Education: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Thursday 21st October 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I add my thanks to my noble friend Lady Warnock for this debate, which will certainly give the Minister the opportunity to spell out in more detail the degree of priority that will be given to SEN and disabled children within the education system. It was good news to hear that the education budget will rise and that there will be a £2.5 billion pupil premium to support the education of disadvantaged children, but we know that there will be many demands on that budget.

Ofsted has done a thorough job visiting and taking evidence from schools in different parts of the country and from a wide range of those involved, including the pupils themselves and their parents, who, as we have already heard, are a fairly unsatisfied group. If one remembers, too, that the 1978 report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, estimated that as many as 20 per cent of all children had SEN, it is clear that the group which we are concerned with is certainly a significant one. If one adds to that the figures emphasised as important by the Special Educational Consortium—that 87 per cent of exclusions from primary and 60 per cent from secondary schools are SEN pupils, and that at secondary school those with SEN are more than twice as likely to be eligible for free school meals—it is clear that a high proportion of these children do indeed come from the most deprived backgrounds and therefore are doubly in need of support if they are to be enabled to reach their potential.

Ofsted's conclusions are important. Clearly, statemented children need the maximum help that the state can provide. However, as other noble Lords have said, it is disturbing to read that as many as half of the pupils identified for school action and school action plus would apparently not need to be so labelled if the school concerned had focused on improving teaching and learning for all pupils.

Three things stand out for me after reading the report, and on which I hope the Minister will comment. The first is the clear need to simplify the procedures by which pupils are assessed for SEN or disability help, ensuring that the system is clearer for parents, schools and other education and training providers, and, equally important, that the same assessment procedures are wherever possible used by all the services involved.

Secondly, the diagnosis procedures should begin as early in the child's life as possible. The noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, has already quoted the evidence given by TreeHouse that the average age for diagnosing autism is six years and seven months, and so on. We know—again, as we have heard—that such diagnosis can begin to be made for a child at 18 months. That clearly illustrates that today's children with SEN will already be unnecessarily falling behind the rate of progress of some of their classmates. In an earlier education Bill some of your Lordships, headed by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, tried to include a provision ensuring that all children were tested for potential complications of this kind before they started school, but, alas, that amendment was lost in a previous wash-up. I hope from what I have heard today that there is an indication that—even if it is not early enough, but at least before five—the coalition Government will give a commitment to make the tests necessary.

The third point seems basic to achieving better results in future. It is to include in all teacher-training courses a basic element of SEN. There will of course be a need for more specific training for those teachers who will specialise, but the main need will be enough training for all teachers to enable them to realise when a child should be referred for more expert assessment.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my noble friend knows how very much we, too, believe in the importance of parent governors. The Minister was kind enough to send us the model funding agreement, but he will be aware that annexe A, which is the memorandum and articles of the academy trust, was not attached to it. The previous model, from the previous Administration, required at least one parent governor to be elected. Can the Minister confirm that that will be in the model when it is published? As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said, the Minister confirmed in response to a question from my noble friend Lady Sharp at col. 260 on 7 July that there will be elections for parent governors. I hope that he will be able to confirm that further today.

However, the Labour amendment is not helpful to new academies as it does not allow a parent to be appointed in the run-up to the opening of a new academy, as did the previous articles. That would be a very desirable time to have a parent governor, while the new school is taking shape, but the amendment would not allow for that. I do not know whether the noble Lord has taken that into account.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, it will not surprise your Lordships to know that I fully support the amendment, and would be grateful for the additional reassurance asked for by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley: that, at least in the old academies, as it were, there will be elections. Sadly, I remain unconvinced that we do not need to specify a number of parent governors to be represented on the board, which was the whole purpose of my previous amendments. I will not go into that again, because we are on Third Reading, but I would love to have more reassurance from the Minister.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the points that have been raised and believe that I can provide that reassurance. First, I echo the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, about the importance of governors, which is accepted across all sides of the House. The point that lies behind the amendment has been raised in debate before, and I apologise if I have not made the situation sufficiently clear. The arrangements for the collection of parent governors are set out in the articles of association of the academy trust, which are agreed between the academy trust and the Secretary of State. Those articles are annexed to and form part of the funding agreement, which, as we know, is what controls the relationship between the Secretary of State and the academy, and always has done.

The model articles state that—I am sorry if this was not appended to the model funding agreement:

“the Parent Governor(s) shall be elected by parents of registered pupils at the Academy. A Parent Governor must be a parent of a pupil at the Academy at the time when he is elected”.

The articles therefore make clear, first, that the election of governors should be by parents of pupils attending the academy and, secondly, that parent governors must be drawn from among the parents of pupils at the academy. Those are the current arrangements for the election of parent governors in academies, and I believe that they are known to be effective.

The articles of association of an academy trust cannot be amended without the agreement of the Secretary of State, so the position as set out in the articles cannot be unilaterally changed by an academy. The previous Government argued and accepted that the funding agreement was the right place to deal with issues of that kind, and I agree with them. We do not need a requirement in the Bill of the sort set out in the amendment. That said, I take the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, just intended to clarify the situation. I hope that that has done so and provides reassurance to all noble Lords who have raised the point. With that, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

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[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, this amendment is also tabled in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote. Both in Committee and on Report I have spoken about my concerns that a large increase in the number of academies will have the unintended consequence of dispersing funding for children with low incidence or complex special educational needs. As a result, vital support services for these children and their parents will become untenable, and there could be large numbers of deaf and blind children and others with multi-sensory impairments who do not get the support they need.

These concerns have received the support of all sides of the House and I am grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. They are also shared by the National Sensory Impairment Partnership, the Special Educational Consortium and, particularly, the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense. I should like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Hill, and his officials for taking the time to meet with me yesterday afternoon, as he offered to do on Report, and it is therefore with regret that I must speak again to say that these concerns have still not been addressed. Sadly, while the Government are willing to recognise that the problem is real, they have shown no real urgency in coming up with a way forward. As the Special Educational Consortium points out in its briefing, the Government should recognise that there is a need to address the impact of the Academies Bill on individual children currently receiving specialist provision when a number of schools convert to academy status in September 2010.

I am alarmed that the Government should seek to pass this Bill knowing that potentially it could damage the educational prospects of some of the most vulnerable children in the country. The number of children may be small and the impact may not be immediate, but that is no excuse for failing to come up with a solution that will reassure parents and children that they will get the support they need. The National Sensory Impairment Partnership believes that the Government should set up a working group to consider solutions. The working group should be time-limited and have clear terms of reference to consider this issue and make urgent recommendations. The group must be led by Government and its recommendations must be communicated by the Government to all local authorities and schools across the country. I stress that the working group should also include representatives of the parents of children with sensory impairments, and I strongly urge the Government to accept the recommendation.

I hope that the Minister can give a positive reply before the Bill moves to the other place. But in the absence of that positive response, I have spoken to Members of the other place who have said that they will continue to raise this matter until we are certain that the educational prospects of disabled children will not be damaged by these proposals. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I, too, support this amendment, as I have done on previous occasions. It is sad indeed that the Minister has not yet been able fully to satisfy our concerns. Disabled children and those with SEN often need specialist support to ensure that they achieve positive learning outcomes. These services are crucial for pupils with a wide range of disabilities and have a unique role to play in the education of children with low incident disabilities such as blindness, partial sight and hearing impairments.

Specialist support services are not focused solely on the delivery of the curriculum. They also provide much-needed training and skills to support independent living, and examples of some of those specialist services give a clear view. I cite the teaching of Braille and of British sign language, independent living training to enable independent personal care skills and home skills, mobility instruction and pre-employment support. Local authorities have traditionally provided specialist support services to all schools, using funds retained from school budgets to ensure adequate provision throughout their areas. There are strong concerns that, as academies move out of local authority control, so will their revenue, reducing the amount available overall to specialist support services and relying on academies to commission the services they require. I hope that while the Bill is still with us, we will have further assurances from the Minister. Otherwise, as the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, said, the issue will come up again in the other place.

