Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have Amendment 77 in this group. Before speaking to it, perhaps I may say how right the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is to emphasise the importance of the concept of “school ready”, which was referred to a number of times by Graham Allen in his important report about early intervention. The noble Lord is also right to point out that some parents will take advantage for their children of the early years provision that the Government make available to them, but others will not. That is why it is very important that their stage of development is properly and professionally assessed as early as possible so that schools can help to bring them on if necessary.

My amendment is very simple. It merely adds the words “and well-being” in the Ofsted framework as laid down in Clause 40. I would prefer to see them in the Bill, but my right honourable friend Michael Gove has assured me, and assured other noble Lords in the letter to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, dated 14 October, that he expects Ofsted to inspect children's well-being and accepts the link between children’s well-being and their achievement in their school subjects and learning. He has also assured us that Ofsted will use its programme of subject and thematic surveys to look in detail at specific aspects of pupils’ personal development. That will certainly pick up issues where children’s well-being is not as it should be, perhaps where equalities issues are not as they should be because, of course, children cannot have well-being if they feel discriminated against. I have tabled my amendment in the hope that it will give the Minister the opportunity to confirm those things.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the letter dated 14 October that he sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, in which he gave assurances that Ofsted’s inspections will consider how well schools provide the well-being of those to whom equalities issues apply and that equalities issues will underpin the whole approach to inspection and will include all protected groups under the Equality Act 2010. It is also good to learn that Ofsted will consider how well gaps are narrowing between the performance of different groups of pupils both in the school and nationally because, as we all know, the gap in social mobility is growing wider among certain groups. It is important that schools are judged on the quality of their teaching, which should cater for the range of needs to help all pupils to progress and to inspire them to have high aspirations in a fair and equal way and, as the Minister said in his letter, free from bullying and harassment because of their culture or background, from which so many children in our schools suffer. I am delighted that these issues are being addressed and that the well-being of all children is being taken into consideration.

How can we make sure that equality issues are delivered in schools day in, day out? What measures will be put in place if schools do not comply with these ideals? I ask these questions because just today I received an e-mail from a supply teacher with a complaint from children who feel that their equality issues have been violated in a school during a lesson. They have asked me for help and guidance, so I would like the Minister to help me with my guidance. I will be interested to hear his answer to this question.

[Baroness Flather]

My Lords, I shall speak to my Amendment 78, which is in this group. It is a very simple amendment to put community cohesion back on the list of items Ofsted will inspect. When I learnt that it had been taken out, I was very perturbed because if schools have responsibility for community cohesion, as I have been told, I believe that it is necessary for Ofsted to look at what they are doing for it. I think that this is more than ever an extremely important area for schools to concentrate on. It is about not racism or equality; it is about the community in which they live and being part of that.

Schools: History

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Luke for securing this debate as I have always maintained that in order to shape our future we must look into our past. The lessons of history are a valuable road map of how events and changes in society have affected the world we live in today. It is often said that we can learn from history and avoid making the same mistakes twice. The only problem I have with this is that many leaders and Governments around the world fail to take an even cursory look at a history book before plunging their countries and populations into catastrophic wars and devastating economic events.

Recent history is frequently airbrushed and adjusted to suit political and ideological ends. I find this deeply worrying because some of today’s history books do not tell the full catalogue of events. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, I am personally concerned with the documentation of black history and that which applies to the diverse nature of Britain and the reasons why we have become such a rich multicultural society. The recent BBC2 television series “Mixed Race Britain” is, I believe, a landmark piece of television. It has made me aware of part of our history that I never knew had taken place. The programme is brilliantly researched and brilliantly documented. It reminds us of some of the most horrific episodes of racism in our recent history. It tells of Chinese fathers and husbands torn from the bosoms of their English wives and children in dawn raids and deported for no good reason, and of curfews forbidding black people to be out after dark. Yes, this all happened here in Britain less than a lifetime ago.

I have always gone to great lengths to explain to anyone who will listen that immigration to this country did not start with the Windrush, as many people seem to believe, and as the media continue constantly to reinforce. In 17th-century paintings by Hogarth we see the diverse nature of London, and yet it is rarely reflected in our history books that there has been diversity here since Roman times.

In 1987, October was established as Black History Month here in Britain to celebrate and acknowledge the contribution of black people, and to educate and inform society about the important part that black people have played in history. To celebrate, over the past few weeks I have been touring schools across the country, speaking to children in both urban and rural areas about the experiences of those who came to the UK from the British Empire. I make them aware that there were thousands of people from Africa, India, China and the Caribbean here in Britain long before the 1950s. I explain how in Nelson's fleet many black sailors manned the ships; how in Devon there are graveyards with African names carved on the tombstones; how millions of people from Africa, the Indian sub-continent and Asia fought for Britain in the First and Second World Wars, the Boer War, and the Crimean War, in which not only Florence Nightingale but Jamaican-born Mary Seacole nursed British soldiers. The children I speak to absorb this information like sponges. It is a delight to see their minds opening up to history.

I always find it amazing that so many films and television programmes fail to show the involvement of any of these groups of people when portraying these historic moments. Time and time again, with very few exceptions, films depicting the Elizabethan or Victorian eras fail to show people of colour as part of history. Even the story of the abolition of slavery frequently assigns the success of the campaign to William Wilberforce and his associates, often airbrushing out the black abolitionists who campaigned alongside them, as the noble Lord, Lord Morgan, highlighted just now. I find it sad, disheartening and frustrating that writers, researchers and directors fail to research past events correctly and truthfully and are therefore in effect changing history. That is why the teaching of accurate recent history in schools is so vital. If our young people grow up without learning and understanding history then we are making a terrible mistake, because the social make-up of our society is shaped by recent history. What vital lessons will be missed by our future leaders if they are not taught recent history in the classroom, history which is affecting their lives?

Some of this history may be unpleasant. It may make us feel ashamed or guilty. But it must never be brushed under the carpet. Imagine if we allowed significant occurrences, violent conflicts, world-changing political events, and the most evil and shocking atrocities of mankind's past, to be forgotten or erased from our history: the African Holocaust where millions of Africans died in enslavement, stripped of their religion, language and culture; the Jewish Holocaust of Hitler’s Third Reich; the fall of the Berlin Wall; the assassinations of Martin Luther King and President John F. Kennedy; the Vietnam War; and most recently, the horrific events of 9/11, the Iraq war and the Afghanistan war. These episodes must never be forgotten.

I produced a television series recently called “Statues and Monuments”. While we were filming a statue in central London a woman came up and said, “Why are you filming the statue of that man? He was a monster. What he did was evil. It should be torn down”. I replied, “No. We have to remember what he represents, so that it can never happen again”. We must never burn our history books. Our young people must be taught our past, so they will never make those same mistakes again.

History is one of the most important subjects in the curriculum and it must continue to be taught in the hope of securing a more peaceful future. If some of our leaders over the past 50 years had spent more time studying history, how different things might be. The world might not be in the wounded state it is today.

I love history and I loved studying history at school. I took a delight in wallowing in it because it gave me the opportunity to delve into the past with an inquisitive mind and to broaden my knowledge of the world. It inspired me to try to make a difference to our society. That love for history still exists today. I believe we must encourage all children and reach out and hand them the opportunity to study history. We must not deprive them of the rich lessons of the past. I ask the Minister to tell us how the Government will ensure that the teaching of history, including black history, remains a core subject for children of all cultures and all backgrounds throughout their time at school, to enable them to leave this world a better place than they found it.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I will be very brief, in part because I have an amendment on a similar theme to this in the next grouping in the Welfare Reform Bill. I, too, thank my noble friend for tabling these amendments and for generating this tremendously important debate at the beginning of Report. It was deeply gratifying yesterday to hear the Minister of State, Sarah Teather, highlighting the fact that the most important thing in terms of outcomes for educating children is the home environment, which is more important than the jobs that parents do or any other factor. My noble friend has hit the nail on the head, and we must get this right.

