the Minister to consider this carefully. Education was the area that saw the greatest improvements under the previous Government, and where the autonomy and accountability principle was tested at scale. Not every trust has used its freedoms at all and not every trust used them well, but the most successful trusts, particularly for disadvantaged children, did not just use those freedoms well but used them brilliantly. Our accountability systems have developed to address those that did not. Why would not the Government want to see more of this? At a time when we need to see the same outburst of creativity and effective practice in relation to special educational needs and disabilities, for example, this is surely an obvious choice.

If the Government reject my amendment, which would simply implement their own party’s legislation, we will all be left thinking that we should judge the Government by what they do and not by what they say. What do all the warm words about academies mean in reality if the actions of the Government go in the opposite direction? This is an acid test of their vision. I support the amendments in my name in this group and oppose Clause 56 standing part of the Bill.

My Lords, I turn first to Clauses 54 and 55, the latter of which the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, opposes standing part of the Bill. Together, they extend local authorities’ current powers to direct maintained schools to admit a child to enable them to direct academies in the same way.

There are important elements of this Bill that are about future-proofing the system. As I explained last week when talking about the nature of the national curriculum, if, quite rightly, a Majority of our schools, or schools that are teaching the majority of our children, are academies, and if, as we do as a Government, we want to continue the progress to see more academies developing and opening, we need to future-proof the system. At the moment, local authorities can direct admissions in the particular circumstances in which they need to do so in only half of schools, and in the future in even fewer schools than that. The proposals enable the school admissions code to set out additional circumstances in which directions can be made to ensure school places for vulnerable children can be secured more quickly and efficiently.

Enabling local authorities to direct into academies without needing to make a request via the Secretary of State will help to reduce delays in securing vulnerable children a school place. It is right, as the noble Baroness says, that there is a route to direct into an academy, but that requires making a request to the Secretary of State and an average, as I understand it, of 38 days for that to be determined. That is a long time for a vulnerable child to be without a school place.

These clauses will also create a more streamlined directions process for children who have come out of care, or where the fair access protocol—the local process to secure places for unplaced and vulnerable children—has failed to secure a child a school place. Together, these measures will help provide a more robust and consistent safety net for vulnerable children, ensuring that no child falls between the cracks.

Amendment 452 from the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, seeks to amend the circumstances in which local authorities can direct admissions and places certain requirements on academy admissions, and Amendment 452ZA, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, requires local authorities to not take into account a school’s academy status in these decisions. Noble Lords are, of course, absolutely right that it is important that these decisions are made in the best interests of the child and that impartiality between types of schools should be maintained.

Legislation already contains protections to ensure that local authorities’ powers of direction can be used only in limited but deserving circumstances. As well as consulting with the child’s parents and schools, local authorities must ensure that decisions are made in the child’s interests, including ensuring that the school is suitable to the child’s needs. These decisions and proposals are all about children’s needs; people who have decided to devote their career to looking after children and our schools are not bureaucrats, as the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, continues to keep calling them, which I think is a shame. I hope that he does not mean it in the disparaging manner in which he continues to use it.

Public law principles already prevent local authorities taking account of irrelevant factors when taking decisions, such as whether or not a school is an academy. Of course, we recognise the point made by noble Lords about the potential for a conflict of interest here, which is why this measure will also give academy trusts a new right to object to the independent schools adjudicator where they disagree with a local authority’s decision to direct a child into their school.

Amendments 450 and 453, tabled by my noble friend Lady Longfield, are on arranging managed moves through fair access protocols. My noble friends have made some important and useful points about the way in which managed moves might be appropriately organised. But I certainly also agree with my noble friend Lady Longfield. As I think I spelled out in the previous group, it is absolutely right that we should maintain a close eye on and improve oversight of pupil movement. That is why we are already doing so by strengthening accountability through reforms to Ofsted and the annual reviews of safeguarding, attendance and pupil movement, including off-rolling.

My concern about my noble friend’s amendments is not the intention but the practicalities. These amendments would require the fair access protocol to be invoked in almost every situation where a pupil moves permanently to another school. From my noble friend’s introduction, I do not think that that was her intention, but that would be the effect of the amendment. That is not the intended function of fair access protocols and would likely delay vulnerable pupils accessing a school place.