[Baroness Walmsley]

There are indeed many complex issues to be further explored and I am sure that this will be done in another place. This morning I briefed my honourable friend Dan Rogerson MP, who will be handling the Bill on behalf of these Benches in another place, beginning on Monday.

One of the complex issues, for example, is that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins—the spirit of which we certainly support—does not explain how the money retained centrally can transfer to the academies. Is it the expectation that a local authority will make the provision in an academy? Can the Minister confirm whether a local authority will have physical access to an academy to ensure that provision for low incidence SEN pupils is satisfactory? After all, it is being asked to pay directly for that provision.

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[Lord Adonis]

I have absolutely no objection to the amendment. If this is part of the glue that is holding the coalition together, it is clearly a very worthwhile amendment. However, it does not amount to much, since Ofsted already publishes an annual report that evaluates the progress of all schools. It has not been mentioned in our debate, but Ofsted gives specific coverage to the performance of academies in that annual report.

The last Ofsted annual report makes glowing reference to the progress of academies—to the value that they add and, in particular, to the extremely favourable ratings that Ofsted gives them, especially to their governance and management. That is the main difference that academies make; they bring in and enhance governance and management.

The Ofsted annual reports have, over several years, substantially validated the previous Government’s decision to start the academy movement. I imagine that this annual report will largely photocopy the annual report which Ofsted produces. It no doubt goes through a different bureaucratic procedure and will allow different opportunities for debate, but it will not substantially add to the knowledge base which the House and the public already have as a result of the Ofsted report. It complicates the legislative framework a little, but that may or may not be a bad thing.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I am, I admit, rather attracted to this idea. Maybe it has gone on in the past and it has not appeared before us or we have not followed it up as we should. Nevertheless, we are talking about a situation in which there are going to be rather a large number of changes. It would also have the attraction of being a sort of pre- and post-scrutiny process. It would be a splendid opportunity to see how the whole scene is working, and equally, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said, where there are specific interests such as special needs, to see what is happening about children in care and so on. I think it well worth considering, and I hope the Minister will consider it favourably.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendments in the names of my noble friends. I remind the House that we have already today—and, indeed, in our debates yesterday—come up with several examples of things that could legitimately be included in the annual report. Yesterday, we talked about the effect on primary schools; today, we have talked about the effect on young people with special educational needs and young people leaving care. To that, you could add achievement in exam results and all kinds of other issues. The amendment is not prescriptive in any way, but it is as well to bear in mind the sorts of subjects that Parliament may wish to consider in holding the Government to account when asking questions about such a report. This is a valuable proposal.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I support this suggestion. There will be considerable power at the centre and a need for parliamentary accountability. The approach proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, and spelt out in more detail by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, is one that I certainly find acceptable.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the issue of accountability that we have just been debating is extremely important, as the amendments rightly reflect. I take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, as he prompted me to think whether it is right to make provision for greater parliamentary scrutiny. I think that there is broad agreement across the House on the need for that, which I shall come back to in a moment.

Amendment 17, moved by my noble friend Lord Greaves, would, as we have debated, require the Secretary of State to make regulations to set out criteria for entering into academy arrangements. I hope that he will accept that the Government have made it clear that they will apply a rigorous fit-and-proper-person test in approving any sponsors of an academy or promoter of a free school. We have circulated the draft funding agreements so that noble Lords can see the kind of terms and conditions that will apply to academies. We will publish the criteria for deciding applications from schools that are not rated as outstanding by Ofsted, which, as my noble friend knows, are proceeding on a slower timetable in any case.

That said, since the academies programme started, the signing of the funding agreement has always been a matter between the Secretary of State and the academy trust. The Secretary of State has discretion over his decision in that respect to enter into academy arrangements and will want to review each application for an academy order on its merits. We think that some flexibility is needed in his consideration of these factors to ensure that he can make the right decision in each individual case. We have touched before on the point that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has scrutinised the Bill and is satisfied that the level of parliamentary scrutiny it includes is appropriate. Nevertheless, as I alluded to yesterday on Report, there is a case for the Government going further in trying to make sure that Parliament has the opportunity to see how the policy is working.

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[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 21. In Committee, I spoke about my concerns that the Academies Bill will fatally undermine specialist support services for children with low incidence needs. I am grateful to the Minister for his letter of 2 July in response to these concerns, and to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, for his reply in Committee. I particularly welcome the Government’s commitment that pupils in academies with low incidence SEN needs or disabilities will receive the support they require from specialist support services. But, unfortunately, my worries have not yet been allayed. The Special Educational Consortium, particularly the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense, share my concerns.

The funding arrangements for specialist support services may be complex but the problem is clear. If funding from the schools budget for specialist support services is to be dispersed widely to a large number of academies in a given area, this will reduce the funding available to existing specialist support services in local authorities. It takes away the pooling of resources that ensures services to children with low incidence needs can be met at reasonable value for money. As the noble Lord, Lord Hill, put it in his letter to me, this will result in “dis-economies of scale”. The noble Lord noted that academies will be able to buy back support from their local authority. However, a survey by the National Deaf Children’s Society raises serious concerns that this is simply not happening. The society found that of 66 local authorities where a deaf child with a statement of SEN was enrolled in an existing academy, in only 17 of these local authorities were the academies buying in support.

So what is happening to the deaf children in the other 49 local authorities? The society suspects that many local authorities are providing services free of charge, but that clearly will not be sustainable with greater numbers of academies. The worst case scenario is that children with sensory impairments are going without the support they need. NDCS is aware of examples where this is currently happening—for instance, in one local authority in Yorkshire and the Humber, where uncertainty over funding and buy-back has left deaf children totally unsupported.

In Committee, the Minister stated that he recognises this is a continuing problem, and that was very welcome. However, I would like him to go further and commit to finding an urgent solution to this problem. I recognise that it is not a new problem. However, if the Academies Bill is going to make matters worse, surely the Minister has a responsibility to act now before the Bill becomes law. In Committee, he suggested that “partnerships among schools” will clearly be the best way forward. Will he say a little more about how this will work in practice? How will these partnerships be funded? What support and guidance are being provided to schools to develop them? How many partnerships are there in place already? Most importantly, what evidence is there that these partnerships will ensure that every child with low incidence needs gets the support that they need?

The Minister also stated that academies will have access to top-up funding to cover the costs of support for children with low incidence needs. He went on to say that this will be funded by the local authority from its schools budget. Will he confirm that this is the same schools budget which will be cut if a large number of schools convert to academies? If so, how can these specialist support services be funded and provided on a reliable and sustainable basis?

The Minister stated that if the academy fails to secure the necessary support, it will be in breach of its funding agreement, and that the Young People’s Learning Agency can investigate, following a complaint. In Committee, the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, made the important and obvious point that the YPLA is not an inspection agency. In response, the Minister stated that voluntary organisations will monitor the situation. However, surely he must agree that this is a very weak and unacceptable safeguard against the risk that children with low incidence needs will be denied the support they need. Many voluntary organisations simply do not have the capacity to monitor provision in large numbers of individual academies across England. It is not appropriate for such organisations to act as a watchdog, relying on them to make sure that the Government and academies fulfil their legal duties towards children with special educational needs.

My amendment would move funding for specialist support services out of the schools budget and into the LEA budget. This would protect these services from some of the unintended consequences to which I referred earlier. In Committee, the Minister did not set out his view on this. If it is his view that this amendment should not be passed, I should be grateful if he could explain why, and what alternative remedy will be put in its place. My amendment would also give the Secretary of State the power to make alternative arrangements if specialist support services in any particular area are inadequate.