It concerns me that we should encourage and enable parents to learn to read, write and count when they have not been able to do that at school. It is very important that we enable parents to get access to adult education so that they can make up for any deficits. It troubles me that creches at the adult education institutes are being cut. I understand the difficult circumstances, but if there is any money available to the Minister and his department in the form of targeted funding to improve outcomes for children, in recognition of the importance of the home environment that money should go to the creches in those adult education institutes.

The noble Lord, Lord Eden, raised some very important points. I am sure that it is a concern to see those children facing away from their parents in the idiotically designed modern prams. I understand his concern about compelling parents to attend parenting classes, but it is interesting to bear in mind what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said when he was chairman of the Youth Justice Board at the time of the controversial introduction of parenting orders for parents who were not managing their children properly—the children were getting into the criminal justice system. His comment was that parenting classes were the cheapest intervention with these families and young men, that they were the most effective intervention and that, when parents went to the classes, they said, “Why didn’t we know about these before?”. They were really grateful for the help. This needs to be treated extremely carefully and perhaps used only rarely. I am not sure whether the classes continue, but perhaps there is a place for them.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raised very important questions, as did the noble Lord, Lord Storey, about valuing the early years experience.

I will have to move on quickly. I thank the Minister in particular for his help in Committee on my concern about the turnover of staff in nurseries. I will not be present for the next grouping of amendments, so I want to thank him now. I realise that the best place for me to put my worries is in the new consultation on the inspection of nurseries. I now know the civil servant to speak to. I am very grateful to him for his help on this. I cannot speak on the next grouping, but I am very concerned about the high turnover of staff in nurseries and the fact that nursery staff are often the poorest paid and least well educated yet we are placing the most vulnerable children in their care. These children above all things need stability in their lives. They need stable people who stay around. In some settings, such as nurseries attached to schools, staff turnover is 5 per cent, but in Sure Start centres and in other centres, turnover can be 13 or 15 per cent. Better support for staff and proper training and development will help to reduce the turnover of staff. I am sorry to jump ahead, but I strongly support the amendment on Sure Start centres and on insisting that staff get the training and support they need.

I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, further to what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, I would like to add play therapy to his list. Qualified play specialists who can work with the child and the parent—especially those having difficulties in relationships and attachment—really work. I have seen the results of that type of therapy, which is quite remarkable. I would like the Minister to take that into consideration when he is looking at this amendment.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I shall make a few brief comments on these amendments. I start by commending the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, who never misses an opportunity to raise the issue of parenting. I am terribly grateful that he does so because, with so many weighty matters often before this House, it is sometimes difficult to get those issues heard.

The noble Lord and other noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, were right when they said that we cannot overstate the importance of having good parents and the disadvantage to children when parents for one reason or another do not understand what good parenting is. For me, that involves having good involved fathers as well as mothers, as the noble Lord’s amendments make clear. Too often in our discourse about this, the default position is mothers, and we forget about fathers. As Minister for Children for four years, that was something I was very concerned about.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Eden, about communication from birth is profoundly important. Communication is the basis of good parenting because the enrichment children get from that kind of elaborative language, play, song and stories literally helps the brain to grow and helps the conceptual abilities of children to develop as well as helping with bonding.

I do not share some noble Lords’ opinion that somehow there has been a failure of moral fibre among the population and that today’s parents perhaps no longer care as much as our parents did. There have been changes, but some of those changes are due to changing social circumstances. The lack of proximity of grandmothers, grandfathers and the extended family to new parents means that sometimes people become parents without the support of their family who have been through that before, so they do not benefit from the wealth of that experience. I do not think this is to do with unplanned pregnancy or feckless parents. It has been demonstrated that many people new to parenting nowadays need support to understand what good parenting is. In my experience, and as the research shows, parents want that support and want to be good parents. That is why, as noble Lords have said, the provision of the opportunity to learn what that means is so crucial. Putting on the statute book that this will be available, without dictating the terms of that in detail, is an important thing to do.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, rightly looked at the Childcare Act and said that it does not make provision for parenting education and support, and he is right. However, other legislation already on the statute book and in statutory regulations make provision for that, and it was enshrined in the legislation and regulations that define the Sure Start children's centre, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, pointed out. When the regulations for what children’s centres should provide were being drawn up, they included a core offer that all children’s centres had to provide, as well as some optional things that centres could provide depending on local need. The provision of parenting support and parenting education classes is in the core offer. All children’s centres, particularly those in disadvantaged areas, have to provide parenting support, and have been doing so. There has been enormous progress in the amount of provision available and, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has said, many schools, particularly primary schools, now provide that as part of their core offer.

The problem for me, which I would be grateful if the Minister could address, is that because children’s centres are closing and many are having to reduce the services they provide because of lack of funds, the progress that has been made in making parenting education and support available is now in jeopardy. The Minister may well refer to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that the Government have very recently announced some new money to promote parenting support, but I question the need for that at the same time as we are seeing some of that provision disappear because children’s centres are closing and being reduced. There is some conflict about where the Government stand in relation to ensuring the provision is available. It has been available for some time now in children’s centres but, as I say, that is now in jeopardy.

I very much support the amendments. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said that he would not press them for a vote, but I think it is important for the Minister to make clear the Government’s position on this, particularly in relation to children’s centres. We will come to that issue in more detail in Amendment 5, but it is relevant here because this is predominantly where parenting support and education is currently available.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, I would like to pick up the subject of searching, as I would like to talk about the need for guidance to be provided by the Secretary of State regarding the erasure of data from electronic devices taken from pupils during a search incident. The erasure of data from electronic devices is a concern that was brought to my attention by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, and I declare an interest as a vice-president of the charity.

Barnardo’s understands the concerns around the use of mobile phones for viewing and displaying offensive material, and that teachers may wish to remove offensive material to prevent it being viewed or shared. However, there are concerns that teachers may use this power to erase data which could otherwise be used as legal evidence in court that a child is being sexually exploited or groomed for sexual exploitation.

It is well established that mobile phones are used as command and control devices in child sexual exploitation. Through the cases Barnardo’s has dealt with, the charity has found that one of the “tell-tale signs” of child sexual exploitation is the secretive use of mobile phones and the internet away from parents’ eyes. Children as young as seven are carrying mobile phones and they are increasingly accessing the internet via mobile phones from a variety of locations. The national guidance to local safeguarding children boards recognises that mobile phones are themselves often given as gifts to children who are being exploited and that they can be used to lure young people into being exploited or exploited further.

This is also recognised by police forces across the country; they acknowledge that gathering evidence for child sexual exploitation can be difficult. To deal with this problem, West Yorkshire Police has drawn up a list to help agencies, carers and young people provide the police with the intelligence they need to make convictions through phone-based intelligence. Intelligence is gathered and used in situations where there may be no evidence available or the victim is unable or unwilling to provide a police statement. This occurs in the vast majority of cases of sexual exploitation. Therefore, the opportunity to provide information as intelligence means that the police can build a comprehensive picture over a period of time and act upon it. This could interrupt and disrupt criminal activity in which young people are being exploited.

Child sexual exploitation intelligence includes details on suspects such as their names and nicknames, details of phone numbers and mobile phones used by suspects and details of any text messages or phone calls made by them or to them. It also includes details of locations where offences have taken place or which the suspects or victims visited, and dates and times that incidents of child sexual exploitation occurred—in fact, any links between suspects, their cars or locations and young people identified as being at risk of child sexual exploitation.