I turn to amendments related to Clause 56 on published admission numbers—PANs—and where the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has indicated that she intends to oppose the question that Clause 56 should stand part of the Bill. Clause 56 provides that, where the adjudicator upholds an objection to a school’s PAN, they can specify the new PAN to be included in the school’s admission arrangements. Here we had a very important and helpful Intervention from my noble friend Lady Bousted, who pointed out the duty that local authorities have to secure sufficient places for children within the areas where they have responsibility. It is therefore important for us to ensure that local authorities have the ability in reality to be able to do that.

We know that, in some areas, schools set PANs that do not offer enough places to meet local needs. Equally, in areas of falling pupil rolls, some schools increase or retain PANs beyond what is needed. This can make it harder for the local authority and school leaders to plan effectively, hurting pupil outcomes. I know that there is concern among noble Lords that the impact of this would be, somehow or other, to prevent the quality and parental choice about which all of us are, I think, concerned. However, as my noble friend Lady Morris pointed out, if it is difficult or impossible for local authorities and school leaders to plan effectively, that may in itself have the effects of hurting pupil outcomes and damaging other good schools—and, in doing that, limiting parental choice. We all agree that we want to protect and promote all those things.

This measure will be supported by changes to regulations and to the School Admissions Code to enable local authorities to object where a PAN is increased or retained; and to create new rules to ensure that quality of provision and parental choice are key considerations throughout. On the point about using regulations, in the department’s discussions with the representatives of trusts, there has been strong recognition that it is appropriate, in these circumstances, to do this through the regulations approach. Of course, that also enables us both to continue that consultation and to make sure that those regulations and the School Admissions Code do what all of us, from different types of schools, want to see delivered here. Alongside changes to regulations, this clause will help create a clear legal framework for how decisions on PANs are made to ensure that all local children have access to an education where they can achieve and thrive.

I turn to Amendments 453A, 453B, 457A and 457B in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. I assure noble Lords that a combination of changes to the statutory admissions code and new regulations will ensure that quality and parental choice are key criteria in any decision on PANs and that other relevant factors are given due consideration. In most cases, pupils will be best served by high-performing schools growing or retaining existing PANs, but such decisions also need to consider the interests and quality of education of children who are already enrolled in other good local schools.

Rather than a rigid, inflexible approach, it is important that admission authorities, local authorities and the adjudicator are able to take into account the totality of local circumstances to ensure that the needs of all pupils in the community are met. As I have suggested, we consider that these matters are best addressed via the regulations that are provided for in Clause 56. We want to work with the sector to develop these regulations to ensure that they are clear and comprehensive and best meet the needs of pupils and schools.

Amendment 454, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, seeks to introduce a route for admission authorities to appeal a decision made by the adjudicator. Of course, the adjudicator already exists—and did so under the previous Government and the one before them, in which I and other noble Lords were Education Ministers at various points—as an independent body appointed by the Secretary of State. It will take an impartial view on the objection from the local authority at the end of a rigorous statutory process. Creating a separate appeals panel would duplicate its role. Of course, in extremis, admission authorities can already challenge an adjudicator’s decision through a judicial review.

Finally, on Amendment 502YC in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, I have to say that we covered quite a bit of this last week in our interesting and lengthy discussions. The amendment would mean that maintained schools could be exempted from or could modify statutory teacher pay and conditions and the national curriculum if they were considered to be performing well. As we discussed last week at length, of course we share the aims of this amendment: ensuring a national curriculum that can improve—and not just maintain—its current ability to innovate, and ensuring that our provisions around pay and conditions are a floor and not a ceiling. We want to ensure consistent and high standards across all schools. This amendment would propose a fragmented approach that is contrary to our commitment to create a core guarantee of quality for all children.

Through our wider reforms, we want to ensure that the ability to innovate and the flexibility to adapt to local needs are available to every school, not just a select few, without compromising on this core standard.

Regarding the curriculum, as we discussed last week, the Bill ensures that the core national curriculum, once reformed, will be an entitlement for children in academy schools as well as in maintained schools. It will provide the solid and broad foundation of knowledge, skills and attributes that young people need to thrive, which they are entitled to receive in full, whatever school they attend. However, the reformed national curriculum will still give schools, including academies, the flexibility to tailor their teaching to the specific needs of their pupils and communities, continuing to give them space to innovate without a ceiling.

