Speeches by O'Brien.

“Q That is very helpful. You have run both types of school and have said that when you were running local authority-run schools, you were often told, “No, we cannot do that”, even when the action would solve a problem and benefit our pupils, and even though you can see the academy down the road doing exactly that. What …”

“Q You said: “We accept current arrangements are fractured: introducing the Schools Adjudicator worsens rather than improves this”. What do you mean by that? Leora Cruddas: We are not sure what the intention is behind the Government’s need to bring forward the clause in the Bill that would introduce greater powers for a…”

“Q That is very helpful and specific. Another thing you have raised concerns about is clause 50, which will give local authorities the ability to challenge a school’s PAN, even if it is just keeping it the same. I am sympathetic and understand what they are trying to do, with place planning and so on, but I have concern…”

“Q Thank you all for being here, and welcome. My first question is to Leora. We heard in the last session some concerns about taking away academy freedoms on pay, the curriculum and QTS. In some of the things that you have written, you have also raised concerns about two other things. The first is clause 43, which is a …”

“Q Would you say that the Bill, broadly speaking, erodes that kind of freedom and diversity in the system? That is at the moment, as drafted—it can change. Luke Sparkes: Certainly, around the areas that I have just described.”

“Having looked at that document, it does have a whole bunch of different maximums in it. It has quite specific maximums as well as minimums. Sir Jon Coles: The thing about the schoolteachers’ pay and conditions document is that it is fundamentally a contract. Section 122 of the Education Act 2002—it happens to be an Act…”

“Q Thank you for being here. I want to direct my first question to Jon and Dan. You have both been quite critical of the loss of academy freedoms in this Bill. Could I persuade you to say a bit more about why that matters? Why do those freedoms matter? What do they enable you to do? Do you accept reassurances from the G…”

“Q One of the major changes in the Bill is the extension of the national curriculum, for the first time, to absolutely all schools. At the same time, the curriculum is being changed and rewritten. I have a high-level question and a specific one. The high-level one is about the different visions for our schools. One visi…”

“Q I just wondered whether we might get an answer during the passage of the Bill. I have a question for both of you. There was a thought-provoking leader in the TES the other morning that talked about the lack of discussion in the Bill, as well as more generally, on discipline. The Bill is largely silent on discipline, …”

“Q Do you have a timescale for when the Government are going on reply to that consultation? Paul Barber: I do not—that is not in my hands.”

“Q Thank you both for coming. My first question is to you, Paul. The last Government promised to lift the cap on faith school admissions and consulted on doing just that. Is that something you would still like to happen and potentially be put into the Bill? Paul Barber: The cap is a policy rather than law. We would very…”

“Q Can you unpack that a little bit? Lynn Perry: Yes, certainly. I will raise the third area and then I will come back to that, if I may. The third area is mechanisms for ensuring that the voices, wishes, feelings and experiences of children and young people really influence the provisions in the Bill, and to put those …”

“Q Thank you for coming. Are there any things in the Bill that you think we should amend as it goes through? Are there things that you would like to improve further, or any ways that you would like us to change the Bill? Why don’t we start with Lynn? Lynn Perry: The coalition broadly welcomes the potentially transformat…”

“Q The Bill will remove the academy order. How will the intervention regime work in future? At the moment, the Ofsted handbook states that “if any key judgement is inadequate…we will place the school in a formal category of concern.” How will that work in future? If a school is in the bottom tier of one of your new cate…”

“Q Do you recognise that sometimes a school can bring someone in who might be at a later point in their career and be highly specialised—perhaps a great sportsman, an IT person or a scientist—and that if the headteacher takes the view that they would be a good person for teaching, as an alternative to having no teacher,…”

“Q Is there a major problem with schools employing teachers without qualified teacher status? Are non-QTS teachers not up to scratch? Would you regard it as a red flag if a school were employing non-QTS teachers? Would it make you think, “We’re probably heading towards a bad result here”? Sir Martyn Oliver: We do not ac…”

“Q Thank you for coming. I have some short questions that do not need particularly long answers. Have you found evidence that academy schools are not teaching a broad and balanced curriculum? Are you finding lots of academies not doing that? Sir Martyn Oliver: No, we do not find that.”

“Q The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) has raised some concerns, as has the Confederation of School Trusts, about the end of academy orders and the fact that because academisation is no longer automatic, there will once again be the prospect of legal action, lots of community campaigns agains…”

“Q What do you think of the curtailment of academy freedoms in the Bill? It has now been published, so you have seen it, albeit that you were not talked to before. What do you think about the moves to scale back the academy programme, the end of academy orders, and LAs setting up new schools? If you were doing this, is …”

“Q Do you have a sense that a large number of schools are not providing a broad and balanced education at the moment? Do you have a sense of how many schools are not following the national curriculum? Julie McCulloch: No, it is absolutely not a significant number at all. We hear from our members that the vast majority d…”