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Baroness Blatch: My first observation is that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, in the guise of someone trying to be helpful to local authorities is, in fact, showing her petticoat on her dislike of city academies, city technology colleges or whatever. They are, in fact, state independent schools, and the legislation setting up the city academies is based on the legislation that set up the city technology colleges in the first place.

To be fair to the noble Baroness, she has made no secret of her views. From our earlier debates today, we know that there is an antipathy towards those colleges. I believe that they have raised educational standards in the areas in which they have been established and have been an enormously valuable educational experiment in some difficult areas, particularly urban areas.

I shall pose a question to the noble Baroness. The city technology colleges, on which the city academies are based, have been in place for some years. What is it about those city academies that has proven to be a problem in the opinion of the noble Baroness? What has made her feel that we ought to change the basis on which the schools are set up? If we take the amendments in the name of the noble Baroness together, it would seem that she is trying to turn them all back into normal comprehensive schools within the state system and take away the independent status that they enjoy. As far as I know, the Government intend that those schools should continue to enjoy that status.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: It is a mixed bag of amendments. It starts with Wales, so I had better deal with Wales first, had I not?

The National Assembly for Wales has set out its strategic view of the needs for education in its document The Learning Country. The contents of that document were widely welcomed in Wales. As in England, there has been a long-standing commitment to enabling schools to build on their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. In Wales, that finds expression in the close partnership arrangements with local education authorities and in the Partnership Council, which consists of Assembly Members and members of local authorities and was established by the Government of Wales Act 1998.

In those circumstances, the Government's view is that it is right to respect the decision of the Welsh Assembly that, in the light of the approach that they are taking, they do not wish to have the power proposed here. That is why we have not extended it to Wales.

I turn to Amendment No. 234. We already require that the curriculum in each academy should be broad, and we use funding agreements to flesh that out.

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However, I see merit in extending the legislative requirement so that it resembles more closely the requirements placed on maintained schools in respect of the breadth and balance of the curriculum and the emphasis on meeting the moral, spiritual, cultural, mental and physical needs of young people and preparing them for later life. That is what the amendment does. Therefore, we accept the principle behind the amendment and its intention. We shall bring forward a government amendment at Report stage to implement it. I hope on that basis it will not be pressed.

I am not so happy about Amendment No. 237 and I hope that it is just a misunderstanding. We agree, of course, with the intention that academies, like other schools, should serve their community and we have put in place stringent requirements to ensure that that will happen. I remind the Committee, and give a further commitment, that academies will be bound through their funding agreement to conform to the requirements of the law on admissions and the statutory codes of practice as those apply to maintained schools.

If I sometimes say that the rules for academies are consistent with those for maintained schools, what I mean is that, in effect, they are the same. They are achieved in a different way through funding agreements rather than in other ways. However, the problem with the amendment is that communities do not always follow neat local education authority boundaries. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, knows, for maintained schools there is case law. The 1989 Greenwich judgment established that LEA maintained schools were not allowed to give priority to children simply because they lived in that LEA's administrative area. I hope that the noble Baroness will agree that academies should, as far as admissions are concerned, be treated in the same way as maintained schools.

Turning to Amendments Nos. 238, 242 and 243, the Government have consistently made clear that we expect academies to be established in partnership with local education authorities. Indeed, that has been the case. The LEA has been an active partner in all of the 17 city academy partnerships announced to date and we continue to have expressions of interest from LEAs which are keen to explore the opportunities that city academies offer for tackling under-achievement and raising standards in their area.

Of course, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, is right. There is public money involved, in particular in the provision of the sites. The key question for the Secretary of State when she considers whether or not to enter a funding agreement with an academy is the likelihood that the academy will make a significant contribution to raising standards. That is not just raising standards for pupils in the academy, but contributing to the education of pupils in other schools in the area. Academies' funding agreements will set out explicit targets for attainment at the individual school level which will feed into the host LEA's targets. They will be required, through their funding agreements, to contribute to raising standards across the board by

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sharing their facilities and expertise with other schools and the wider community. Therefore, the involvement with the LEA can be seen to be pretty important in the establishment of academies.

In considering sponsors' proposals, we look for evidence that local stakeholders, including the LEA, have been involved in their development. We want to be sure that each one will complement and augment the existing provision in terms of the education it provides and the opportunities it offers to the wider community. The involvement of LEAs has contributed to the city academies programme. We expect LEAs to continue to play a positive role, for example, by being represented on the governing bodies of academies.

Already, the Secretary of State is obliged to consult relevant LEAs before entering into a funding agreement with a city academy and that obligation, which I believe is the thrust of these amendments, is re-enacted under subsection (3) of the clause. The Secretary of State is already consulting LEAs as required. We have testimonies which I could read out, if it was not so late, from a number of local education authorities, to that point. However, we do not see any need to put in place unnecessary additional legislative hoops. The primary goal of the academies is to raise standards and it will do so most effectively when it works in partnership with the LEAs and other stakeholders.

There may be occasions when the LEA, or an adjacent LEA, does not support the case for an academy. The Secretary of State has to consult the LEA and any other LEA from which the Secretary of State thinks pupils might attend. If the LEA or LEAs, do not support the academy, they will say so. The Secretary of State will then have to consider their views alongside the case made for the academy by sponsors and others, including local parents and other community groups.

However, it is possible that the LEA's view may not always be the right one. There may be cases—I expect them to be rare—when the LEA sets its face against an academy and where an academy is exactly what the area needs. In such cases, the Government feel that an academy should go ahead.

Finally, I turn to Amendment No. 245. I am happy to say that I think it is unnecessary. Academies are independent schools funded by the Department for Education and Skills. We work hard to ensure that each one will play a full part in its local family of schools and is properly accountable. But there is no need for the blanket insistence that academies should be the same as schools maintained by the LEA. What matters—and all that matters—is that each academy has governance arrangements that meets its needs and helps it to provide the best possible education for its pupils. That does not mean that in each case the governance should be the same.

However, it does mean—and I can give the Committee this assurance—that academies will comply in full with the requirements of special educational needs, admissions and exclusions

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legislation as they apply to maintained schools. We expect academies to be established as charitable companies limited by guarantee. They will have a memorandum and articles setting out their governance arrangements. We have agreed a standard memorandum and articles with the Charity Commission and we have placed a copy of this in the Library, together with a standard funding agreement.

We intend that academies should be treated no more and no less favourably than maintained schools. They are equal but different. I hope that that is what the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, wants because that is what we want.

10 p.m.

Baroness Blatch: I think I am quoting the Minister accurately when he previously said that as far as admissions are concerned academies should be treated in the same way as maintained schools. There are two very important distinctions between academies and maintained schools. One is that they take in children from across the ability range but in about five ability bands. That is scientifically worked out, which is wholly unlike maintained schools which, if they are local comprehensive schools, simply take all-comers, whatever their abilities.

Secondly, academies admit by interview and no other maintained school is allowed to take in children under the admissions procedure by interview. Therefore, they are different in that respect.

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