On the matter of pay and conditions, the Bill enables the establishment of a pay floor to help to ensure a competitive pay offer for all state schoolteachers. This is crucial for recruiting and retaining the best teachers, who are integral to driving high standards in our schools. Through our wider reforms to teacher pay and conditions, we will spread best practice and innovation across the state school system by removing the ceiling on pay, as is the case for academies, and introducing greater flexibilities for all state schools—for example, enabling more flexible working for teachers, as we have discussed when previously considering this area.

I hope that, given the assurances I have provided, my noble friend Lady Longfield will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for her response and the emphasis that she has placed throughout on inclusion. The ambition is for all children to be able to benefit from a great education and for them to be able to thrive in school.

The Amendment I put forward about managed moves is very much about keeping children within schools and the education system. It is a practical response, and I have been really pleased to bring together a group of schools and school leaders who are really putting forward a very positive practice by meeting with the education team and talking about that. With that in mind, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 450 withdrawn.

Clause 53 agreed.

Amendment 451 not moved.

Clause 54: Power to direct admission: extension to Academies

Amendment 452 not moved.

Clause 54 agreed.

Amendment 452ZA not moved.

Clause 55: Power to direct admission: additional triggers

Amendments 452A and 425B not moved.

Clause 55 agreed.

Amendment 453 not moved.

Clause 56: Functions of adjudicator in relation to admission numbers

Amendments 453A to 454 not moved.

Clause 56 agreed.

Amendments 455 to 457B not moved.

Clause 57: Amendments to invitation process for establishment of new schools

Debate on whether Clause 57 should stand part of the Bill.

My Lords, we have seen some of the most significant improvements in outcomes for pupils in our free schools, with schools such as Michaela and Ark Greenwich in London, Eden girls and boys, part of the Star academy trust in Birmingham, and the Mercia School in Sheffield, to name but a few, achieving remarkable results. I know that my noble friends Lord Harris, Lord Nash and Lord Agnew are very likely to add to that list of exceptional free schools that they have been part of creating.

Free schools have been a mechanism for the injection of new ideas, new energy and improving models of education into the state system. Free schools respond to parental and community demand; they provide parents with choice over their child’s education and they have driven up standards. Free schools are usually part of a strong multi-academy trust that has a track record of delivering high-quality education and the back-office capacity needed to support smooth and financially sustainable operations across HR, finance, IT, premises and more. Local authorities do not have and never have had the same capacity and ability to provide tailored support to schools.

The reason for the change in policy in the Bill to allow local authorities to open free schools in future is given in the policy summary, which says that the measure better aligns

“local authorities’ responsibility for securing sufficient school places with their ability to open new schools”.

Again, to loop back to the previous group, on which the Minister did not commit to write—I am sure that her officials noted my request for data—can she share the evidence that there really is a gap in their ability to secure sufficient school places and cite any instances where a local authority has been unable to meet its sufficiency duty as a result of a lack of applications from suitable trusts to establish a new free school? Certainly, during my time in office, there were always multiple applications for new presumption free schools, both mainstream and special schools.

My worry is that this is an example of bureaucratic tidiness being prioritised over outcomes for children. The English system is not tidy: we have voluntary-aided schools, voluntary-controlled schools, foundation schools and many other models. On paper, it might look messy, but we have still been able to rise significantly up the global league tables because we focused relentlessly on outcomes over bureaucracy. This Clause feels like we are putting a bureaucrat’s diagrams first—even, I add before the Minister growls at me too much, a bureaucrat with a big heart and a lifelong commitment to children. All of this will change—and to the detriment of pupils.

It will also create higher costs for the Government. In an interview with Schools Week in April, Rachael Wardell, the new president of the ADCS, said, on the range of new responsibilities that councils will be given in the Bill, that

“part of our ongoing dialogue with government is going to be about, if you want us to do these things, then we’re going to need to be resourced accordingly”.

Can the Minister give an estimate of the additional funding needed for local authorities to fulfil their new duties, including in relation to free schools?