In his letter, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, noted that academies will in future be free to buy in services from other providers. In light of the difficulties that some local authorities have in meeting the needs of children with low incidence needs, I recognise the appeal of this and hope that this option will be explored further, as I have no desire to prop up services that are not doing a good job. However, I stress that this needs to be fully thought through and fully planned for.

I very much welcome the fact that officials have met with the National Sensory Impairment Partnership, as the noble Lord, Lord Hill, pointed out in his letter. I have been told that the partnership also welcomes this and believes that there has been a useful discussion and exchange of views, which it is keen to continue. However, it does not believe that there has been sufficient progress in resolving the outstanding questions and concerns.

The partnership believes that the Government should set up a time-limited working group that will consider alternative arrangements and make urgent recommendations. This group should include representatives from the Department for Education, local authorities, professionals, head teachers of academies and maintained schools, and parents. I firmly agree with the partnership. If the Government wish to show that they are serious about addressing these important concerns about specialist support services and diseconomies of scale, it is imperative that a working group be set up immediately, and I very much hope that the Minister will give me a positive reply to this proposal, which would do much to alleviate the concerns.

Children with low incidence needs may, by definition, be fewer in number. That cannot be an excuse to pass a Bill which would potentially prevent many from getting the support that they need. I urge the Minister to do more than just recognise that there is a problem. He must find solutions before this Bill is allowed to pass. I beg to move.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Wilkins, as I did with regard to her amendment in Committee. I agree with my noble friend and share her concerns on specialist support services for children with low-incidence needs. I also agree that the Minister has not yet, I fear, provided a satisfactory response on these important concerns. I also reiterate the point made by my noble friend that the Government’s desire to pass the Bill speedily must not be at the expense of children with low-incidence needs.

In Committee, I highlighted my concerns about the impact of the Bill on the range of services delivered by specialist support services outside school. For example, many services provide pre-school support directly to families and children to aid language acquisition and to teach Braille. Support may also be given to ensure that children with visual impairments have the necessary independent living skills. Such support is essential if we wish to ensure that children with low-incidence needs are able to fulfil their potential and live independently later in life. The cost of failing to provide such support is likely to be prohibitive to individuals with low-incidence needs and also to the Government’s welfare budget. I am concerned that such services may be compromised if the schools budget for specialist support services is cut when a large number of schools convert to academies. When it comes to low-incidence needs, surely it is vital that our limited resources are pooled and used effectively to fund the services and ensure the best possible value for money.

I am concerned also that these unintended consequences will result not only in wastage but also in very poor value for money. These concerns are shared by the Special Education Consortium. I regret that the Minister did not address the concerns that I expressed in Committee that such preschool services would be undermined by the Bill. I strongly urge him to do so today.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

My Lords, I am pleased to follow the noble Lord, Lord Knight, because, as he will recall, our board of education was anxious to work with the then Government on that Bill. We were very supportive of what was emerging in the Bill and we were as saddened as others by its eventual fate. I therefore thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for bringing forward the amendment—and I do not always say that about her amendments. However, I do on this one because everyone in the House, as we have heard, has good reason to be sympathetic to the principle of PSHE and wishes to see it delivered, at the highest possible standards, across our education system.

That may prompt noble Lords to ask why the church so often seems to be in the forefront of those resisting this kind of development. It is a good question. I do not always appreciate the answers I get from within my own constituency but, at the heart of it all, something needs to be said in this debate before we get carried away with all the positives and affirmatives: there are implications for some of our understandings of childhood and we must not go down the Pollyanna school of pedagogy. None the less, we all appreciate that something gets lost when some elements of children’s education come in earlier than is perhaps appropriate to the well-being of the child at quite an early age.

The motives of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, are honourable and I support the underlying principle, but I do so in the spirit of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for two reasons. First, there is not much detail in the amendment and I need to know a great deal more about what is described here as PHSE. At what age will it be introduced? As the Academies Bill will affect primary as well as secondary schools, the question of age kicks in. I want to know more about its content and whether it will be consistently provided across the country and by whom. All this seems to be within the purview of the curriculum review, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has referred. Out of that may come more detail which will enable some of us to give a fair wind to the spirit of the amendment.

I wonder whether this is the place to pursue this important agenda, partly because, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and others, have said, it applies only to academies. If it is as good as many believe it is, it ought to be good for all, not only for some. I would support a process that would enable this to become part of the agenda for all our children and not only for some who happen to be in schools which have converted to academy status. While I support wholeheartedly the spirit of the amendment, I would not be able to go into the Lobby with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for those reasons.

I look forward to the debate continuing and to engaging with this Government, as we did with the last, to achieve something that will be for the common good of all our children. We want them to experience and enjoy relationships, as given by God, so that they can have fulfilled lives—sexually, in terms of their health, in terms of their economic management and, most of all, in terms of their personal well-being and delivery of their potential.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, this has been a stimulating and diverse debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for her amendment. Academies have the advantage of being able to teach in a way that they think appropriate to their pupils. That would be a plus in making PSHE a curriculum requirement and we could get it started in the academy set-up.

I agree that it is sad that PSHE has not been included in the curriculum as a result of bits being struck out of rushed legislation in the final days of the previous Government. However, that is as it may be; I can see no reason why we should not start with this Bill and see at a later stage whether it needs extending. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said that PSHE is taught in practically every school, yet we hear from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, that it is taught neither well nor in a way that young people approve of and can gain from. So it is clear that there is a need for rather greater teacher training, too.

I am only sad that my noble friend Lord Northbourne is not here, because he would have stressed, as have I on previous occasions, that here is an ideal framework within which to teach parenting. I am talking not just about relationships with one’s own parents but also, and much more importantly, about the relationship that a parent will have with their children and their responsibilities to the rising generation. That will be of enormous value to young people when they think about whether to use contraceptives at the age of 10 or, better still, to refrain from sex altogether. When I was chair of the Broadcasting Standards Commission some way back, a lot of issues of this kind were brought to us by worried and concerned parents. What children see on television today, and sometimes even hear on the radio, is enough to make it important that we educate children as early as possible to deal with these situations.

My thanks still go to the mover of the amendment. If we are pushed to a vote on it, my instinct will be to go into the Lobby with her. In the mean time, we all need to think about even more ways in which we can get over the important message behind all this.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I had not intended to speak today as I have not had the opportunity, for various reasons, to become engaged in the Academies Bill. I should like to ask the Minister a couple of quite simple questions. If this proposal were to be delayed today, what timetable would there be for bringing it back in the way that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, suggested? We are told that the Government have an education Bill coming along in the autumn. What guarantees can he give that this subject will be in that Bill?

I have heard at least four of the noble Baronesses whom I admire most in this House speak on opposite sides in this debate. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that this subject is different from all the others. I have said previously in this House that, unless we attend to the welfare of our young people, they will never learn the other subjects that they are in school to learn. This topic attends to their welfare. It ensures that they have the life skills and confidence to move forward in all the other subjects that they are trying to achieve with all the other hopes that they have in order to attain a good life position and life skills. I talk to a lot of children and remember my life in ChildLine, and I feel that unless this is grasped soon we will lose more children who do not understand the issues.

My noble friend Lady Howe has just talked about the influences around young people. I also talk to a lot of parents. They may often feel anxious about some of these topics being taught, but they are even more anxious about the influences on their children without having facts and information. In ChildLine, I talked to one child after another one and one young person after another who had curious and false information. I am told by my colleagues still working there that that continues. I have been out of ChildLine for 10 years and it is a great indictment that we have not yet got these topics in schools so that young people have, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, would say, their rights, because it is a right to have this information.

