division_name: Academies Bill [ Lords ]
motion: <p class="" pid="b.24.2/1" pwmotiontext="yes">I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.</p>
  
  <p class="" pid="b.24.2/2" pwmotiontext="yes">Today's Second Reading marks the first legislative step towards the fulfilment of our manifesto commitment to improve England's education system. It grants greater autonomy to individual schools, it gives more freedom to teachers and it injects a new level of dynamism into a programme that has been proven to raise standards for all children and for the disadvantaged most of all.</p>
  
  <p class="" pid="b.35.2/1" pwmotiontext="yes">I beg to move,</p>
  
  <p class="indent" pid="b.35.2/2" pwmotiontext="yes">That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Academies Bill [<i> Lords</i>] because it creates the legal framework for the expensive free market schools reforms which will be funded by scrapping existing school building programmes; its approach is based on reforms in other countries which have seen falling standards and rising inequality; it contains no measures to drive up standards, improve discipline or deliver greater equality in schools; it fails to build on the success of the previous Government's Academies programme and instead focuses additional support and resources on those schools that are already succeeding at the expense of the majority of schools; it deprives schools with the biggest behaviour and special educational needs challenges of local authority support for special needs provision, the funding for which will go to those with the fewest such challenges; it permits selective schools to convert to Academy status, which risks the unplanned expansion of selective education; it removes any proper requirement to consult local authorities or the community before the creation of an Academy and centralises power in the hands of the Secretary of State over the future of thousands of schools without adequate provision for local accountability.</p>
  
  <p pid="b.128.2/1" pwmotiontext="yes"><i> Question put, </i>That the amendment be made.</p>
  
  <p pid="b.128.2/2" pwmotiontext="yes"><i> The House divided:</i> Ayes 234, Noes 333.</p>