There are examples of prosecutions of men using Facebook to groom children for exploitation, but the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre—CEOP—also warns of the use of smartphones and 3G technology. CEOP warns that online child sex offenders are using more intimidating tactics to engage with, exploit and abuse children and young people. Reports of this are increasing. Text messaging is used as grooming behaviour, and this is also increasing.

This is not just an issue of the loss of child sexual exploitation evidence, but there are also similar concerns around deleting messages or data which may have been used for bullying or harassment. It is important that victims of cyberbullying are believed and get the support they need, and that the bullies are dealt with appropriately. Therefore bullying messages received on mobile phones should not be deleted in case they can be used to support victims of such harassment.

Conviction rates for child sexual exploitation remain disappointingly low. In 2009 Barnardo’s was aware of 2,893 victims—perhaps just the tip of the iceberg—yet there were only 89 convictions. Organisations such as CEOP and Barnardo’s are committed to making everyone at every level become aware of how we can all identify child sexual exploitation. They believe that texts and e-mails will be one way of showing behaviour over time.

The power in the Bill to erase data will be new to teachers. Therefore, the Secretary of State's guidance should be explicit about what data can be erased and should advise caution. I ask the Minister and Secretary of State to consider giving the guidance that teachers must record the nature of any material erased and the reason for its erasure. This should be done with a witness present.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I support these amendments, but I am bound to say it is with a heavy heart. I will explain why. I have been involved with education, educational philosophy and research into education for more than 50 years. When I think about what I believed when I started out, I realise that I must have been hopelessly naive. If I had been asked what the nature of a school was, I would have said that it was a place where people went to learn and teach, where values were developed and where one’s life was enhanced. Central to that were the teachers themselves. All of us know the difference that they have made to our lives. When I consider this group of amendments, I am forced to ask myself what has happened to our society. This section of the Bill, headed “Discipline”, could have been written for a prison or a concentration camp—but it is written for a school. It is also simply a repair job: at best, an Elastoplast. It does not solve any fundamental problems whatever.

I believe strongly that my noble friend's amendments do improve matters. They certainly make the Bill much more sensible and deal at least to some degree with the role of the teacher and the relationship between the teacher and the pupil. However, the fact remains that what is stated totally changes what some of us feel the teacher/pupil relationship should be. I do not believe for one minute that the Minister will accept the amendments, but it would be right to do so. It would certainly be right to test the opinion of the House on these matters. Some day, despite Governments of all parties kicking and screaming about these things, we will have to face up to the problem of social improvement and ask what has happened to our way of life and whether there is anything we can do about it.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, with respect, I am not convinced by the Minister’s arguments. I agree with people who have said that there is room for people without qualified teacher status in the classroom. They can bring a lot to the school and they have a set of experiences and often a set of qualifications that are not QTS, but which lend themselves to effective and imaginative teaching. I am pretty sure that that provision is in the 2002 Act, but I could be wrong. So we have that flexibility.

This measure causes me some difficulty, and that is why I wanted to wait until the Minister had spoken. Given that that exists already, and that probably everybody here could cite examples of people without QTS who are effectively teaching in schools—we have had a lot of examples already—what is going to change? This is primary legislation we are talking about. It is not sufficient to say that this measure allows something at the edges, a fraying of the boundaries, a bit of give and take. With respect, that is not good enough for primary legislation. It is about laying down what is allowed and what is not allowed.

Secondly, if this really is not much—if it is just a bit more blurring of the edges, on top of the blurring of the edges that was set up in 2002—why free schools? Is the Minister saying that these people have nothing to offer to academies, have nothing to offer to maintained schools? Let us just think about it. We could have an example—let me be kind—of a brilliant person with suitable non-teaching qualifications who wants to and is willing to teach this nation’s children. The only place they could do that is a free school. Why should the Government stop children in 99.9 per cent of the system being able to benefit from that teacher’s experience?

I think the Minister is caught between two extremes. Either it is nothing, so put it everywhere—just say. One way might be to produce an edict saying, “Remember that there are people other than those with QTS who can work alongside those with QTS and good leaders in our schools, and we welcome you and please populate our schools”. Or it really is a shift in the law that is going to draw the boundary in a different place in terms of the qualifications that teachers need. If it is the latter, with respect again, we need more than we have had so far about where those boundaries will be drawn. Saying that it is a bit of fraying it at the edges, a bit of give and take is not really good enough for primary legislation.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, at a seminar in Birmingham recently, many parents from the black community were in favour of an alternative system of education, because they felt that schools were failing their children. They favoured free schools because, as I said, they felt that the present system was failing their children. They wanted education to strengthen their children’s identity, and found that sometimes that comes from individuals who can assist the teachers in the classroom by giving them support. So unless the teaching curriculum changes and reflects the needs of these children, we might need to have unqualified teachers in the classroom.

I know of one particular unqualified teacher who already helps to teach in the classroom. She says that she has made a great difference to the children’s lives, giving them confidence and self-esteem, especially young black Caribbean boys. She says that she has had all the checks and has had everything done in terms of training and child protection. So in some cases like these we need to consider having unqualified teachers in the free schools, because there are lots of black communities out there begging for this to happen, for we feel that we are failing our children.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I am interested in the noble Lord’s response because, like my noble friend Lady Morris, I felt that he was almost trying to have it both ways. To be honest, I do not think he addressed a number of the key points I originally raised because the quote I gave from Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, and the signals he has sent out are about more than just fraying the edges. This is not about doing things on the margins. The signal the Secretary of State has sent out is that he thinks that there is a model in the independent sector that we should embrace wholeheartedly in the maintained sector because there are all sorts of lessons we should learn.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Elton]

Because my noble friend Lord Lucas is praying in aid, I think I should say that I found his speech persuasive. I was expecting the Minister to remind us that in effect the Secretary of State is no such person and that, when a complaint is made to him, someone quite different, more junior and perhaps more approachable manifests himself or herself. However, if that is not how the system works and if the only way to get a personal, sympathetic hearing is through the local ombudsman, I am very interested in hearing it.

For years I have been concerned about bullying in schools and about the extent to which the psychology of it is not understood. I know of children who do not feel that they can report that they are being bullied for a variety of reasons, one of which is that they think they should not be in that position. They think that they will be letting their parents down and they do not tell them about it at all. So when they go to the parent and the parent cannot get an answer, and the great strong arm of mother or father is unable to protect the child, a further blow is given to that child’s confidence and its very home base is under threat. I was somewhat moved by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low, and was greatly concerned by what my noble friend said. I hope that the Minister will be able to give substantial reassurance on this issue before we get to Report.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I should like to bring in the point of view of parents because many of them do not know who to complain to. I recently came across a case of a mother whose son was excluded. He was bullied at school and the SEN provision at that school was not particularly good, but because he was bullied he responded and got excluded. The mother thought that he was being treated unfairly but did not know who she should complain to. She wrote to her MP and me, and I could not tell her the best route to take. We therefore have to consider educating parents on who they need to complain to, and I support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Low, for tabling the amendment and for enabling us to have this conversation. My noble friend Lady Benjamin ended on a good point because getting a perfect complaints system that is able perfectly to deliver everything for everyone is an extremely tall order, but I am sure that there is more that we can do in terms of people being aware of the routes of recourse. One of the challenges for the Government and the department in thinking how to take this forward is making sure that there is clarity about the routes of redress and about the way that different routes of redress fit together, because confusion is part of the issue and my noble friend is right to say that it is not a sensible way forward to expect a parent who is concerned about their children to know how a complaints service works in every regard. I will therefore certainly reflect on that point.