The Government should grasp this nettle now so that we do not lose time and more children. If they do not and if the noble Baroness does not divide the House, I should like the Minister to give us a timetable so that we know when this can be taken forward.

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Moved by

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

15: Clause 1, page 2, line 16, at end insert—
“( ) At least 25% of the people on the governing body of an Academy will be elected from among the parents of pupils at the school.”

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I return to an issue that I raised in Committee: ensuring that parents have proper representation on academies’ governing bodies. I should perhaps again declare my interest as president of the National Governors’ Association, whose views, not unnaturally, I represent.

Governing bodies have considerable responsibilities, as I think we probably all agree, and—this is not always acknowledged—they play a critical part in ensuring that our schools perform well for the children in our community. They are the schools’ accountable bodies, and therefore strong governing bodies are vital to the Secretary of State’s aim to improve school standards and accountability. The NGA is very committed to ensuring that a full range of skills and experience is represented on governing bodies and it actively works to improve the training, knowledge and skills of governors. For example, the NGA’s well respected induction publication, Welcome to Governance, is accompanied by a test and certification process.

NGA members also strongly support the need for governing bodies to represent not just parents but the full range of local stakeholders who also have a great interest in the success of the school. At this point, I should say that I fully support Amendment 17A in this group in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharp and Lady Garden.

In Committee, I listened to the reluctance of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, to prescribe further the composition of governing bodies for academies. Perhaps understandably, the noble Lord does not want to curtail the freedom of academies, and I support the desire to leave more autonomy to those who know how to run schools without too much interference from central government.

However, in outstanding schools—those which, if they apply, are likely to be fast-tracked to academy status—governance is likely to have been working well and to have provided an engine for a school to reach the point where it is rated as outstanding. Therefore, if the governing bodies of those schools, or fast-tracked academies, choose to contain a reasonable number of parents—I think that in Committee the noble Lord hinted that that was likely to be the case—could they not be commended by the Secretary of State as examples of best practice for all academies to follow?

I am of course pleased that this Government have been championing the role of parents in setting the ethos and direction of schools, but surely the way in which parents can do this most effectively is as members of governing bodies. I hope that the Minister can give a more satisfying answer to this point than he did in Committee. Sadly—I have never quite understood this but the previous Government certainly bear responsibility for it—academies are currently required to have only one elected parent member, although I am pleased to note that many have chosen to have more.

My amendment is modest and not too limiting. It requires only one-quarter of governors to be parents of pupils at a school. That is a long way short of a majority and therefore parents alone could not prevent an academy trust taking an initiative that parent governors did not support. However, it goes a small way to ensuring that parents have some influence in determining the strategy of a school. It therefore cannot be argued that the amendment limits the activity of a school or its trust. Without the amendment or something like it, the Bill will allow a reduction in the level of parental involvement, rather than the increase that the Government have promised.

As it stands, the Bill offers rather more central accountability in place of local accountability at the same time as reducing the number of parents required to be involved in holding the school leadership team to account. Also, election to a governing body is a democratic process, which is an important safeguard. More central accountability might be seen as a move towards more central control by the Secretary of State both in schools converting to academies and in any new academies being set up as free schools.

As I said, I hope that the Government will be able to give a rather more encouraging answer on the re-emergence of this amendment and also that they will be rather more appreciative of the considerable role that governing bodies play in this whole process.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

There will certainly be election. I must apologise, but I am not currently 100 per cent sure whether there is provision for election or not, and I will need to follow that up, but there will be election.

I was headed toward saying to the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, that I am sorry not to be able to be more helpful. I understand her point. I hope that she will spare the time to meet me with the NGA to talk about the matter more generally but, at this juncture, I ask her most respectfully to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much thank the Minister for the consideration that he has given. Of course, I am hardly completely satisfied, as he will understand. The conversation that followed the initial moving of the amendment expressed the view that we all share about the importance of governing bodies. I suspect that many other people in this room have been governors at some stage of their life. My experience goes back many years, to when there was not a great deal to be done other than consider meals and milk. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, for his contribution, because he put it in the wider community sense, and the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, for her point about the democratic process: how, so often, becoming a governor of a local school sparks off the base of the big society—as the Conservative side of the coalition was keen to put across to us all.

I will leave it at that. I thank all noble Lords, because quite a number spoke. I will withdraw my amendment and I certainly hope to have a meeting with the Minister and members of the NGA.

Amendment 15 withdrawn.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendment. The point has been well made by noble Lords on both sides of the House that there needs to be an element of planning. I suppose that it is for the Minister to make a decision about whether his Government spend money on surplus places or on building schools for the future. It is interesting that one day there is no money for the Building Schools for the Future programme and the very next day, from the same department, there is money to fund surplus places. Surplus places cost money and do not contribute to standards.

I want to raise a slightly different point, which I do not think has been mentioned so far. I should like an assurance that the Minister understands the impact of a new school on another school that might already be doing a good job of raising standards. I start from the premise that it is not only academies that will raise standards; many good schools that do not have academy status are already on the journey of turning round underperformance. They are in a fragile state but are improving—going from failing and underperforming to being successful does not happen overnight. During that important period, when they have good leadership and are changing their reputation within the community, and when parents are understandably nervous but are restoring their confidence in those improving schools, they need a bit of protection. I worry that if an academy opens with a blaze of glory, with new money from the Building Schools for the Future programme, as was indicated yesterday, that will undermine the progress that the school makes.

I am not in the business of defending failing schools—I have done my share of closing failing schools and replacing them with either maintained community schools or, indeed, academies. However, I am in the business of trying to support and nurture schools that have put in a lot of effort and are now improving. Quite honestly, if surplus places are built into a local system, it will not be the schools that are already strong and successful that are damaged but those that have already had a lot of state intervention and support and are on the journey to becoming good schools. I should like to hear the Minister’s comments on that aspect of the amendment. It is an excellent amendment and I look forward to supporting it.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I, too, am sympathetic to the amendment. It is particularly important to emphasise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about the number of places in schools that are already free. Quite apart from the complications that exist with new free schools entering into academy status, I should like to hear from the Minister whether the powers that he already has will allow him exactly the same right to make a decision, and whether having that in the Bill will make any difference whatever, given that presumably he will retain the right to make a decision based on whatever evidence may be brought to him that such a school will have a bad effect on other schools.

[Baroness Royall of Blaisdon]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. Most of the issues have already been raised and I certainly agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby, and my noble friend about surplus places. Later, many of us will be speaking to amendments relating to the role of local authorities. We do not know what the Government’s attitude to those amendments will be. The role of local authorities ensures that the key role of schools in their local community is properly considered. At the moment, that role is not present in the Bill, because local authorities are excluded from it. If local authorities in their current role continue to be excluded, the importance of this amendment grows. Someone has to take a strategic approach to legislation. Despite what the Government may say, one cannot just have schools springing up all over the place, not just because of the issue of surplus places but because of the key role of schools in the community. If the Government continue to insist that the Bill should apply to primary schools, it is even more important that someone should have an overview of the impact on schools.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I understand the Government’s desire to push this flagship policy forward as fast as possible to keep their momentum after a successful election. However, when one is making a revolution—this might be momentous in the culture of education—it cannot hurt and must be helpful, where there is an opportunity to delay for some months until another Bill arrives, to talk more with head teachers.

My concern all the time is that perhaps there has not been sufficient strategic thinking about what the impact of this change will be on every child. I do not doubt that many primary and secondary schools will welcome and want this. My concern is that we may be moving towards a three-tier system of public schools, academy schools and the rest, with many of our children in the poorest areas experiencing a poorer quality of teaching when they need as good teaching as—or even better than—those in more wealthy areas. That may not happen—I may be quite wrong and I hope that I am—but the more time that we give to thinking this through carefully, the more chance there is that I will be wrong.