This proposed change creates a fundamental conflict of interest for the local authority. It will both invite proposals for a new free school when one is needed and be able to propose one itself, and it will then decide which proposal to approve. That is hardly a system designed to build confidence. We are told that, where it puts forward its own proposal, the Secretary of State, through the work of the regional directors, will be the decision-maker; however, this introduces an additional layer of work and, dare I say it, bureaucracy in a system that is currently working reasonably well. Organisations such as the New Schools Network have been critical in supporting trusts, establishing free schools and building capacity in the sector. We therefore think that the change in policy created by Clause 57 is a fundamental mistake and unnecessary, and I hope that the Minister will think again.

My Amendment 480 seeks to unblock the pipeline of free schools, which have been put on hold since the election. I think that 44 free schools are on hold, including some that bring high-quality 16-to-19 education to areas of very high deprivation, such as those with a high percentage of white, working-class boys, which the Secretary of State has recently focused on. Surely this is a way to demonstrate that focus and unlock those applications now.

The Government have, so far, spent twice as long reviewing the free schools pipeline as it took to open the first 24 free schools in 2010. The time between that election and the opening of free schools was 142 days; in contrast, the time between this Government’s announcement of the review in October 2024 and today has been about 288 days. Overall, it feels like the whole programme has been delayed, and I hope that the Minister can reassure the Committee that this is not the case and put some numbers on how many places will open in the next three years, in both special and mainstream schools.

Finally, I express my support for Amendment 481, in the name of my noble friend Lord Agnew, which would bring greater transparency to the accounts of maintained schools. I am sure that my noble friend, like me, is tired of being told that there is not enough transparency around academies, even though there is actually no financial visibility for maintained schools. I beg to move.

My Lords, I will address my Amendment 481. This group is a bit of a mixed bag, but I think that my amendment is relevant and important, as it seeks to level the playing field by ensuring that there is a high level of financial governance for local authority schools compared to academies. Yet again, the credit must go to a previous Labour Government for setting out such strong foundations to underpin the governance of academies; comparing academies and local authority schools is like light and day.

I have a reputation for being something of a martinet when it comes to the disciplined management of school finances. Various people have made fun of me over the years, which does not trouble me in the least, because every pound I have saved from wasteful and poor management in schools is then available to go to the front line in improving the education of children. The Minister might even want to call me a bureaucrat, because I have been so assiduous in that part of the system. I would love to see the overall schools budget at a much higher level, but that will not happen given the parlous state of our country’s finances. We therefore have to work with what we have.

In the meantime, the level of accountability and visibility of LAs’ oversight of their own schools is murky at best. An academy trust has to complete a full external audit of its finances within four months of the close of the academic year—that is, between 31 August and 31 December. The accounts have to be filed with Companies House on that date. At that point, the full record of the trust’s financial affairs is available for public scrutiny for the year ending only four months earlier. You can get that information on any trust in England with about four clicks of a button. There is a red list in the DfE—I hope the Minister has seen it —of any trust that misses this deadline. When I was there, any trust more than a month late was immediately placed on a risk register. If schools’ managers or trustees cannot get the money right, how can they ever get the education right? It really is that simple.

But what visibility is there for local authority schools? There is virtually nothing that is easily accessed. Even as the Minister for the school system, I found it an endless battle to get this sort of information. Although LAs would complain frequently about not having enough money, they were rarely forthcoming about how they were spending what they had. This is a very unacceptable state of affairs. If we look at some key categories of oversight and compare the levels of transparency, I hope noble Lords will see why this very unbalanced situation needs correcting.

First, there is the accountable body. For academies, it is the board of trustees and the members sitting above that. The DfE Academy Trust Handbook sets the rules. These board members and the members themselves are on every academy’s website. For local authorities, they are their own accountable body—and try talking to that person.

Secondly, there are audited annual accounts, which I have already explained. But there are no requirements for anything similar for local authority schools. It is even worse that the average frequency of an internal local authority audit of its own schools is about every three years, and it is virtually impossible to see a copy of those reports. I failed consistently when I was in the department.

Thirdly, there is internal auditing. For trusts of a certain size, this is another annual requirement. For noble Lords not familiar with the term, an internal audit is not exactly as it says on the tin. An internal audit is conducted by external specialists but looks at different areas of schools’ operation beyond straight finances, such as deep dives into cyber vulnerability, payroll, the condition of the school estate and so on. There is no such requirement for local authorities.