The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, has talked about the peaks of Whitehall and the Secretary of State sitting on his peak. It is worth emphasising that what we are talking about is returning to the situation that existed until April 2010. It is not therefore the case that we are proposing a leap into unknown territory and are striking out in some unknown way. The situation that we are seeking to return to is one that obtained until April 2010. Until then the Secretary of State had always considered unresolved complaints and, of course, the point was made that the Secretary of State is, in such cases, a manner of speaking and it is officials who consider the complaints on his behalf.

The LGO service was, as has been pointed out, established in only 14 local authority areas. My first point is that the vast majority of parents and pupils will see no change to the current arrangements in their areas. The Government are very grateful for the work of the Local Government Ombudsman in the 14 local authorities in which the schools complaints service has been operating. It is clear that the intention behind the creation of the service was a good one, but we are not convinced that the LGO school complaints service is the right way to ensure that issues that cannot be resolved locally between parents and schools are settled as swiftly as possible—and speed is obviously one of the important issues here. The LGO service is a good service, but is expensive, relatively speaking, and was described by the Association of School and College Leaders as being a sledgehammer to crack a nut—that was its phrase, not mine. We believe it is preferable to return to a system in which complaints about schools which cannot be resolved locally come to the Secretary of State.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, spoke particularly about special educational needs complaints. I agree with him that the present system and arrangements are far from clear. That is in part due to the complex nature of the current system, which, as he will know, the Green Paper is seeking to address. Parents do have a number of routes of complaint in relation to the SEN assessment and statementing process, depending on the precise nature of their complaint and the remedy they seek. He argued that it would be preferable for all complaints relating to SEN in schools and local authorities to go to the Local Government Ombudsman. However, I think it is fair to say that there may be complaints for which the power of the Secretary of State to direct compliance with legal duties can provide a swifter and more effective remedy for a parent who is frustrated by the failure of a school or local authority to take action. It is the case that intervention by officials in the department can be the prompt that resolves a difficult situation. Appeals about SEN assessment and statementing can also go to the First-tier Tribunal, which will remain. I think that it is hard, under the current arrangements, for there to be a single route of complaint. I accept that what is needed is clear information for parents on which route is most appropriate. Parents certainly want clarity. The department should work closely with the sector over the coming months to look at how the process for considering complaints about SEN provision works coherently for parents.

I accept that noble Lords have concerns about the capacity and capability of the department to provide a first-class complaint-handling service for parents. There was also a point raised about the YPLA. My honourable friend the Minister of State for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning has made a commitment that the department will publish a set of standards on the timescales, clarity, transparency and accessibility of its consideration of complaints. With this in mind the department has started work to review the way that complaints are considered and to establish appropriate safeguards. The policy statement on Clause 44 that we circulated on 12 July outlines the draft standards that the department is developing, and I would welcome views on those standards from noble Lords. Through that work, we will ensure that the department has processes in place to consider complaints on behalf of the Secretary of State to the high standards that parents rightly expect.

Given the particular concerns relating to special educational needs complaints, officials recently met both the Special Educational Consortium and the National Deaf Children’s Society, which has been mentioned this afternoon, and will be meeting them again with the Local Government Ombudsman. Alongside the measures in the SEN and disability Green Paper to make the SEN system less adversarial, I am keen that the department should continue to work closely with interested parties in developing an improved service for this group of parents. I would like to extend an offer to the noble Lord, Lord Low, to discuss the improvements that we are seeking to make.

There was a specific question from the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about the admissions arrangements for looked-after children. Complaints about admissions policies will go to the adjudicator. We are proposing to extend the groups of those that can complain. In terms of the refusal of a place to an individual child, there are the local admissions appeal panels. If there is further information I can send him, I will.

I recognise the views that have been expressed this afternoon, and I do think that this is an important area. I hope that I have provided the noble Earl, and other noble Lords, with some reassurance about the importance we attach to this, and at the moment I would ask the noble Lord, Lord Low, to withdraw his opposition to the clause.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We are due to address virtual schools later. I think that my noble friend has an amendment on the subject so we can return to it then. I can respond more fully to my noble friend Lord Avebury at that juncture.

[Baroness Benjamin]

In the Minister’s efforts to address this issue, could he please include parents? Parents are the key to the problem of these children not attending school. They are essential to making this successful. In my experience as a governor and a chair of governors of an academy where we had Gypsy and Roma children, the parents were the stumbling block. If you can get to them, part of this problem will be solved.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that encouraging reply. It is good to hear about the work that his department is undertaking. I think that I heard the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, talk about the demise of specialist Gypsy, Roma and Traveller education services. Maybe the Minister briefly said something about that at the end of his response but, I am sorry, I did not quite catch it. If he could clarify what is going on with those services, I would be grateful.

I apologise if I misled the Committee in any way by describing myself as “teaching” this boy. I was running workshops in a school environment. I am not a teacher; I should make that quite clear.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am happy to reassure my noble friend Lord Peston that philosophy occasionally plays a part in schools. I could take him to a couple of primary schools not six miles from here where it is argued by the head teachers that it improves behaviour in the playground. However, that is a separate matter.

On the amendments before us, it is important that we get this matter right one way or the other. I do not accept the connection to 1935, and nor does my noble colleague who proposed the amendment, but if you look at the argument and the tussle going on in Scotland at the moment over the history curriculum then you will pause and have thoughts about where decisions are finally made and on what basis. There is an issue here.

Two things are clear. First, in the end the Secretary of State has the responsibility to make the decision. That is the current decision and I rest content with that. Secondly, though, the Secretary of State, however clever, will need advice. That advice is of great interest to Members here and elsewhere. I would not propose going backwards and effectively reconstituting the QCDA. We have been there and done that, and there were problems; let us think new thoughts. My own inclination as a time-served academic is that when the Secretary of State publishes changes to the curriculum, he or she publishes, as a good academic would, a series of footnotes and references to the advice sought, who gave it, to whom it was given, what the advice was and whether it was well evidenced. That would give me much greater confidence than setting up a board.

There is no final expert opinion on what should be in a curriculum. The risk for the QCDA and any successor would be an assumption that there was a right answer. There is not; there are nuances and leanings in different directions. In the end, that should be a matter for the Secretary of State to take a view on, but we need to know what the advice was so that we can protest if necessary.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I agree that philosophy is very helpful to young children. It helps them understand who they are and how they fit into this great big world. I hope the Minister can assure us that when we take advice about what should be in the curriculum, there will be representation of our diverse society in the approach that it takes. I believe that will go a long way to helping people from diverse backgrounds understand who they are and how they fit into our society.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, in abolishing the QCDA we are not seeking to give the Secretary of State greater control over the curriculum, nor do we wish to reduce the external expertise that can be brought to bear on qualifications or curriculum policy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, and others have acknowledged, the formal accountability to Parliament for the curriculum, qualifications and national curriculum assessment will remain as it is now, with Ministers. I note that no one has fought for the QCDA to be maintained in its current form. By removing it, we will bring the delivery of those essential functions, which are continuing, back into the department. This will improve clarity and transparency, simplify the system and save money.

As has been pointed out, under the existing legislation, the Secretary of State already makes decisions in respect of the national curriculum. What will change is that the Secretary of State will become directly responsible for taking forward the statutory consultation process whenever the national curriculum needs to be amended. In future, the Secretary of State will have to have more direct responsibility than has arguably been the case previously, for changes to the curriculum, for justifying how the decisions to make those changes have been arrived at, and their implications.

