Today, even if sex education was made statutory the move wouldn't be wholly effective, since academies and free schools don't have to follow the national curriculum anyway.
There are many excellent chain sponsors and some highly effective multi-academy trusts, but whether this can be a framework for a successful school system is far from certain.
This is expensive to do properly, but much more cost-effective than the academies programme: it basically means teachers teaching less and being given more time to study their pedagogy.
At one point in the speech he quoted Tony Blair's description, in the former prime minster's memoirs, of why academies are effective.
Ofsted's national director of schools, Michael Cladingbowl said the inspections had shown that E-Act had "not been effective in improving its academies".
The report urges the Department for Education to ensure that all schools, including private schools, faith schools, colleges and academies, "deliver effective relationship and sex education".
Labour says that this would provide a more consistent form of oversight - and would be more effective in identifying problems with academies and free schools.
He says that the academy has been effective in the past, particularly in providing advice to the pope on nuclear disarmament, but believes that it has lost its edge in recent years.
He believes that the academy is most effective when its members get together to discuss the big scientific questions that most interest the Vatican, particularly in cosmology and biological evolution, noting that the church no longer adheres to a literalist interpretation of the biblical creation story.
"We're not aware of any scientifically credible study that has identified a specific food or food supplement as being an effective alternative to appropriate medications," the academy panel's chair, hematologist Barry Mendelow, told ScienceNOW.