Fourthly, there are financial returns. Academies are required to submit annual accounts to the DfE and indeed a three-year budget forecast. They also need to demonstrate compliance with their chart of accounts. For local authorities, again there is no standard national chart of accounts, and they are not required to submit three-year forecasts.

Fifthly, there are monthly management accounts. Academies are required to ensure that the chair of the board of trustees sees these at least four times a year. My noble friend Lady Barran actually reduced it. I had it at six, but she was right; my bureaucratic obsession probably had got the better of me. But this is not required for chairs of governors in local authority schools.

Sixthly, there is related-party transaction reporting. Academies have to comply with specific rules, such as needing independent authorisation from the DfE for larger sums. It was £20,000, but my noble friend—she might correct me—lifted it to £50,000. Again, there is nothing like that for local authority schools.

Seventhly, there is the publication of salaries. Academies have to disclose all salaries above £100,000, but local authority schools do not. This is required only for LA officers at LA level. Estimates I have seen indicate that there are over 1,000 staff in local authority schools across England who exceed that threshold, so any defence that it is not a material number of people in receipt of public money does not wash.

Eighthly, there is website reporting. Academies are required to publish their audited accounts on their website. There is no requirement for local authorities to publish their school accounts.

Ninthly, there is the accounting officer. Academies have to appoint an accounting officer with—I stress—personal responsibility for accurate and timely reporting. No such thing exists in local authority schools.

Given that LAs are facing an unprecedented financial squeeze, with some virtually bankrupt, such as Birmingham, there should be no excuse for them not to up their game. The costs—which will of course be the reflexive defence for not doing anything—would be trivial against the improvement in the spending going on inside the LA schools and would be recouped many times over the cost of the audit fee.

Every time I have taken over a local authority school, we have eliminated hundreds of thousands of pounds of wasteful expenditure, which is then focused on teaching. In every secondary school inside my trust, because of the very tight financial management, we have been able to extend the school day by three hours a week. If a child spends the full five years of his or her education in one of those schools, it is the equivalent of receiving another year’s education. That is what is at stake here. Norfolk is not a well-funded local authority; it is about middle ranking. We are not getting any handouts. It just shows you that, if there was more rigour in the system, it would make an enormous difference to the children in our country.

I keep coming back to the point of this Bill. Here is a very simple suggestion, which would be more than self-funding, that would drive financial discipline into a part of the school system where opacity currently rules the roost. I beg to move.

My Lords, I am very disappointed that we have over 50 schools from which we are still waiting to hear the results. We started taking free schools back in 2012. We have 16 free schools today, all handed to us under the Conservatives. We have got great results from these 16 schools: 12 are outstanding, four are good, and there are 15,000 children. This year, in those schools, the difference between the ordinary children and the disadvantaged children was only 1%; that proves that they are working. We want more of these schools. I want to see everyone get a good education.

The other point is that we want more schools because we have teachers whom we have trained. We have nearly 200 teachers trained to go into new schools. We are paying for them privately from investors to make this happen, but we cannot get the schools. We cannot get schools that are failing because they will have another two years of failing. That is very disappointing.

Look at the results in the free schools and the county schools. With primaries, looking at every school in the country, the results are 68% for free schools, at local council schools it is 62%, and I am proud to say that Harris is at 76%. At secondary level, which is finished for this year, our Progress 8 scores are at 0.24 while the council scores are at 0.001. A-level results at academies are fantastic: 29% of the children get A*s and As from our free schools against the country average of 26%. This makes a big difference. We are giving children a better education. We want to make sure they get a better education; I think that is a fantastic thing.

We have two schools that we have been working on for two years and three years respectively. One of them is at Bow, in an old mill, at the top of Tesco and in a building down the road. We were promised that we would get a new free school in Bow, where they are building 4,008 new houses, but at the moment we cannot get an answer. We have got the staff for it. Before, this school was always inadequate. It was inspected in the last month before the year’s end. The primary got “outstanding”, the secondary got “outstanding”, and the sixth form got “good”. The sixth form was over the top of the Tesco. It used to have only 40 students. Now we have 220. So in that poor area, in those poor conditions, we are giving good people a good education. That is what we need to do. We need a school where we can have 1,500 students, and it works.