I talked to a head teacher today who said how frustrated he was with the current system. Certainly things have to change, but I emphasise that the Minister has only recently taken up his Front-Bench post. I am sure that the Secretary of State has put a lot of time into consulting teachers, but it cannot hurt for there to be more time for the Minister to talk with head teachers and to think through what could be the consequences for all our children of these changes. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, it has been an extremely interesting debate and all sides have contributed a lot to one’s thinking. I am sympathetic to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry. Perhaps I should declare my interest as president of the NGA, because I think that the vast majority of governing bodies are responsible organisations that represent local areas considerably.

I agree that there are two points. Should primary schools be part of the scheme? Yes, I think that they should be. Are they so different that we have to wait for the next Bill to come through? I rather doubt that. We could begin the process now. The Secretary of State has considerable powers already and bodies such as diocesan boards are clearly strong partners.

Bearing in mind the issue of special educational needs, which is important to us all, I would like to know whether SEN pupils will be disadvantaged if we go down this route because they will not have the same backing from the local authority to provide the extra resource support that they are getting. That is my test. We could certainly begin with experiments now. I hope that the Minister can convince us that he will take a view on all these things before he gives the appropriate timescale for schools to apply to become academies.

[Lord Mackay of Clashfern]

My Lords, I very much follow the line that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, has taken. Assuming that some primary schools would eminently qualify—I rather thought that the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, said that there were some—I cannot see why it is right to delay the power to deal with them while you wait to see if others should join them. One has to remember that this is for primary schools and the time spent in primary school is comparatively short. We would deprive children who might well benefit from the system for a considerable portion of their primary school life. While delay is attractive from some points of view, it would damage those who are qualified now to obtain the benefit.

I believe that it is right for the Secretary of State to have discretion to receive these applications and to refuse those that he considers to be unsuitable or to delay them. I have no reason to doubt that he will exercise that discretion wisely. Apart from anything else, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, said, the Secretary of State will be judged and, if the schools are failures, that will come home to roost. I have no doubt that the noble Baroness is aware of that problem.

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Therefore, I recognise the points that have been made by my noble friend and by other noble Lords about primaries and their place in our national life, and we have reflected on them. I hope that my answer provides some reassurance and that, in the light of that, the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, can the Minister give the reassurance that I was hoping for? In the consideration of an application, I hope that the special educational needs side will be borne very strongly in mind, not least because early diagnosis of problems is very important for the future development of that group.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am happy to give that reassurance, but also to make the point that, as the noble Baroness, will know, because of other amendments which I have moved on SEN, with the support of this House we will include in the Bill a commitment that there should be absolute parity in all academies on SEN comparable to that in all maintained schools.

Education: Funding

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. I am fast learning the difference between another place and this House, and I consider myself fortunate to be in this place.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, the Minister was right to praise the previous Government for a lot of the things that went on regarding education. Equally, though, I fear that the Statement in both Houses underlines some considerable mistakes that have been made and the wasteful way in which resources have been used.

Given all our concerns about special needs and schools in deprived areas, not least with the Academies Bill going through, I am thinking about the school buildings that are going to be left half-done, as it were. There is this attractive and clearly well qualified group of five people set up to look at some of these areas. Will the Minister assure us that they will be looking at both deprived areas and deprived needs as one of the major priorities for spending any money that they can find, and that they will move faster?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will ensure that the terms of reference for the independent review are available. If they have not already been placed in the Library, they should be. I take the noble Baroness’s point that it is precisely on those who need help most that one ought to be concentrating such capital as we have.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

78: Clause 1, page 2, line 15, at end insert—
“( ) At least 25% of the people on the governing body of an Academy will be elected from among the parents of pupils at the school.”

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, we have had one or two little forays about governors and governing bodies in Committee. I have to admit that I am surprised at how small a role governors appear to play in the Bill. I reaffirm my position as president of the National Governors Association in moving this rather specific amendment on its behalf. There is general concern about the small number of parents on governing bodies. I am probing, I hope, to get a full answer on what the Government intend to do about it.

The composition of the governing bodies of maintained schools is set out in the School Governance (Constitution) (England) Regulations 2007. The precise arrangements will depend on the type and size of the school, but, broadly speaking, the arrangements mean that at least one-third of governors will be parent governors; at least two governors, but not more than one-third of the total, will be staff governors; and at least one will be a local authority governor. Existing academies are not covered by any such regulations. Their governor arrangements can vary widely, depending on the views of the proprietor. Academies tend to have some form of limited company arrangement. Some will have a body which calls itself a governing body, while others will state that the school is governed by the limited company, but that there will be an advisory body which may include some parental representation.

The NGA very strongly supports the need for the governing body to represent different stakeholders with an interest in the success of the school. This Government—not least with their launch of the idea of free schools—have a track record of championing the role of parents in setting the ethos and direction of a school. However, surely the way in which parents can most effectively do this is as members of a governing body. An academy is currently required to have only one elected parent as a member of its governing body. One elected parent governor does not represent parental involvement of the kind and extent that government Ministers have been promoting in other ways—or, incidentally, of the kind of numbers involved which the NGA also strongly champions. Its preferred option is to have at least one-third of the governing body as parent governors. The NGA’s advice to any of the outstanding schools which will opt to convert to academies is to retain the current structure, which it believes has served the schools well to date—at least, there is no evidence to the country.

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[Lord Lucas]

Before my noble friend replies, perhaps I may ask my noble friend on the Front Bench a question. He cited a piece about parent governors being elected. Can he give me the reference to that, because I shared the belief held by my noble friend Lady Walmsley that that was not the case? I would very much like to correct that misapprehension.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I am grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate and very much back the issues that they have been pressing. It will not surprise the Minister to hear that, alas, I am far from happy with his response. His admission that “at least one” tends to drift towards “one” in people’s minds confirms the fairly obvious route.

I hope that the Minister will be able to work this whole situation through. If, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has said, we are going to be looking at vast numbers of academies, although I feel that that is somewhat on the horizon, it really will be the case that local people—the big society, which is back to the Government’s definition—will have to be properly represented and able to do the job that they will need to do to get the best education for all our children, which all of us want.

I have no option at this stage but to withdraw my amendment. However, I certainly cannot guarantee that I will not be back on Report unless I have something rather more palatable to chew on. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 78 withdrawn.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 108 and 178 in my name and that of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. I need not detain the Committee long at this time of night.

Amendment 108 is slightly different in that it concerns the application to convert to academy status, and is very much probing. At the moment, there is no provision in the Bill to withdraw an application once it has been made. Will the Secretary of State allow a maintained school to withdraw an application, and what will be the latest time by which a school can withdraw it? Presumably there will be some point of no return prior to the conversion date or the date on which the academy order is issued, which is the date that allows the school to convert to an academy and therefore to negotiate a funding agreement.

Amendment 178 proposes one of a permutation of clauses—or, rather, it proposes the same clause with a permutation of times in it—and proposes that an academy, once established as an academy, can revert to becoming a maintained school. Its purpose is really to provide a mechanism for the school to revert to maintained status.