I hope I can give some reassurance to noble Lords on the issue that I think lies at the heart of this. Consultation on changes to the national curriculum will continue to be a requirement. The Secretary of State will have to conduct a formal consultation with interested parties, including local authorities, schools, teachers and others—the kind of people that my noble friend Lady Benjamin mentions. The precise groups with which he will need to consult are, as now: associations of local authorities, bodies representing the interests of governing bodies, organisations representing school teachers and other persons with an interest in the proposals, which is a fairly broad group. Everyone would have to have a reasonable opportunity to make representations, there would have to be a consultation, and the Cabinet Office advice, as now, is that that should be for at least 12 weeks. After the consultation has ended, the Secretary of State has to consider the responses and must publish a summary of the views expressed—which relates to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood. The summary published by the Secretary of State will deliver the degree of openness and transparency for which noble Lords have argued. Then, as now, final decisions would remain with the Secretary of State.

The Government are certainly committed to ensuring that everyone with an interest in the national curriculum is given an opportunity to offer their views. The current review of the national curriculum, launched in January, is being conducted in an open manner and we are looking for views from a wide range of interested parties. Once we have published our proposals for a new national curriculum early next year there will be further wide-scale public consultation before final decisions are made.

My noble friend Lady Sharp asked about international evidence. The expert panel to the current curriculum review is looking at the curricula used in the most successful education jurisdictions, including Singapore, Australia and New Zealand, but if I can find more detail I will send that to her. My noble friend Lord Willis asked about academies. As he knows, academies are required to provide a broad and balanced curriculum and we think that that has been successful to date. Although they will not be required to teach the national curriculum, we hope that by slimming it down and making it less prescriptive academies will want to use it as a benchmark. All the material previously available to schools from the QCDA will be accessible to all those schools that want to use it. Finally on the national curriculum, so regards the current review, we intend to publish all the evidence we have considered when we bring forward proposals.

We think that the arrangements are in place to draw on appropriate advice as policies are developed. We do not believe that the abolition of the QCDA will lead to increased government power or control over what I accept are critical elements of our education system. There will be safeguards to ensure transparency and hold the Secretary of State to account.

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[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I preface my remarks by asking for some agreement on definitions. It is the word “school” that interests me. In its broadest sense, and I think that we would all concur with this, it is a community of people focused on the well-being and the best interests of children and pupils. It has been used in a different way in this debate, though, and it is in that different way that I would like to use it, while remaining conscious of the base meaning that lies behind it.

We have been using the word “school” to mean those who govern our schools. Schools are expected to take independent advice, and new legislation is placing a duty on schools to achieve two objectives—just two examples from this very debate. I am interested in that definition of “school”, which I think amounts to “governing body and head teacher”, who are expected, in the way that things are developing, to achieve more and more than has been done elsewhere until now.

I do not flinch at that. I am a governor and chair of a foundation that runs two schools in the inner city here in London. We try our hardest as governors and head teachers in the area of career development, particularly because we see increasingly that, if we want to achieve excellence in the provision that we offer, partnership with other schools is increasingly going to be the way forward. I do not know how every school can produce an adequate and rich service in this area. In the Borough of Islington, for example, our school operates with others and we try to pool our best efforts and to make careers advice available in a richer and broader way.

In another initiative that perhaps I might report because it is of some interest, our inner city school co-operates with a school in the independent sector, the Leys School in Cambridge, and we cross-fertilise and attend each other’s careers festivals. I have to say that the independent sector provides a somewhat narrower focus for the range of careers that it seeks to interest people in, but, for all that, it is richly provided for by those who come and help people in conversation and all the rest of it.

We have not quite got reciprocity to the point where I would like to see it, with people from the independent sector coming to us for careers advice. We are situated on the edge of the City of London, and some quite extraordinary people come to us from City institutions to offer that kind of advice, which people from Cambridge could well benefit from. If we are envisaging that schools, in the way that I am defining them, will provide an adequate service across the land, with every school expected to provide excellence all the time in careers advice, we are just baying for the moon. Those are two initiatives that I can report now.

Throughout my contribution to the discussions of the Bill, I am afraid that I will drone on about the extra expectations that are coming the way of schools—that is, governing bodies and head teachers. During this afternoon's debate alone, the responsibility for shaping and focusing the curriculum has fallen to governors and head teachers. I am not saying that they should not do that, but more and more expectations of schools as independent and freestanding bodies are coming our way. There is the curriculum, now there is careers advice. Before we finish our discussion on the Bill, what else will be expected of governors? I am a governor. I attend, as regularly as I can, refresher courses offered by my local authority. I try to be up-to-date with seminars and other things that stretch your mind about new possibilities offered for all of us. I look around the table. I see some absent places where some very busy people are feeling increasingly deskilled and disempowered to do the tasks expected of them—all voluntarily, without a single penny coming our way. As we go down this path and pass more and more responsibility to the school, under the definition I have offered, we must bear in mind that implementation of these grand ideas will be left to people who will be under greater and greater burdens.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

If my noble friend will forgive me, I invite the noble Lord, Lord Low to speak to his amendment in the group.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I rise to support the amendment and to tell noble Lords a little story. Back in 1965, my mother and sister went to see the careers officer and my sister said that she wanted to work at a leading pharmaceutical company. The careers officer said: “I am sorry, Sandra. They don’t take coloured people there”. My mother said, “I brought my children to England to learn and to be educated, and they have worked hard to do so. Surely that is not possible”. The careers officer said, “I am terribly sorry. I can get her a job as a nursery nurse, but not one in a pharmaceutical company”. My mother proved her wrong. She got my sister to write for an interview. She got the job and she worked there for 30 years. But sadly, the myth still applies today, and there are many young people who do not believe that they will be accepted in certain places.

It is for that reason that I have set up an initiative called Touching Success. I get successful people to visit young people in schools and invite them into their organisations. This helps to help to inspire these young people to believe in themselves and understand that they can work and will be accepted outside their postcode. This is important because many of them do not often see role models they can identify with. That is why I believe we need experts to engage with young people, especially those from diverse, disadvantaged and lower-income backgrounds who do not believe in themselves. They do not see that they can succeed. Careers advice is essential to helping them understand that they will be accepted and can go beyond where they see themselves. We need experts to help them, as my mother did with that careers officer way back in 1965. Believe in yourself and the world is your oyster. Anything is possible. That is why I support this amendment.

[Lord Elton]

I shall speak, if I may, to Amendments 86E and 86F, about the age at which careers advice is made available. When teaching in a secondary school myself, I remember the agonies associated with seeing how early children had to choose which subjects to specialise in. All I would ask is that the Minister should bear in mind the advisability of having careers advice available early in the year when the first choice of specialism is forced on children.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I am not going to sum up on what has been a wide-ranging debate; I just want to make a quick comment. First, I want to put on record my support and that of my noble friend for the amendment on PSHE in the name of my noble friend Lady Massey, and those in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Secondly, I was disappointed that such provisions disappeared from our legislation in the wash-up before the general election, because we were proceeding with this. Thirdly, these amendments appeared in our legislation following a wide-ranging review that my noble friend Lord Knight conducted over a long period and which involved all the faith schools, other schools and lots of interested parties. It reached a remarkable consensus on the way forward. Provisions similar to these amendments appeared in our legislation. I should like to ask the Minister: given the progress that was made, what else could the review that this Government are now carrying out possibly be looking at? Could they not move a little quicker to get these provisions into legislation, given that that work was already completed?