I have heard people saying today that some primary schools are too big; I do agree, to a degree, but we have a primary school with 300 students and one with just under 1,000 students that are both outstanding. These schools are both in Thurrock, by the way. So we know it can happen, but you need motivated staff and motivated people. Motivated children want to come to school, but some of them are not.

When we take over a school, we set three years to make it outstanding, and 95% of the schools we have taken over are outstanding in three years. We talk to them. We put more people in them. We cut the cost, because the costs are very strong. They have got too many staff not doing things. We take them out, put good staff in and make sure it happens. Remember that a child gets only one chance of a good education. We have to make sure every child in this country, wherever they come from, gets a good education.

Then there is the school in Greenwich. This is very disappointing. We spent three years and nearly £1 million pounds of our budget to get it approved. I know the department spent a lot of money as well. We got it approved about six weeks before the election. It was in the press. Before it opened—it does not open for two years—it was oversubscribed in year 7. People want these good schools—not only our Harris schools—all over the country. We have to make sure we give them good schools, but we cannot have those schools that have been failing for two years failing for another two years, because that is nearly the lifetime of a child in education.

I am a great believer in education. I know everyone here is. We have got to make sure it works; we have got to make sure it happens; and we have got to make sure we give them a good education. I hope the Government look at these free schools and make it happen, because they are very successful.

My Lords, I too speak in support of the free schools programme, Amendment 480 and the Clause stand part notice in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran.

As we have just heard so powerfully, free schools have been a significant driver of education improvement in this country over the past decade and a half, and their impact has been felt most powerfully in the communities that needed the benefits they have brought the most. Today there are 741 free schools educating hundreds of thousands of children and their results speak for themselves. Of those free schools that have been inspected, 93% are rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. As my noble friend Lord Harris just said, this summer’s exam results have confirmed their impact. Free schools once again outperformed other non-selective state schools in both GCSEs and A-levels, helping to drive up standards, particularly in areas of high deprivation and traditionally poor educational achievement.

Some 31.3% of A-levels taken by pupils at free schools achieved grade A or A*, compared with 25.2% of pupils in all state-funded schools; 23.7% of GCSEs taken by pupils at free schools were graded 7 or above, compared with 20.6% studied by pupils in all state-funded schools; and provisional results for 2025 key stage 2 showed that 70% of pupils at free schools met the expected standard in reading, writing and maths, compared with 63% of pupils at all mainstream primary schools.

These are not isolated success stories. They are systemic proof that autonomy, innovation and freedom work. The success of free schools has been especially striking in disadvantaged communities. The New Schools Network report on the impact of free schools highlights that they have been disproportionately located in the most deprived parts of the country and played a key role in improving access to high-quality places where they are most needed. Many of the strongest performers, such as Reach Academy Feltham, Dixons Trinity Academy, Newham Collegiate Sixth Form and the Star Academies, all serve communities that have historically struggled with low attainment.

Giving school leaders the freedom to innovate, as we have heard, whether through a longer school day, a more stretching curriculum or developing closer links with businesses and universities, has a measurable impact on pupil outcomes, helping to close the disadvantage gap. Given this record, it is disappointing that the Government now seek, through Clause 57, to weaken the very mechanism that has allowed free schools to flourish by removing the requirement on local authorities to seek academy proposals first when a new school is needed. As Sir David Carter, a former National Schools Commissioner, observed:

“Free schools are an excellent way of filling gaps in provision that aren’t always obvious in Whitehall or in Local Authorities, and we should back school leaders and others to decide what their area needs”.

Finally, Amendment 480 tabled by my noble friend Lady Barran would require the Secretary of State to proceed with the opening of the 44 mainstream-approved free school projects that were paused in October 2024. As we have heard, many of these proposed new schools will offer incredible opportunities for the young people in the areas where they are due to be set up, from ensuring that every English region has a 16 to 19 university-backed maths school to proposals for new state sixth forms to support students from disadvantaged backgrounds through a collaboration between a leading private school and a multi-academy trust in Oldham, Middlesbrough and Dudley.

