Education Bill

Baroness Brinton Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I recognised that there would be a number of reasoned arguments and I stand with my colleagues who made them. I took a rather different way on this. During the summer I consulted a number of friends and my family—it was a random experiment—and it became absolutely clear that they did not believe that I was telling the truth when I said that it was the Government’s plan that when their child was going to be detained they would not be told. They said, “You are making it up”. That was the first response.

The second response from rural parents—I work and have friends in London but I live in a rural area—was, “But there is only one bus. They cannot be detained without notice because if they do not get on the bus they do not get home at all”. We have to remember that not every poor parent in a rural area has a car; they depend on that transport. There are no other bus services or taxis; you catch the school bus or you do not get home. The third response was the sheer indignation that this was “my” child, not owned by anyone else.

The common thread through all that was that the parents were quite keen for the child to be disciplined at school. There was no disagreement that the child should not receive their discipline, that detention might be the right answer, or that the closer it was to the incident the better little Jonny would learn from it. The disagreement was that parents had to know that their child was going to be detained so that they could ensure the protection of their child and were not worried out of their minds. I hope noble Lords will forgive my anecdotal bit of research but it was pretty consistent with the reasoned arguments that we have heard this evening.

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I also support Amendment 33, which I have added my name to. I will not rehearse the arguments that have been made by noble Lords who have already spoken except to say, as I said in Committee, that these issues about safeguarding are absolutely paramount. There is one area that no one has picked up on but of which I have personal experience. Looked-after children, foster children or children with difficult family arrangements often have complex arrangements at the school gate. For this particular group, it is always vital that the parent with the residency order knows exactly what is happening.

My own experience was at primary school level, where the school was fully on board with all the issues. In a large secondary school with 1,200 pupils, I worry that a teacher or head of department handing out a detention might not be aware of such complex arrangements. For such reasons, which also come back to safeguarding, this is really important. Amendment 33 does not ask for much. The key thing from this Side is for the Minister to please look again at the wording. We want a really clear statement that nothing will be done that will compromise the safety of the child. That is the absolute nub of it. We can all give many more anecdotes but fundamentally, at its root, this is about the safeguarding of children.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, there is clear evidence that good standards of behaviour are vital if children are to receive a high-quality education. We know that a clear and consistently applied behaviour policy, including rewards and sanctions, helps schools to achieve these standards—indeed, noble Lords have acknowledged that in their comments.

There is strong public support for improving the standards of behaviour in schools. A recent survey for the Times Educational Supplement found that 91 per cent of parents and 62 per cent of children favour tougher discipline in secondary schools. The same poll found that 88 per cent of parents and 60 per cent of pupils supported teachers in giving after-school detentions. The head teachers who gave evidence in the other place made clear that detentions are a key part of maintaining good behaviour. As has already been mentioned, Sir Michael Wilshaw went so far as to say that detentions were,

“a crucial plank in our behavioural policy”.

There is a certain level of agreement among us that behaviour patterns and detentions are part of a way in which a school operates effectively.

This clause removes the requirement for schools to provide 24 hours’ written notice of detention outside school hours. In doing this, we seek to enable head teachers and teachers to use detention in the way most suited to the circumstances of their individual schools and in the way that is most appropriate to the pupil or incident with which they are dealing.

Various concerns have been raised today. It might be helpful to noble Lords if I set out what a school has to do, by law, to issue an after-school detention at the moment. First, under Section 89 of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, the head teacher must determine and make generally known in the school and to parents whether the school issues detentions outside school hours.

Secondly, Section 91 of the same Act requires that detentions must be reasonable and constitute a proportionate punishment in all the circumstances. There must also be strong assurances that, when issuing a detention, school staff must have regard to any known special circumstances of the pupil, including the pupil’s age, any special educational needs, disability or religious requirements. That would certainly affect any looked-after children or children with caring responsibilities.

Thirdly, a further safeguard in Section 92(5) of the Act provides that if arrangements have to be made for a pupil to travel home after a detention then, when deciding whether a detention is reasonable, the member of staff must take into account whether suitable travel arrangements can be reasonably made by the pupil’s parents. Many noble Lords have raised concerns about children being unable to get home after detentions in rural areas but we believe this safeguard is designed to address that concern. It is already there, as one of the safeguards that the school must have regard to. A detention that left a child unable to get home in a safe way would not be reasonable in the circumstances and would be in breach of the existing safeguards. I can well understand my noble friend’s point about children with caring responsibilities, and with these other difficulties that we have outlined, but the safeguards above prevent a young carer being given an out-of-hours detention if it is unreasonable, given their individual circumstances.

There is one additional requirement: that parents must be given 24 hours’ written notice of a detention outside school hours. So, in the long list of requirements that schools must follow before issuing an after-school detention we want to remove just one. Why do the Government want to remove the requirement for 24 hours’ written notice? We have had briefing from the Association of School and College Leaders, which made it clear that,

“generally such punishments are most effective if they take place as soon as reasonably practical”.

Indeed, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Howarth, both acknowledged the fact that immediacy of punishment for a crime is a much more effective way of disciplining young people.

The requirement as it stands also places many good schools that issue 15-minute detentions at the end of the school day in breach of the law. These schools do not and would never for a moment consider jeopardising a pupil’s safety or damaging relations with parents. Of course, even with the present requirement for written notice in place there is no guarantee that parents will be aware that a detention is happening. Schools may send the notice home with pupils, who may or may not pass it on to the parent. Equally, an e-mail from the school may not be read that day or parents may not be contactable by telephone. This means there may be cases where parents have not been aware of detentions in advance, but we have absolutely no evidence that this has led to children’s safety being compromised.

My noble friends’ amendment seeks to replace the present requirement, which I think we agree is problematic, with one under which parents must confirm that they are aware of a same-day detention after school, or must receive 24 hours’ notice of it. We well understand their intentions; we would all want parents to play a full part in ensuring high standards of behaviour and to be aware when their child is at school. I fear, however, that the amendments would cause similar problems to the current requirement. Asking that a parent confirms that they are aware of a same-day detention means that a teacher would be prevented from keeping a pupil back, even for 15 minutes at the end of the last lesson of the day, without first making arrangements to contact the parents. Noble Lords can imagine how long that could take and that on many occasions it will be impossible to gain confirmation at short notice that a parent is aware of a detention. I remind noble Lords of all the safeguards which are already in place to make quite sure that transport is there and that the young people do not have caring responsibilities, where after-hours detention would obviously not be appropriate.

There are other cases where an unco-operative parent could, in knowledge of such a requirement, ignore attempts by a school to contact them in order to prevent a same-day detention. They could simply let phone calls go to voicemail or not answer an e-mail, so the whole thing could escalate way beyond the 24 hours —and way past the time when the young person had done the disciplinary matter—and escalate the punishment to a level which was never intended. It is because of these consequences of well intended regulation that we believe it is necessary to remove the requirement and rely on the extensive existing safeguards, which require schools to act reasonably in all the circumstances.

Having said that we are not attracted to regulation we take immensely seriously the concerns raised today and in Grand Committee. We therefore propose that advice to schools on this matter could be strengthened to make sure that schools understand what they should do to act reasonably. An addition to the guidance on behaviour and discipline in schools will say:

“When judging whether a detention outside school hours is reasonable teachers should consider whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.

They should obviously make every effort to contact parents, but with all the other safeguards in place, and never in any circumstances take actions that would compromise the safety of the child.