It might be of interest to the Committee if I note that the seven-year rule in the Bill came from the Education Reform Act 1988 of the noble Lord, Lord Baker. The rule was originally five years, and Lady Blatch, whom many people in this House will remember, moved as a Back-Bencher that this should be changed to seven years on the grounds that any young person attending what was then a city technology college should be afforded the opportunity to complete a full seven years—the period of secondary education up to 18 years of age. The assumption was repeated by the Minister of the time, the noble Earl, Lord Arran, and it might be worth asking whether it continues to be the assumption that academies will provide sixth-form education. Certainly our primary schools and many of our special schools will not necessarily provide sixth-form education.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, my Amendment 179 is also in this group of amendments. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has mentioned, probably a number of us were sent them and we have used them in differing ways, but they are in fact extremely similar. My proposal is very much, as we argued in the first place, that if you have to go through a series of consultations before you take the specific step of applying properly to become an academy, the whole procedure of consulting the parents, the staff and everyone—the kitchen sink, as it were—to become an academy is the same as the procedure before you decide to come out of the process. All of that indicates the concern about the whole process. There are without doubt, as originally set out, a number of reasons why a school, having suddenly leapt to the idea that becoming an academy is definitely the way forward, might regret converting to one, so it should have the option of returning to maintained status if that is best for the education of its children.

I therefore join other noble Lords in what they have said about these amendments, and I hope the Minister will be able to satisfy us on these points.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I have tabled Amendment 92 in this group. I cannot resist commenting on the fact that we have been in debate on the Bill for 20 hours and are still only on Clause 2. That says something about the drafting. My amendment covers a simple point. I suspect that the Minister will say that the amendment is unnecessary, but it makes clear that the seven years’ period of notice the Secretary of State can give under Clause 2(2) in relation to payments to an academy may be given at any time. It follows a well worn precedent in normal law of contract, but if he assures the Committee that it is superfluous, so be it.

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[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with this amendment. Certainly, as regards independent schools, under the Charities Act a great deal of sharing of facilities is required. That is extremely effective. Academies will be very much in the same position. It would be interesting to know how this will work for them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for his probing amendment and I am happy to provide the assurances that he seeks. Perhaps I may mention that the new Titus Salt School, the site of which he will know very well, has built a car park for its staff that is available for people who use Roberts Park at weekends. The noble Lord will know exactly where I am talking about.

The model funding agreement requires academies to be at the heart of their communities and to share their facilities with other schools and the wider community—for example, by making their sports facilities available for local groups to use. That will remain a requirement on academies. We therefore entirely agree with my noble friend that it is important for a school to be at the heart of its community and that it should, as far as possible, encourage the community to make use of school facilities in the evenings and at weekends. The place to impose obligations on an academy is through the academy arrangements—either the funding agreement or the terms and conditions of grant. We therefore resist the imposition of this in the Bill but entirely sympathise with the intentions of the amendment.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Gould of Potternewton]

My Lords, I support this amendment, to which I have added my name, following the great disappointment—the sobbing to which my noble friend Lady Massey referred—of PSHE being removed from the Children, Schools and Families Bill in the wash-up on 7 April. I do so to hear whether the Government are prepared to reconsider their previous negative approach to this issue.

In the wash-up debate, the support for the removal of the clauses from the Bill focused on two main points. First, there was the lack of trained teachers, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. Secondly, there was the view about whether PSHE was being well taught. It certainly was in some schools but, as Ofsted said, that was in too few schools and throughout the country teaching was extremely patchy. Using the shortage of teachers as a reason for not teaching PSHE is standing the argument on its head. The PSHE continuing professional development programme, which was established by my noble friend Lord Adonis, has gone some way towards providing a pool of trained teachers. I accept that more has to be done, just as I accept that PSHE should be taught by accredited teachers. The answer is that if a subject is a statutory entitlement for pupils, it is guaranteed that it will be taught in teacher training. If it is not, there is absolutely no guarantee that that is the case. Therefore, the pool of untrained teachers will continue. As my noble friend Lady Massey said, adequate teaching materials should be provided, which is not always the case at the moment. We are talking about timing and flexibility in how the subject is taught, as long as it is taught well and covers the main issues that I will refer to.

I find it extraordinary that the coalition Government—Conservatives and Liberal Democrats—can reject something that prepares young people for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. In doing so, they reject the teaching of mutual respect; valuing each other, which the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, again referred to; loving and happy relationships; safety and health; and responsibility for oneself and others. Last week the Minister referred to the curriculum review, and the need to be innovative, be creative and respond to the needs of pupils. He will find the answer to that in the pamphlet written by his right honourable friend Iain Duncan Smith, Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens. I could quote most of the report in answer to why PSHE should be taught in schools, but one sentence refers to,

“the subject at the heart of this pamphlet: the need for intervention in the earliest years of a child’s life, thus ensuring that he or she fulfils their potential and is not subject to intergenerational transmission of disadvantage”.

Those are fine words and a fine concept, the fruition of which could be considerably assisted by making PSHE well taught in all schools by making it statutory. Disadvantage can be overcome if the teaching is there to do that.

If for no other reason, the teaching of PSHE makes economic sense because it is about prevention. It is about reducing health inequalities and social exclusion; safeguarding children and young people; reducing homophobic bullying and its consequences; and avoiding teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted illnesses such as HIV, and drug and alcohol misuse. It is about increasing the understanding of the short-term and long-term effects of alcohol on physical and mental health and sexual behaviour. While there is a clear need for sensitive and sensible messages on the avoidance of risk, which can lead to pregnancy or acquiring an STI or HIV, there is also a need to build the confidence—that is what it is all about—for girls to be able to resist the pressure and learn how to say no; and for all children in how to avoid exploitation and abuse.

I was interested in the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about condoms. He is right: there is a problem in condoms just being delivered to schools. Nobody tells pupils what they are for and why they should be using them sensibly, or not using them at all if they are not having early sex. That is not taught. We are saying that we should make sure the teaching goes alongside giving condoms to young children. At a school I visited it was fascinating. Young people were issued with condoms, particularly after school. Some of the younger ones thought that they were balloons and had great fun blowing them up, but some of the older ones sat around and had that important conversation, which should take place in schools.

PSHE teaches young people to respect each other and not to pressurise others to do something that they do not want to do. Teaching children and young people about physical and mental lifestyles will save the NHS and local authorities a considerable amount of money. A further aspect of PSHE that we do not always talk about is that it underpins the employability of young people through the development of personal and social skills which commerce and industry demand in their workforces. It also identifies the necessary flexibility to deal with changing workplace and industrial situations.

PSHE is about economic well-being and financial capability. It can teach about managing money and how to avoid personal debt, and the problems that result from that debt, which sometimes mean considerable cost to the state. It prepares young people for their future roles, such as parents, employers, employees and leaders. A groundbreaking survey, which will be launched in October, asked the views of parents, teachers and governors, particularly as regards the SRE aspect of PSHE in England. It was carried out by the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, the National Association of Head Teachers and the National Governors Association, in partnership with Durex.

The results showed a high level of agreement between the three groups, with 91 per cent of parents, 83 per cent of governors and 83 per cent of teachers believing that it is very important that young people have information on practising safer sex. While the majority of parents believe that PSHE-SRE should be taught in schools, part of the programme should be to engage those parents and provide them with information and practical support to help them develop the confidence to talk to their children about relationships, sexual health, alcohol and drugs, and their responsibilities and attitudes to others.

In that way, perhaps we can break down the intergenerational transmission of disadvantage described in the Early Intervention paper. PSHE teaching is an important way of building relationships with parents. Parents need to be more involved and lessons should not end in school. In the survey to which I have just referred, 84 per cent of parents said that what is taught in schools should be followed up in the home. The dropping of PSHE from the Children, Schools and Families Bill went against the views of parents, teachers, governors, the Youth Parliament and young people. Now that the Government have the opportunity to redress that situation, I hope that they will take it to heart.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I support a great deal of what has been said today. I shall go back rather further. In the early years of the previous Government, there was an attempt to introduce citizenship. My noble friend Lord Northbourne and I hoped valiantly that young children would be taught not just about their relationships with their parents, but about how they would bring up their children and what sort of a parent they should be. Sadly, the whole citizenship exercise disappeared into a vacuum of being taught all around the curriculum, so it was never followed through.