Since the pause, however, there has been a lack of information and progress. The 44 schools under review have not been publicly named and there has been a lack of transparency from the department about the review process being followed or indeed when it is due to conclude, with officials saying only that updates will be sent to trusts and local authorities in due course. Projects provided information to the department before Christmas but have heard little since. Can the Minister please update the House on when the review will conclude to provide certainty to these projects? She will know they will have put a huge amount of work and effort into submitting their applications but have been in limbo for almost a year.

Furthermore, at Education Oral Questions in the other place on 21 July in response to a question on capital resources to help expand Exeter Maths School, the former DfE Minister Stephen Morgan said that the department hopes

“to replicate the success of these settings across the country

There are two maths free schools in the pipeline—Nottingham and Durham—and a number of other 16 to 19 projects proposed for outside London by trusts with a track record of exceptional results. The Government have at their fingertips the means to replicate the previous success we have seen across the country, so why not approve the two maths free schools and all the 44 schools in the pipeline?

Free schools have delivered exceptional outcomes, expanded opportunity and brought high-quality education to communities that for too long were left behind. Clause 57 risks turning back the clock while Amendment 480 would give certainty to 44 much-needed projects and ensure that the next generation of free schools can continue this record of success. I hope the Minister will reflect on the positive contribution the free school programme has made and is making to hundreds of thousands of pupils’ lives and ensure it is able to continue to grow to further improve our education system, particularly in areas that need it the most.

My Lords, it is a great honour to speak after the last two speakers and I will speak in support of the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Agnew. The speech from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, and the passion with which he spoke were a tribute to him and his team, who have done a most remarkable job. It is also a tribute to the previous Labour Government, who had the foresight to bring in people such as him to help turn around failing schools. That is why it is such a shame, as I have said before, to see this Labour Government appearing to row back on many of those proposals; I hope that is not really the case.

I will not begin to try to compete with my noble friend Lady Evans, who so ably ran the free schools programme and understands so much more about it than I do. My own experience of free schools is limited to my group opening one primary school in the grounds of Pimlico Academy because we believe strongly in an all-through education, a broad education and a subject-specific education even for primary school pupils where that can be delivered efficiently. We teach Latin in our primary schools, a subject which some believe is too exclusive for children in state schools.

The noble Baroness will be aware that my group, Future Academies, was appointed by the previous Government to run the Latin excellence programme, a £4 million contract to bring Latin to 40 state schools across the country which were not previously teaching it, something we were doing. Sadly, this Government binned that programme, which was a great pity, because the students love Latin; it helps them greatly with their grammar, their vocabulary and their thinking skills. I offer just one statistic. Noble Lords may be interested to know that this summer 48% of pupils at Pimlico Academy who took Latin GCSE, a subject which is thought to be very difficult, got a grade 9.

I understand that there are over 50 special and AP free schools in pre-opening, or which were approved prior to October last year. We desperately need more special schools and AP schools in this country. I ask the Minister kindly to tell me how many of those are now planned to open and how many are not. If she cannot do that today, and I understand why she may not be able to do so, perhaps she would write to me with the answer.

On my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment about auditing local authority schools, my MAT has specialised in taking over failing schools, mainly from local authorities. I have been struck in most cases by the very poor state of financial control of those schools. Generally, when a school is failing educationally, it is also failing financially, not just because of falling rolls but because of fairly poor financial control. An annual audit, as my noble friend has proposed, seems to be an absolute must in the case of local authority schools.

My Lords, as I had to go out and take an urgent phone call during the debate, I think it would be wrong for me to comment.

My Lords, this third group of amendments relates to the opening of new schools, including new maintained schools, academies and free schools, and the financial governance of maintained schools—but not to the noble Lord’s Amendment about local elections, so I will not respond to that.

Clause 57 relates to how new schools are opened, and the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, opposes it standing part of the Bill. The clause ends the legal presumption that new schools should be academy schools. It requires local authorities to invite proposals for academies and other types of school when they think a new school should be established and gives them the option to put forward their own proposals for new schools. The current system allows local authorities to propose new schools only as a last resort or in very limited circumstances. Local authorities hold the statutory responsibility to secure sufficient school places in their area, and it is right that we give them greater ability to fulfil that duty effectively. These changes will enable consideration of any local offer that meets the needs of children and families.

