Schools White Paper

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with the right reverend Prelate that we could just as easily have called the White Paper “The Importance of Teachers”. I hope he, and other noble Lords, will accept that there is widely shared support on all sides of the House for teachers, for the important job that they do and for the status that we want them to have. As I said, there will be a review of slimming down the curriculum. We want to slim it down so that teachers have more latitude and more time in the school day to teach a broader range of subjects, as they think fit. However, the emphasis on the core subjects will be important, and the introduction of the English baccalaureate as a sign of the breadth of academic standards that a school offers will also help with content. I take the point about the importance of rural schools and making sure that arrangements there are properly taken into account. If schools increasingly work together in federations and partnerships, there will be more opportunities to deal with those arrangements. However, I think that we all need to reflect on the particular circumstances of rural schools, including small ones.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much congratulate the Government on this White Paper because, even from a quick glance at it. There are a number of things that we can all applaud and look forward to seeing developed. I have two specific points to make. First, the idea of bringing in second-career teachers under the Teach Next programme is excellent as it will bring in a range of different disciplines to schools. Speaking as president of the NGA, I am particularly glad that there is a reference in the White Paper to the role of governors and, indeed, that there will be opportunities for the National College to train the heads of governing bodies. However, I should like to ask about children with special needs and perhaps those who are difficult. Specifically, will there be early intervention to check the needs of children who may have autistic or other problems so that they can be dealt with and supported earlier? Secondly, there is reference to an experiment in how head teachers can be held accountable when they exclude a child from class activities. Can the Minister give us a little more detail about that? It sounds very interesting.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s comments, particularly about governance, which she and I have discussed at length. The NGA has repeatedly pointed out to us the importance of training for chairs of governors. As the noble Baroness rightly says, we hope to improve that training and to make it available through the National College. The White Paper also talks about the importance of trained clerks—another subject which I know is dear to the noble Baroness’s heart. We also talk in the White Paper about the option that schools will have to change their system of governance. Again, this is not a compulsory change; it is part of our permissive approach. Moving to smaller governing bodies that are more strategically focused with particular skills, rather than numerically prescribed, is also an option. I completely agree with the noble Baroness’s point about early intervention, and we must make sure that that persists.

The suggestion in the White Paper about a pilot is to see whether it would be possible, as the noble Baroness correctly identified, to give the budget and responsibility for excluded children to head teachers to address the perception of some that some schools parcel out difficult children and then wash their hands of them. Like a lot of these issues, this might not be straightforward. We need to see how it would work, which is why we are piloting it, but that is the thought behind that statement.