[Baroness Benjamin]

I totally agree with my noble friend Lady Walmsley and I support her amendment and the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. We need to teach our children to develop social and interpersonal skills and, most of all, to help them to understand what unconditional love is. We have talked about sex, relationships and family life, but lots of children do not know what true unconditional love is. They also need to develop a kind of strategy whereby they can think for themselves. Helping them to develop interpersonal and social skills will go a long way towards achieving that. That is what the amendment is all about.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will not be quite as brief as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, but I shall do my best. As she said, it has in many ways been an extremely interesting and engaging debate. At its heart, apart from a few outliers, it boils down to a judgment that one has to reach as to whether the best way forward on addressing these important issues around PSHE, which we all agree need to be addressed, is through the statutory prescriptive route or through a different approach by trying to slim down the statutory provisions and the national curriculum, and leaving more space and opportunity for more skill—words used by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—for teachers to give children and young people the support that they need. Almost my first debates in this House just over a year ago were about PSHE and faith. Whoever said how tenacious my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey—with whom I have had many discussions—have been on this subject was absolutely right.

We know that in a recent report on the subject, Ofsted found that PSHE education was good or outstanding in three-quarters of the schools visited and that pupils’ personal development was good in most schools visited and was outstanding in about one-third of the schools. However, that same report also found that there were weaknesses, particularly around sex and relationships education, and in some other areas that we need to find ways of addressing. At heart, therefore, is a generally broad agreement on the ends to which we are working but disagreement about the means.

The Government’s aim is to shrink the curriculum and to leave schools and teachers more time to decide for themselves what to teach—a point of view that received a fair amount of support from a number of noble Lords. Teachers have said that they feel that their professionalism is undermined by the overall degree of prescription to which they have been subjected. By stripping the curriculum back we want to give schools the space they need to offer a rounded education, including of course PSHE.

We know that PSHE covers a range of important areas and schools teach it in a variety of ways. It seems to me right that schools should have the discretion to teach it. They know their children. Different schools have different circumstances, and different kinds of children will need different support from their school. Ofsted has said that the most effective curriculum model seen was one in which discrete, regularly taught PSHE lessons were supplemented with cross-curricular activities. That point has also been raised. We are keen to see good practice being shared with the minority of schools that are not teaching the subject as well. Our priority should be to support schools in their efforts to do better by their pupils. That is why we are carrying out the internal review which we have heard about, which has two main objectives: to consider what should be taught; and to look at how schools can be supported to improve the quality of all PSHE teaching. That may be a new element, different from the work previously carried out by the noble Lord, Lord Knight.

I completely understand the impatience of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and my noble friend to hear from the Government when this fabled review will heave into view. I have been saying for some time to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that it will be soon or shortly; I think it is very soon or very shortly, and as soon as we are there, I will of course circulate that to all Members of the Committee.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

I, too, support what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said about the wonderful work that teachers do in school and how they use their gift of imparting education to make a difference to children’s lives. That is very evident in the many schools that I have visited. However, when I go into schools to give inspirational talks, many children automatically want to hug me. We need to be clear that this amendment is directed not just at teachers but at people like me who go into schools. We need to be sure that we are not committing a criminal act if a child hugs us and we want to hug that child back.

[The Lord Bishop of Chester]

My Lords, I want to pick up the reference of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, to professionalism. Over the past 25 years since 1986 we have seen a whole torrent of legislation on schools, which has had a cumulative effect of undermining the professionalism of teachers. In many ways, I see the Government trying to reclaim that ground. It seems to me that fundamental to any guidance on this issue is that we start from the position that teachers are professionals and that they use their judgment. The rest is a case of trying to fill that out, as it were, rather than tackling the matter the other way round, which subtly undermines the very professionalism that should be at the heart of education. I hope that in due course that approach will result in fewer education Acts.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, just before he does, I thank the Minister for his reply, particularly for what he said about an advisory group in relation to the new arrangements. I hope your Lordships will agree that the meeting last week with Charlie Taylor was a success. Certainly, the group I was with was impressed by the Government’s choice of adviser. I have met Bernadette Cunningham, who the Government have chosen to advise them on early years care. Her work with the Coram Family is well respected. Therefore, the Government’s track record in choosing advisers is a very good one so far.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, the TDA has undertaken excellent work in raising equality in schools. Recruitment from BME groups is important to ensure that white and BME pupils benefit from a more balanced representation of society. The experience of teachers from diverse groups is important. Therefore, I hope that the Minister can confirm that this policy will continue under the new body.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, we have had a useful debate and I was pleased to hear the comment that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, has just made. I listened carefully to the Minister’s reasonable tone in responding to it. I understand the argument that runs through the Bill about increasing ministerial accountability. He knows that I think the Government are being brave because we all know that there are periodic crises in education and Ministers will be a lot more accountable for those than they have been to date.

I say in passing that Ministers are not the only individuals accountable to Parliament. The Permanent Secretary is the accounting officer and is accountable to Parliament through the Public Accounts Committee. I worry who on earth will want to be the next Permanent Secretary at the Department for Education, not just because they will follow a class act in the form of David Bell but because they will be accountable for so much to the Public Accounts Committee. The TDA has a chief accounting officer in the form of the chief executive but the Permanent Secretary will replace the roles of five or six other accounting officers as well as being accountable for his own department. I think that permanent secretaries will also be taking a pay cut. It is going to be a tough task to recruit them. Perhaps the Government need to set up a recruitment agency for permanent secretaries.

Now that we have seen that dip in applicants, perhaps the Minister would be minded to write a letter to tell us how much was saved in the freeze on advertising in terms of the TDA in isolation. Given the current labour market conditions, which we know make teaching more attractive because there are not so many alternative graduate careers, it is extraordinary that we have had that dip. In the end, I did not hear an argument from the Minister which told me why the previous experience of things being run from Whitehall would be improved this time around. I cannot say that I am persuaded but being a co-operative sort of chap, I am happy to withdraw my amendment.

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[Baroness Brinton]

I thank the Minister for his helpful response. My starting point in response is to pick up the comments made by my noble friend Lord Willis of Knaresborough. From the amendment’s perspective, the HE qualification is a starting point. The amendment does not signify the beginning and end of training. I applaud his comments about continuing professional development, which is essential, at whatever level. I would hate there to be any misunderstanding on that point.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about the lowering of standards. The motivation behind the amendment was concern that they might be loosening because of the different use of language between the various White Papers and Bills that we have seen. Standards must be consistent.

I am grateful for the Minister’s response and I look forward to the further review of the publication on special educational needs training. My noble friend Lord Rix has had to give his apologies, but I am sure that he would be similarly reassured by that point. I am sure that he would be grateful for the list of points made by the Minister, particularly the one on the scholarship for specialist training. However, I think that my noble friend would still want to make the point that every teacher—

[Baroness Benjamin]

He is behind you.

[Baroness Brinton]

I shall not speak for my noble friend any further. We are back in Whitehall farce territory. I apologise to my noble friend.

The point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, about the bachelor of education is important, but the key point of the amendment is to make sure that that base-line graduate qualification plus postgraduate and continuing professional development means that we have an excellent teaching workforce, and I am grateful to the Minister for his response.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I want to talk about Amendment 47, and then make some general comments on the other amendments. Amendment 47 is clear and concise: it is about the £4,000 fine, which is a blanket fine for all schools. For some schools, that might not seem a lot of money; for others, it is a considerable amount. For a small school—a rural village or a small urban school—it is a significant sum. In my area, there is a secondary school with 10 forms of entry. Next to that is a small Roman Catholic primary school with 101 pupils on roll, I think, and £4,000 equates to that school’s entire literacy and numeracy budget. Down the road, there is a small maintained school, for which £4,000 equates to its entire special needs budget. For a large secondary school, £4,000 is perhaps its promotion budget. We might need to link the sum in a fair and equitable way. On this occasion, one size does not fit all.

I turn to some comments made during the debate. I declare an interest as a head teacher of 25 years. I have never excluded a pupil at all. Why? First, we forget that the important thing is not the end of the process but all the things that you put in place beforehand. As I think I said last week, if you have a robust behaviour management policy, you will involve parents at every stage, and the parents are the greatest way of ensuring that a pupil does not have to be excluded from school.

