Education Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords I have no difficulty or disagreement with anything that anyone has said so far. I very much agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, shortly before the Division, and I did not disagree with what the Minister said.

My problem is that it is almost as if the Government have launched a press release saying, “No change”, and therefore expect change. It has always puzzled me what drives teacher behaviour or teacher perception. As the Minister said, this is not new legislation. It has never been illegal to put a sticking plaster on a child, hold on to a child’s arm to the front or rear of the queue, or to hold a child’s arm while practising the violin. My only criticism is that to table an amendment—I appreciate that it is a probing one—saying that we should have rules allowing you to do those things almost implies that we have rules saying that we cannot do those things.

I have two points. First, does the Minister believe that this guidance will change anything? I am not sure that it will. It is not the first time that the teaching profession has been given guidance and reassurances that it can do these things and that they are not against the law. What deeper understanding does the Minister have of what is driving teacher behaviour and public perception? It is not as if teachers have not had assurances in the past that they would not be hauled over the coals if they behaved in that way. There is a danger in putting together in guidance touching which is natural and instinctive and touching which could be totally wrong and a threat to children. The trouble is that we have not been successful in marking the difference between the two. I am not confident that the guidance being offered today will do anything more than the guidance that previous Governments gave out. Indeed, I may have given out some myself; I cannot remember, but it certainly had no impact.

Secondly, there is a lesson to be learnt. People who are not in government are sometimes tempted to give the impression that certain things are illegal and guidance says that you cannot do them. We ought not to play that game because we then become accomplices at creating a false impression. The problem is that there is a false impression out there that teachers cannot do these things. However, they have always been able to do them, and it is right that they should.

Will the Minister say something about the guidance? It could even be the same press release, who knows? How can we have any faith? I am not being critical because I did not solve the problem either, but what else can be done to get the message across?

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, perhaps I may help the noble Baroness, which would be unusual from my position to hers. The Minister sent me a most useful document, Customer Voice Research: Behaviour and Discipline Powers in Schools, for which I thank him very much. It is extremely helpful to me in my arguments, I fear, in several places. As regards powers of discipline, a teacher commented that she was completely,

“unaware … of the ‘main powers’ available to teachers”.

Teachers say, for example, that the powers sound “really antiquated”. They have said, “I don’t understand it”, and,

“I don’t feel confident that the Head would back me up”,

if I was to do this. It seems to me that this is about knowledge, culture and leadership, and not about legislation. We should not be legislating for executive powers; we should be legislating for strategic options, the things which I have just mentioned.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, my friend in sport, my noble friend Lady Massey, will not be surprised to see me rise to address the subject of sport in the context of Amendment 74, particularly in respect of a brief but important issue.

In subsection (2) of the proposed new clause to be inserted by Amendment 74, my noble friend uses the phrase “for teaching physical skills”. As he knows, and as I am sure the Committee knows, physical skills cover cardiovascular and respiratory endurance, stamina, strength, flexibility, power, co-ordination, agility, speed, balance and—from memory—accuracy. However, I think that my noble friend is focusing on sport and recreation in schools. Sport requires participants to compete in physical activities and we should also cover recreation.

Standardising the language in legislation is extremely important. I hope that if my noble friend withdraws his amendment and brings it back later, he will focus on ensuring that, in this and in all contexts, we are talking about sport and recreation in schools. It is very important that recreation should be included to encourage dance, for example, among young people in schools, and not just competitive sport and the traditional sports. In that context, I simply offer that brief observation to my noble friend, who I hope will consider it when he is considering his reaction to the Government’s reply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I was going to make some comments on the content of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, but I am struggling, as I gather are other noble Lords. I know that we got rather a lot of e-mails this morning in rather a hurry but I do not believe that I have seen the e-mail referred to by the noble Lord. This raises a wider question. Here we are trying to scrutinise legislation properly, but how on earth can we get involved in a debate when we are debating blind assurances that the noble Lord has been given that we do not appear to have seen? Forgive me if it is somewhere in the ether and I should have received the e-mail by now.

The comment that I should like to make—and which this infamous e-mail might answer—is that the amendment is very stark. I suppose that I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that teachers do not go into teaching to fail. The onus should be concentrated far more on identifying what has gone wrong and identifying support mechanisms than on simply setting out provisions such as those in the amendment for the disciplinary measures to be taken against an individual. Somehow the context is missing, although it may be that the Government have now provided it.

My only other point is that, as I said, teachers do not go into teaching to fail, but there should be a requirement on all teachers, not just those who are struggling, to get involved in continuous professional development. Under this amendment, if all else fails, we will get them to do some extra training. It should be a requirement for all teachers at all times to update their skill-set. Those are my only comments, but it would be interesting to see this e-mail. Perhaps we can have the opportunity to come back and make further comments when we have seen it.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly and probably will be told off by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in his summing up, but I do not know why we are debating this at all. If I was sitting on one of my boards I would be saying that this is an executive matter and not a governance or policy matter. If I look at the amendment and think about the number of disciplinary procedures that I have had to write, and the number of development programmes in which I have had to be involved, I can see all the difficulties and loopholes that this would lead to in terms of the present HR legislation and the difficulties that people would face trying to implement it. Not having seen the famous e-mail, I do not know whether it answers these questions. However, I would respectfully say to my colleagues that these sorts of issues are much better not dealt with in legislation.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, lest my noble friend think that she is on her own, I am with her.