It is “worrying” that education ministers have not yet set out what they want to take forward from last year’s Schools White Paper, an academy trust sector leader has warned.
Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, highlighted this concern when she spoke today at the Schools North East Academies Conference.
The Schools White Paper set out plans for all state schools in England to be in or moving towards being in multi-academy trusts by 2030 and was followed by a Schools Bill that aimed to legislate for a new system for overseeing and regulating academy trusts.
However, there has been uncertainty over the government’s policy priorities after education secretary Gillian Keegan told MPs the Schools Bill was being scrapped last month.
In her keynote speech in Newcastle today, Ms Cruddas said: “The White Paper was published in March 2022, not even a year ago, but [we have had] five secretaries of state since then - so a long time in politics.”
She added: “I do worry that we have not heard from the ministerial team, from this government, confirmation of which aspects of the Schools White Paper they intend to take forward.”
Ms Keegan was appointed as education secretary by prime minister Rishi Sunak when he took office three months ago in October.
The government Schools Bill had set out plans to create a new system to regulate MATs. However, it ran into difficulty in the House of Lords last year after concerns over the way it was drafted would result in a major shift in power over the day-to-day running of schools - because it identified a wide range of areas where the government could set standards for trusts and schools to meet.
This led to the government withdrawing large swathes of its own bill and establishing a regulatory review group to help it produce new clauses over how MATs should be regulated.
Over the course of 2022, political instability in government has led to five education secretaries in the space of less than a year. Last month, Ms Keegan confirmed the Schools Bill would not be going ahead.
Commenting on this, Ms Cruddas said: “A huge amount of work has been done under the leadership of Baroness Barran over the summer, in the context of a regulatory review, and I think it is therefore a shame that we have lost the bill because I think we could have got it to a better place.
“By the way, I don’t think the bill was an attempt by the then government to do a power grab [over schools], which is how it was presented in the press. I think what happened in parliamentary drafting terms...is the draft made provisions as wide as they possibly could because the work of the regulatory review had not been done.”
Ms Cruddas said that despite the Schools Bill being withdrawn, the work of the Department for Education’s regulatory review group - looking at oversight of MATs - was still ongoing, with a meeting taking place this week.