Having said that, my wife is a secondary teacher in a large inner-city school and I have seen teachers’ careers destroyed by disruptive behaviour. We are not talking about teachers who should not be in the classroom but, because of the circumstances—because of poor leadership, because the other issues have not been put in place—their lives as teachers can be wrecked, as indeed can those of the pupils.

Some of you may recall that I said two things last week. I agreed with a noble Lord opposite who said that any exclusion is a tragedy. I also said, however, that teachers have a right to teach and pupils have a right to learn. Pupils also have a right to ensure that a system is fair and just and they are the first to know if something is not fair. In any school it is the pupils who say, “Hey, sir, that’s not fair” or “Hey, miss, why are we doing this?”. If we have an exclusion policy which is not fair and just, pupils will be the first to see that and that is why I support the amendment moved by my noble friend Lady Walmsley.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I fully support all the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lady Walmsley and I congratulate her on her tireless efforts to highlight children’s and young people’s rights and well-being. I want to make the case for a group of young people up and down the country, especially in our urban cities, which are littered with potholes of deprivation, low self-esteem and practically no aspiration. As we have already heard, it is a sad fact that many black Caribbean and mixed-race white and black Caribbean boys experience a high number of exclusions. We have heard that 16.6 per cent of all Caribbean boys and 16.3 per cent of all mixed-race Caribbean boys experienced a fixed-term exclusion during 2008-09, in comparison to 8 per cent of their white and 4 per cent of their Asian counterparts.

We have to ask whether society is failing these young people, who in many cases grew up seeing themselves as victims, partly because of the harsh and sometimes abusive lives they encountered. They feel anger and frustration about their situation and their place in society, which becomes overwhelming, and in turn they become aggressive and disruptive.

As part of my charitable work, I once accompanied 100 children from disadvantaged backgrounds with some of their parents to Euro Disney. A 10 year-old Caribbean boy did not listen to what his mother and others told him about jumping over a barrier on a wet marble floor. Not surprisingly, he fell with a hard thump and hit his head. Instead of his mother rushing to comfort him, as you might have expected her to do, she violently kicked him while he lay on the floor injured. Eventually, after the doctor arrived and things calmed down, she had to be persuaded to go into the ambulance with her son but not before she broke down and, in between her sobs, she cried for help. She explained that she was on her own, that her son had been excluded time and again from school and that she could no longer cope because he would not listen to her. Goodness knows what she did behind closed doors.

They were both victims of circumstances. Family life is tough for many but for that family there was a happy ending. They were counselled by trained charity project workers who put the family back together again and helped them to heal. That boy’s behaviour changed in school.

These are some of the types of children that are being excluded from schools. They need to be dealt with by staff who have been properly trained by trained play therapists, who know how to deal with damaged children, and to be shown love, understanding and—yes—discipline too but not exclusion and rejection, which only cause long-term damage way into adulthood.

I welcome the fact that the Government have decided to retain exclusion appeals panels. However, the decision to strip them of the power to order reinstatement of a pupil decreases their ability to hold a school to account. Many believe that appeals panels with powers of reinstatement represent a vital safeguard against miscarriages of justice and offer a chance for parents’ voices to be heard.

As so eloquently stated by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, despite claims from the Government that the reinstatement of pupils subsequently undermines the authority of teachers, evidence shows that only 2 per cent of exclusions are overturned and that approximately 90 per cent of exclusions are simply not brought before appeals panels, highlighting that the situation is not widespread.

We heard the case of our famous Lewis Hamilton. Goodness knows what would have happened if his appeal had not been successful and he had not been reinstated in school. We would not have seen the brilliance of that champion and have felt that pride to be British.

It is crucial that teachers are properly held to account on exclusion decisions, particularly given the massive impact that those decisions can have on a child’s future. Therefore, I believe that the Government should allow appeals panels to reinstate excluded pupils in schools if an appeal is successful, and that the Bill should be amended accordingly.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I, too, support both these amendments. There are real concerns, as we have already heard, about the proposals to remove the requirement for written notice of detention outside school hours, given the safety concerns of parents for the whereabouts of their children, particularly if their children are at risk due to family circumstances or where they live or the nature of their journey from home to school. It is essential that the school gives parents notice if their child is to remain at school outside school hours and that the child’s safety and well-being are considered and given top priority.

Many have considered this proposal to be in direct opposition to the current insistence that the parents of excluded children must account for their whereabouts in the first five days of exclusion. It is only fair that, in return, parents are kept up to date by schools on their child’s whereabouts. I therefore support the amendment to retain the requirement for written notice of detention outside school hours.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to ask the Minister a specific question, which arose from the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, without any support or evidence at all to back up his claims. We should not have any legislation on the statute book unless it is actually going to do something—to improve or rectify a situation. The Education Act 2002 gave schools two powers. One was the right to earned autonomy and the other was the power to innovate. I am sure the Minister’s officials could tell him, or her, immediately how many schools since 2002 have applied under those powers to innovate to have detentions on the same day.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I should like to know where the parents are in this. If I were the parent of a child who had been searched at school by a same or opposite sex—but particularly opposite sex—teacher, I think I would be mightily cross if I had not been informed. If I were a head teacher, I would hate to be on the receiving end of a parent’s anger at their child being searched. The witness should ideally be a parent. Has that been thought of in the Bill? Are parents excluded from this procedure? It is an issue that should be considered.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, Barnado’s deals with a lot of children who have been groomed for sexual acts. If a child who had gone through that kind of procedure were searched at school, it would have a devastating effect on them. I remember once launching one of our projects for Barnardo’s—I declare an interest as one of the vice-presidents. I put my arm around a young girl because I always like hugging people, but when I did that she flinched like an animal. I wondered why and the counsellor told me that she had been groomed since she was a 10 year-old child. She was now 15 and people showing her any type of affection had a devastating effect on her. Imagine what that girl would go through if she had to be searched at school. I fully support my noble friend Lady Walmsley’s amendment. This is something that should be carefully thought through before we put it into the Bill.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, we are in difficult and delicate territory. We accepted that when we discussed related points on Tuesday. However, there is a need to lean in the other direction and expose the argument. My focus is particularly on the question of having another witness available. I realise and accept that being searched by someone of a different sex is a more complex matter, and maybe we need to differentiate these two.

I make the point about whether another witness is necessary by quoting what my noble friend Lady Perry said on Tuesday. “There are crisis incidents” she said, and:

“At that point, a teacher has to take action”.—[Official Report, 28/6/11; col. GC 230.]

I am concerned about the parent who discovers that their child has been injured at school when perhaps an intervention would have made a difference.

This is a difficult point to make, but the issue in principle that we touched on and now face full on today is whether the legislation should preclude the possibility of a teacher exercising judgment. We all have the respect for teachers that we properly should have and we have insisted on the need for professional training and back-up. That is why the training has to be school-wide, not just for a specialist teacher who does this kind of thing. However, can we not leave room in the legislation for crisis incidents and for the exercise of good professional judgment by a teacher in a situation in which we hope none will be tested?

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I remember from when I was a teacher that some of the most valuable discussions I had, long before all this, came from case studies of a particular child or family. We brought in all the agencies, or as many as we could at that stage, who were responsible for that child. Those case studies were time-consuming but often addressed the given child’s situation—why that child could not learn, why that child was absent and what was going on. All the agencies could share that information. The ideal scenario now is that all the agencies we have talked about today should be able to share their experiences of a child and should be encouraged to do so.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, childhood lasts a lifetime. Whatever children go through at an early age will stay with them for ever. Children’s well-being should be at the heart of everything we do in society. It should begin at home, but that is not always the case. However, it definitely needs to happen at school. Today, many children face difficulties in their lives. For some, life is like a marathon; it is relentless and the challenges that they face are unbearable. Some even die because of those challenges. The children who are victims and who are vulnerable need schools to support them. Schools have a duty to help them through the traumas that they might be going through by having strategies in place to cement the solid foundation needed to address children and young people’s well-being.