Following on from the Ofsted report, I wish to comment on the success that the schools mentioned had on things such as bullying. In some schools, from the moment a child enters, he or she has a mentor. It is another child’s duty to settle the new child into the school. It would be a huge help if that could be taken seriously and become part of the way in which all schools integrate the next generation.

It may not be totally fair to blame the Government—certainly not all members of it—for the way in which the previous Bill disappeared into the sand, but now that they have this opportunity to look at the situation again, I hope that they will come forward with sensible proposals.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey of Darwen and Lady Gould, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, have long been advocates and apostles of PSHE. Their difficulty has been that for a long time PSHE has been regarded as a “trendy left” view which has been dismissed on largely political grounds. Therefore, I want primarily to address my Conservative Party partners in the coalition. Three aspects of PSHE should give them pause.

The first was eloquently stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. It is that huge threats to children, such as drugs and alcohol, need to be discussed seriously within schools at a very early age—the middle of primary school—and onwards if people are to realise their immense and devastating consequences on children. They have to counter great pressure from, on one side, teenage magazines and what one might call youth culture, and, on the other, the supermarket culture. That is not easy to do.

The second issue, which supersedes any political views and which I again ask my partners in the coalition to consider very seriously, is parenthood. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been famous for the way in which he has consistently argued in this House that we have neglected at our peril the parenthood of the human species, which is long in growing up. Long ago, when I was Secretary of State, I remember proposing that parenthood should be a fundamental part of sex education. In other words, the emphasis should be at least as much on the responsibilities of bringing up a child—families will devote a huge part of their energies to that process—as on sex education itself. You cannot divorce the two and in some ways we have done great harm to ourselves by doing that. We now look at what one can describe in some quarters only as an abdication of parenthood. I do not refer just to people who are economically deprived but to the many who wrongly think that money substitutes for time in the bringing up of children. There are huge lesions to be mended in our relationships with children. I strongly thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and commend him on the consistency of his arguments in this field, which desperately need to be listened to.

Finally, on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others who said that there are insufficient qualified teachers, conceivably the coalition might think of something rather unique and announce that it is its intention to introduce compulsory PSHE—with the emphasis as I have described—in three years’ time. That would immediately attract many young people to thinking about teaching in that field. We try to do everything instantaneously. Education, like growing a tree, is a slow process, and we need to think in terms of how one can obtain responses further down the line. In this case, many young people and many others who are coming into the profession would seriously think about a responsible approach to PSHE as part of the curriculum, although it may be unwise to introduce it immediately.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I have also been a school governor in one form or another for getting on for 40 years. Training courses for governors are run not only by local authorities but also centrally, and they are quite detailed courses. There is also a training guide on the web. The noble Lord might like to look at the Department for Education website where he will find that under “governors” there is a sort of teach yourself course to show you what you should know to become a good governor.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, as president of the National Governors’ Association, perhaps I may be allowed to make a tiny comment. There has been a good deal of improvement in the training of school governors, but it is not uniform. I think there is a desire on the part of the National Governors’ Association to pay rather more attention to this side of things so that all governors are given some training before they start as well as ongoing training whenever that is necessary.

[Lord Bates]

My Lords, one of the great joys of this House is the realisation that when you raise an issue, you suddenly find several world authorities in the Chamber with the answers ready to hand, which is fantastic. I will not delay the Committee except to say this. Under the new mechanism the school will be separated from the local authority, which will not provide these functions going forward to an academy. Given that, could there be a role for the governing body of the academy to take a more detailed view—almost a form of Ofsted standards “light”—of the institution? That would provide some internal checks and balances while at the same time it would strengthen the governing body’s understanding of what is actually going on in the institution for which it is responsible.

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[Baroness Wilkins]

Amendment 97 does not sit easily with the other two amendments in this group and is on a separate area. Therefore, we are moving on. This probing amendment seeks firm reassurance from the Government on how the Academies Bill may impact on specialist support services for children with low-incidence special educational needs and disabilities. I am focusing my remarks on specialist support services for deaf children, but these issues are applicable to other children with low-incidence needs, such as those with visual impairments.

The National Deaf Children’s Society, to which I am indebted for its advice on this issue, estimates that there are more than 35,000 deaf children in England, of whom 90 per cent attend mainstream schools. However, deafness is a low-incidence need. As a result, in many schools it may be many years before a deaf child enrols. The reality is that deaf children are spread unevenly in mainstream schools across any one area. There is no reason why a deaf child cannot achieve as well as their hearing friends, provided that they get the support that they need from the start. This support is normally provided through local authority specialist support services, which cover a wide range. They include providing the school with amplification equipment, such as microphones; ensuring that there are follow-up checks and maintenance; training mainstream teachers on how to support deaf children; and, most importantly, providing direct support to families to help with pre-school language development.

These services are normally funded by the local authority, but academies will be independent from them. I am therefore seeking reassurance that deaf children will still receive the support that they need in a school system with a greater number of independent academies. Currently, in local authority maintained schools, schools funding is allocated to local authorities by the Government. While most of the money is then delegated to schools, local authorities will usually retain or top-slice some money to fund services, such as the specialist support services for deaf children. The service then provides outreach support free of charge to all local authority maintained schools in its area. Where a school becomes an academy, any money retained or top-sliced will be taken away from the local authority and given straight to academies, which will be expected to buy in any specialist support that their pupils will need. But if a child has a low-incidence need, such as deafness, the cost of meeting this specialist support to one individual academy will be proportionately greater. The economies of scale that operate at a local authority level will not exist at individual academy level. I am deeply concerned that any extra funding that academies receive will not cover the costs for these necessary services, which may result in deaf children not getting the support that they need. This is not a theoretical risk.

The National Deaf Children’s Society is already aware of a number of cases in existing academies where deaf children have gone without the support that they need. Last year, when the NDCS did a survey of local authority specialist support services for deaf children, it asked whether any academies in their areas bought in support for any deaf children who were enrolled at those academies. I am shocked that nearly three-quarters of academies did not buy in any support, which raises alarm bells as to how deaf children in these academies are being supported, if at all. Surely, that is an inefficient way of funding specialist support services for deaf children. This top-slice money that academies will receive will go to all academies, even if they do not have a deaf child on their rolls. Does the Minister share my concern that this will be poor value for money?

My amendment aims to address these concerns. The first part would amend the School Finance (England) Regulations 2008 with the intended effect of moving funding for specialist support services for low-incidence special educational needs from the schools budget to the core LEA budget. This would prevent funding for specialist support services for low-incidence needs being top-sliced and spent inefficiently in the way in which I have described. I would welcome a statement from the Minister on how the department will address this matter.

I am all too aware that local authority specialist support services in some areas are not as good as they should be. For that reason, the second part of the amendment would also give the Secretary of State the power to make alternative arrangements if this is the case. I believe that the Government need to take urgent action to set up a working group to consider whether alternative arrangements, such as parent-led services, might offer a better way in those areas of delivering such services. I urge the Minister to ensure that any such working group includes representatives of children with low-incidence needs as well as their parents.

However, any alternative arrangements need to be carefully thought through and planned to ensure continuity in the service that deaf children receive. It is not good enough simply to throw our cards in the air and hope for the best. Government figures show that deaf children are already 42 per cent less likely to do as well in their GCSEs as other children. It is vital that this Bill helps us to ensure that deaf children get the support they need, regardless of the type of school they attend. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me on this. Should he not do so, I will return to this issue on Report.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much support the probing amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Wilkins. I agree with my noble friend and I am glad that she indicated that it is not suitably grouped. I share her concerns over the impact of the Academies Bill on specialist support services for low-incidence special educational needs and disabilities. I also am grateful to the National Deaf Children’s Society for its briefing.

