Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I thank the Minister. She has been to one of our conferences with 200 people, and I am proud to say that she is coming to our conference in October, where we will have 4,500 teachers, and seeing some of our children. I am really passionate about academies. My noble friend Lord Baker got me involved in the first one at Crystal Palace 30 years ago. That was a very bad school, where 60...
Lord Harris of Peckham: Perhaps I may say that after two years, in every school we have taken over the lowest grade we have had is “good”. They were failing schools, and I consider that getting “good” in under two years and having 80% of our secondary schools “outstanding” already is a great result. Sir Dan Moynihan and our teachers have done a great job, and I am really proud of them.
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I have some experience of these meetings with parents. I should like to talk about three primary schools: Roke of Croydon, a school which took us 18 months to get approval for, was failing and letting children down. All of you will have heard about the Tottenham school, which took us two years to get approval for, and Carshalton. They were all failing, and they all took more than...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I am sure that everyone here wants to give every child in this country an outstanding education. Way back in 1988, when my noble friend Lord Baker asked me to start a CTC in an inner city, I thought about it hard. I realise now that it was one of the best decisions of my life to carry on and open the school. It took two years—not only to find the site but to get the local...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Baker for talking me in 1990 into opening a CTC school. That school is the most popular in the country, with 3,500 applicants for 180 places, and it has been found outstanding by Ofsted for the past 12 years, so I thank him very much. I also thank my noble friend Lord Forsyth for his very kind words. I support the programme on academies. We had a lot of...
Lord Harris of Peckham: It is very important that we get every child in this country a good education because they get only one chance. I thank the late Baroness Thatcher and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for giving us our first chance of a CTC, at Crystal Palace in 1992. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, under whose leadership we opened 10 academies. I am proud to say that nine of those are outstanding and one is...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I have some experience of the subject having run 13 academies last year and 19 this year. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Baker, for talking me into sponsoring CTCs 20 years ago; the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for helping me to get eight failing schools through local authorities; and the noble Lord, Lord Hill, for giving us 10 schools in the past two years and six new schools for next...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, when the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker, started CTCs in the late 1980s, I agreed to sponsor a school in Croydon and one jointly with the church, Bacon's, in Bermondsey. The school at Croydon was one of the worst in the country, with a GCSE pass rate of only 9 per cent and only 400 pupils. Of those 400 pupils, 60 every year were expelled-that is 15 per...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Shephard for asking me to speak today on education and social services. The Harris Federation has seven academies: three in Peckham, three in Croydon and one in Bexleyheath. One academy is shared with the Church of England, six special schools and four primary schools. These account for 18,500 children in south London sponsored by the Harris family. I...
Lord Harris of Peckham: My Lords, I wish to speak about my experience as chairman of the Guy's and Lewisham Trust from 1991 to 1993. A shadow trust was formed in February 1991, and when I arrived I was surprised to find that morale was very low--that is something of an understatement--but that the staff, especially the nurses, were very committed to the NHS. Quite honestly, management did not know what to do. When...