Many schools have such strategies in place and take this responsibility seriously. I visit schools up and down the country to give inspirational talks to children and young people. I often identify children and young people who need support, and discover what they might be going through mentally, physically and emotionally. It is so rewarding to know that you can make a difference to a young person’s life by giving them support and making sure that their well-being is addressed. It is the responsibility of us all to make sure that this happens time and again. We should have joined-up policies to make sure that it does. I fully support the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Laming, and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. If we can do this, we will do a just service to our children and our young people across the country.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Laming for tabling these amendments. I have just one quick question for the Minister, following on from the question of the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, who talked about the impact on children with special educational needs. What does he think the impact might be on children in the care of local authorities? In principle, I can see that outcomes might be improved if there is at least a strategy that involves schools working with local authorities and thinking about how children’s homes and foster carers could be better meshed into the system.

Schools already have various duties with regard to looked-after children, but this might be another means of promoting outcomes for them. I should be grateful to the Minister if he circulated some copies of the plans for children and young people. I suppose it would be fairly easy for me to find those plans in the Library, but I should be interested to see how they work. I recognise the Minister’s drive to reduce bureaucracy, and I wonder whether the legislation is perhaps going a bit too far in trying to right that wrong.

Finally, I share the noble Baroness’s concern about the academies process. There are many positive sides to it, but there is the danger of schools becoming atomised, and the process would seem to add to that risk. I look to the Minister for reassurance in his reply.

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[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I, too, support what the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, has said. I feel very sad that three people of culturally diverse backgrounds have had to bring up this point. I should like the Minister to respond to her and for others to be part of this conversation.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Forgive me, my Lords. I meant no discourtesy to the noble Baroness, Lady Howells, and I hope she will understand that. I meant no discourtesy to any noble Lord in my reply. I am grateful to noble Lords for having raised the point and for reminding me that I did not do so. I was responding to the specific points relating to SEN. I obviously accept the point that the noble Lord made about exclusions and disproportionality, and the statistics speak very powerfully. That is precisely the sort of issue that the exclusion trials ought to take into account. Regarding where we have got to on the trials, my understanding is that we want to look at a range of issues concerning exclusions in different parts of the country and in different settings. It would be absolutely right to do that. If it would be helpful, clearly I would be more than happy to speak to the noble Baroness and to bring together some officials who can explain where we are with the trials. We could have a conversation to make sure that these important points are picked up.

Education Bill

Baroness Benjamin Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

I, too, have had grandchildren at a Montessori school and I have a great regard for the system. Why are we suddenly throwing in Steiner schools when they are not mentioned in the amendment? I understand that there are good reliable figures to show the effectiveness of the Montessori system; are there such figures for the Steiner system? I simply do not know.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support the amendment. I, too, have great admiration for the Montessori system because my daughter went to a Montessori school and it got the best out of her. I believe that young children need to be excited by learning, by discovering who they are, by play and by forming their own self-opinion and doing things that are beyond them. The Montessori system is one of the best ways of getting children to understand who they truly are, especially if they then go on to conventional education in schools. It broadens their outlook, it makes them excited about learning and the amendment should be supported by everyone in the Room.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

I also agree that Montessori offers a high-quality experience for children and one would want to support it. In talking about Montessori and supporting it, I was very keen that more children from disadvantaged backgrounds should be able to access this high-quality provision. What progress has been made in the proportion of children from disadvantaged backgrounds who now attend?

I would not have thought that mapping the qualification is an insuperable problem. I am sure the Children’s Workforce Development Council will be positive in resolving the issue. When the Minister replies, will he enlighten us as to what is going on in the CWDC? It has been doing good work in raising the level of qualifications and ability of early-years professionals, in improving the infrastructure of qualifications and in supporting all parts of the sector going forward. I understand that the Children’s Workforce Development Council is going to be brought in-house and that its annual grant of £110 million has been taken away, as has its non-departmental body status. What are the implications of that for the progress that has already been made in early years and for continuing that progress in raising the level of qualifications and so on which we are all so concerned about?

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[Baroness Walmsley]

It may be convenient for the Committee if I answer the question just posed by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, about Amendment 20. I think that was a slight misunderstanding of the amendment. My noble friend meant that no teacher other than the security staff could be required—in other words, forced against their will—to carry out a search if they did not want to.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support several of the amendments in this group but would like to focus on black and ethnic minority children. If you ask any black young man how many times he has been stopped and searched in the streets, you will find that it has been more times than his white equivalent. In some cases, there is a just reason to do so and some young people warrant the action of being searched. This does not mean that everyone should be categorised in the same way. Sometimes there needs to be a sympathetic approach towards young people who have what can perhaps be described as a “street attitude” or come from backgrounds where there is little or no parental or family support or guidance. There needs to be understanding of what might be going on in that young person’s life to make them behave in a certain way.

The same can be said about young people in schools today. Stop and search has become an accepted attitude towards many young black children and young people. Sadly, many of them will most likely grow up having to face the same ordeals and indignities as generations before them. This leads to young people feeling worthless, disillusioned and having an anti-social attitude—they act in the way that they believe they are expected to by society. Many look to gang culture to feel safe, accepted and important. It is a case of safety in numbers in order to survive. Those misguided young people need our help and understanding. They do not need to be condemned and vilified.

As touched on by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, earlier, many are concerned that the power of members of staff to search pupils could result in disproportionate numbers of black children being searched. If black pupils are searched more than other pupils or feel unfairly targeted, trust may be undermined, potentially leading to more negative behaviour in the classroom. Evidence shows that black Caribbean boys in particular are disproportionately excluded from school and routinely punished more harshly, praised less and told off more. Explanations for this cannot be attributed solely to things like culture, class background or home life, and government research concluded that teacher’s attitudes—sometimes subconsciously—towards black children can be a contributing factor.

Given the overrepresentation of black Caribbean children in other areas of discipline, it is likely that they will be disproportionately searched under this new power. As the Runnymede Trust and others have argued elsewhere, institutions are required by law to assess the impact of their policies upon individuals from different ethnic backgrounds under the Equality Act. Given this legal requirement, I plead with the Minister to make sure that careful monitoring takes place of those searched in schools and action is taken to decrease any arising disproportion.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I echo something that the noble Baroness just said. The carrying of a weapon is often an essential part of a person’s sense of security. If he is in a community where everybody else carries a weapon outside, he will bring them into school. We are probably going down the wrong road by treating searching as the response to an emergency. I know as a former teacher that the emergency arises when the weapon has been produced. A knife was produced in a class I was teaching. It was quite a large knife, but luckily the owner of it was slightly smaller than me and there was no struggle. We had a discussion and it ended amicably. I am very much aware of the little thrill of horror that went through me when I first saw it and of the need for teachers to be protected from that.

Searching is preventive. It is not to discover something in an emergency but to prevent the emergency arising by applying the search before the weapon can be used. One way is if the whole school is searched when everybody goes in, as you are at an airport. Another is if the whole class is searched because there is known to be a problem there. But to search individuals can produce exactly the difficulties to which the noble Baroness referred. This needs a good deal more practical thought about what happens on the ground, rather than just legislative thoughts about how easily it could be provided from an administrative point of view. We have not yet got to a point where we should legislate. There needs to be much more discussion, perhaps outside this Room as well as inside it.