Reform of adoption system urged by Government in bid to cut waiting time

A major overhaul of the adoption system is needed to cut the eight month time lag endured by children between being given a placement order and joining a new family, the Lords has heard.

Education minister Lord Nash said that delay was twice as long for disabled children, and insisted proposed new regional adoption agencies would help speed-up the process as they would work across local authority boundaries.

Lord Nash (pictured) said the scale of the problem could no longer be ignored because as of March this year 2,810 children were waiting to be adopted.

“The current adoption system is not operating as well as it could. The system is highly fragmented with around 180 different agencies each recruiting and matching their own adoptions, such a localised system does not deliver the best service to some of our most vulnerable children,” Lord Nash said.

However, opposition peers strongly attacked other parts of the Education and Adoption Bill intended to deal with so-called “coasting” council-run schools which are deemed to be not necessarily failing, but not progressing either.

Labour’s education spokesman Lord Watson warned that provisions in the Bill to convert coasting schools to academy status would abandon democratic control.

“Simply turning a school into a sponsored academy does not change a school for the better, where schools improve their performance it is nearly always because of the hard work and commitment of the head teacher, the teaching and support staff and the pupils themselves with the support of their parents.

“There are now more pupils in inadequate academies, at 102,000, than in inadequate maintained schools, around 98,000,” Lord Watson said.

Lord Nash defended the legislation, which was receiving its second reading in the upper house, insisting that schools would only be declared as “coasting” on examination of data for three consecutive years.

“This Bill puts children and their education first, removing bureaucracy, and the scope for delaying tactics which currently means that, on average, it takes over a year to convert a school to become a sponsored academy, and means that those with idealogical interests can delay or even block transformation altogether.

“The Bill does not propose any automatic accadimisation for coasting schools. Some coasting schools may be asked to bring about sufficient improvements, and where this is the case, they shall be given the opportunity to get on with that without distraction.

“Where the coasting school does not have a credible plan, and the necessary capacity to bring about sufficient improvement, it is right that regional schools commissioners are able to force the conversion of the school into an academy with the support of a sponsor,” Lord Nash said.

The minister said a new approach was need because it was “shocking” that since 2010, 51 local authorities, one third of the total, had not issued a single warning notice to schools.

The debate saw Labour former education secretary Lord Blunkett make his maiden speech to the upper house in which he said that when bringing-in reforms in 1998 he was “seeking to put standards before structures”.

Labour former education secretary Baroness Morris of Yardley warned that once the Bill became law “we will be on the way to a fully academised system”.

And she hit out at the creation of an “Animal Farm situation where academies are ‘good’ and everything else ‘bad’.”

Lady Morris said: “I am not satisfied with where we are. But I don’t believe moving to academy status is always the way forward.

“There is no evidence that academies are a one size fit, sole solution, to the problem of failing schools.”

Winding-up the debate, Lord Nash said parents did not want their children in a “failing” school and this was why the Government proposed to speed-up the process by which they became sponsored academies.

Lord Watson said the minister was effectively saying that if democracy was too much of an inconvenience it could be set aside. “Is that what this country’s really about?” he demanded.

Lord Nash said ministers were bringing forward proposals whereby in certain circumstances a school would become an academy, adding: “And we feel there should be no delays in that. All too frequently there are delays.”

Challenged again by Lord Watson, the minister added: “Democracy can be suspended where it is in the interests of the children.”

The Bill was given an unopposed second reading and now goes forward for its detailed committee stage.

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