Amendment 480, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, relates to the opening of projects in the free schools pipeline. I understand the noble Baroness’s desire—and the passion and enthusiasm of the noble Lord, Lord Harris, who, as others have said, has played an enormously important role in improving the quality of schools for many of the children who need it the most—to ensure that the approved free school projects open as planned. I know that trusts and local authorities commit significant time and energy to supporting these projects.

However, noble Lords will also understand the need to consider carefully the use of a limited amount of school capital. Agreeing the amendment would commit the Secretary of State to opening all projects in the current pipeline, regardless of whether they are still needed or represent value for money. That is why the department is giving careful consideration to these proposals in relation to the need for places, their value for money and the extent to which they provide a distinctive local offer. It would be wrong to spend funding on new schools that cannot be financially viable while existing schools urgently need that funding to improve the condition of their buildings.

Amendment 481, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Agnew, would require local-authority-maintained schools to have an annual external audit. In response to the noble Lord’s contribution, I am afraid I must clarify that he was wrong to state that maintained schools do not have to publish salaries over £100,000 and that they do not have to submit three-year budget plans. Those requirements were introduced by the last Government in 2021 following a consultation put out by the noble Lord as a Minister. He has had more of an impact even than he realises.

I nevertheless understand the points the noble Lord made about the responsibility on all school leaders to ensure that public money is being spent as effectively as possible in order to maximise the amount that can be spent directly on supporting and educating our children. However, the Government do not believe it is necessary to mandate all maintained schools to have an annual external audit. Maintained school accounts form part of local authority’s accounts. A sample will be audited each year as part of the local authority audit process. Any maintained school that wants a separate audit has the right to commission one. We can argue about whether, as the noble Lord has suggested, auditing would save money. However, we are clear about how much it would cost. School audits can cost £10,000 or more—the total cost of separate audits for all maintained schools would be at least £100 million a year.

I hope that, given my explanations, the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her clause stand part notice, and other noble Lords will not move their amendments.

I accept what the Minister says—that of course the proposal for new free schools has to be properly interrogated, et cetera— but it has now been nearly a year. She alluded to the fact that some of the issues may be around the tight funding. At the very least, could she commit to contacting the schools or groups that have put forward proposals, just to give them an update? In some sense, it is the not knowing and not hearing that is the most frustrating for them, so perhaps she could at least do that.

As the Minister well recognises, it is a huge amount of work to do this, and there will be local groups, schools and parents desperately wanting to know if these schools are going to open. Even if she cannot tell us today, if she could perhaps commit to some further information for those in the pipeline, that would be a welcome move forward from their perspective.

I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness and the need for trusts to have certainty about their projects as soon as possible. We will provide an update on next steps to trusts and local authorities in due course, and I am sure that others in the department have heard the reasonable points made by the noble Baroness.

I am slightly surprised by the Minister’s response to this group. On the changes proposed by Clause 57, she repeated the point set out in the policy summary document about the importance of local authorities being able to meet their sufficiency duty, but she did not give us any examples or data to suggest that there had been instances where they were unable to meet their sufficiency duty because of a lack of suitable applications. Therefore, if I may, I will repeat my earlier request that the Minister write to me setting out exactly how often that has happened, maybe over the last five years, year by year, so we can get a picture of what this problem really is.

The Minister gave the House no reflection on the capacity of local authorities to deliver new free schools, no reflection on the conflicts of interest inherent in this policy and no real recognition of the contribution of free schools, which, as we heard particularly from my noble friend Lord Harris, have done really great and important work, particularly in narrowing disadvantage gaps. As my noble friend Lord Nash said in relation to the importance of the Latin Excellence programme, these schools have often been pioneers in raising the aspirations of children through the curriculum they offer. As we debated, and as I quoted in the debate last week on the curriculum, this is about opening doors for children—not moving the destination closer to them but building the bridge so they can get to that destination.

On my noble friend Lord Agnew’s Amendment 481, it is good that the Minister has the figure on the cost. I am sure my noble friend could negotiate that down given half a chance, but the real point is the one he made: that his trust has been able to unlock funding that gives three more hours a week to the children in that trust, or one year more of education. The Government’s accepting invisibility and probable financial inefficiency in local authority schools does the children in those schools a real disservice.

Clause 57 agreed.

Clauses 58 to 60 agreed.

Schedule 4 agreed.

Clauses 61 and 62 agreed.

Amendments 458 and 458A not moved.