In particular, I am concerned about the impact of the Bill on outreach services to pre-school children. Parents are at the heart of a child’s learning, as we would all agree, but the parents of a child with special educational needs or a disability need extra help, as well as the child. In many cases, this extra help is provided by the local specialist support services. We have heard about the important role that local authorities play in that. For example, the parents of children with communication difficulties need guidance and support on how to communicate effectively with their child. Without such support, it would be far more difficult for these children to acquire language and to develop communication skills at the same rate as their peers. A huge responsibility rests with helping the parents.

We risk condemning children with these communication difficulties to a life of underachievement before they even begin school. We have already heard from my noble friend Lady Wilkins just how far behind they can fall if they do not have early access to the services they need. Almost certainly, when such children start school, the school they attend will be forced to provide costly catch-up support.

There is a range of other pre-school services that families of other disabled children will find invaluable. I am very concerned that if funding for these services is delegated to academies, they may be unable or unwilling to invest in pre-school services. I am also concerned that it may be unsustainable for existing providers to do this if much of their funding is reduced as a result of the Bill. Like my noble friend Lady Wilkins, I would warmly welcome reassurance from the Minister that the Bill will not risk undermining these valuable pre-school services for disabled children. We are all urging the earliest possible testing for special needs. If ever there was a need, it is for this group of children.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

There is in fact no sector of education that has more experience of academy-type schools than special education because of the existence of a large number of non-maintained special schools that are sponsored and managed by outstanding charities such as Barnardo’s and a number of other charities whose presidents are in the Chamber this evening. They are entirely independently managed but take their pupils largely or wholly by way of referrals from local authorities.

The improvement of special educational needs provision was of great concern when my party was in office and I know that it will be of great concern to the Minister. During my time in the department, I looked at this in detail and, so far as I could tell, there is no difference in inspection grades, quality or responsiveness to the needs of the special education community between maintained and non-maintained schools. There are sectors where schools that are maintained or non-maintained perform better and sectors where they perform less well. EBD is a classic case where special schools, whether maintained or non-maintained, perform less well.

Indeed, this is an area that needs a significant injection of new dynamic energy of the kind that academies could well breathe into the special schools sector. However, I saw no evidence that a school being managed in the maintained system or in the non-maintained system, which actually gives it greater independence in management than academies have, made a difference either to its responsiveness to the needs of pupils with particular special educational needs or to its maintained collaboration with local authorities, because the whole pupil referral base of these schools depends on the local authorities being willing to place their pupils in them. I therefore do not share concerns about the principle of academies in the special schools sector.

On the contrary, in crucial areas of special educational needs, particularly EBD, the dynamic innovation and attention to the needs of particular sectors that academies can bring could lead to significant improvements in provision and could enable existing special schools to expand their provision and to adapt to improve the way in which they meet the needs of pupils with special educational needs in ways that enhance the overall quality of the state education system.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I have just one query. I am grateful, as everyone is, for the time the Minister has already given to this whole area—we have had a whole session on it—and I am enthusiastic about the variety that will be available through the plans under the Bill. However, I am slightly worried that the overall cost might go up if the local authority is less involved in the whole set-up. It might contract out some of its provision. It might do that now, but it might need to do even more than that. Is that likely to put up the cost of meeting the special needs that really must be met if we are to do our duty by those with them, as we all want to do?

[Lord Low of Dalston]

My Lords, Amendment 83 proposes that Part IV of the Education Act 1996 applies to academies as it does to maintained schools. Part IV contains what is commonly known as the SEN framework, which makes provision for pupils with special educational needs and covers the assessment and statementing process, admissions, the delivery of services, the need to have regard to the SEN code of practice, and so on. The exclusion and disciplining of pupils with SEN are dealt with elsewhere in educational legislation and are the subject of later amendments.

On Monday, we debated amendments that sought to ensure that academies’ funding agreements contained all the requirements that Part IV of the Education Act 1996 lays on maintained schools in relation to pupils with SEN. The Minister very helpfully agreed to consider how best to achieve parity between academies and maintained schools, and to come back with proposals on Report. I must apologise to him and to the Committee that I could not stay for his reply on Monday on account of needing to attend a function elsewhere, but I read his reply in Hansard and found it most helpful. I thank him and ask him to accept that no discourtesy was intended.

We discussed those amendments then simply because they came up earlier in the Bill, but their scope was somewhat narrower than that of Amendment 83. They provided simply that funding agreements should incorporate Part IV of the Education Act 1996. Amendment 83 would provide that the requirements of Part IV are applied to academies as a matter of law and not simply as part of the contractual arrangement between the academy and the Secretary of State by which academies are governed.

The SEN framework in Part IV of the Education Act 1996 was developed with cross-party consensus. It makes provision for meeting the needs and providing support for children with SEN and disabilities, and gives parents a legal right to ensure that their children’s SEN are met. We know that the Minister is committed to ensuring that academies are subject to the full range of responsibilities in relation to children with SEN that maintained schools are under, but he believes that this can be brought about by contractual agreement. A better and altogether simpler way would be to provide that the requirements of Part IV are applied to academies as a matter of course, and as a matter of law rather than of contract. I suggest that for five reasons. First, it would ensure consistency across all academies. Secondly, it could ensure more comprehensive coverage of the rights and duties in Part IV.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

I thank the Minister for his reply to my noble friend. However, does he also recognise what policy in the past 10 years has recognised? These children—from difficult families that are complex to deal with—need a seamless provision of services. The Children Act 2004 enshrined a duty on all agencies to work together to safeguard and promote the welfare of vulnerable children. I spoke recently to the manager of a children’s home in Camden. He said, “I used to manage a private home which was reasonably good, but it is so much easier for me to run this home because the services in Camden are so well connected. Mental health and social services work with the children and their families”. The general principle that I think my noble friend is driving at is: please reassure us that there will be no risk of fragmentation. I suppose that is the word. It proved so hard to get everyone to work together in the best interests of the child. We certainly would not want to put that in jeopardy.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I do not think any of us realised that the Minister was going to reply quite so soon, before there was any other opportunity to support my noble friend Lord Northbourne’s point. One of the crucial issues is what we all know is happening and has been happening for 37 years, since Keith Joseph first mentioned the cycle of deprivation. All this has been going on and we have not managed to cope with it. The pertinent question is: who will get the right provision and the early statement for young people so that they can be helped at the earliest possible age? Who will ask that question for these individual children in this state? On any view, they cost us all—the individual and the country—huge sums of money. We have really failed in this way. We have all been talking about it for 37 years. I would very much like to have that point addressed.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I did not hear my noble friend answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about the curriculum. These children have broken free from the ordinary structure of education and need to be reconnected with it. That process of reconnecting with it is in no way aligned with the idea of a curriculum based on English, maths or other academic subjects. You have to hook them on something to which they relate and then you can bring them back to academic work or whatever else is necessary to build their career. You have to be able to let go everything that they have rejected about the school and find another way into their psyche.

I am sure that my wife, who spends a lot of her time working with these people when they reach prison, would endorse that. She uses family ties because by the time most of these kids reach prison they have a family of their own. They probably do not know their father and do not have much contact with their mother, but they have children and they can be made to reconnect with them or with the remnants of their family. That can give them the motivation to get back into what you might call school work. But to contaminate that process with school work risks the whole process; you have to be able to adapt what you are teaching to the needs of these children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Lucas]

Amendment 36, which is in my name, expresses an ambition which I understand, having listened to the Minister, is clearly beyond the scope of anything that will be put into the Bill. I none the less hope that he will agree with me that it should be our ambition that outstanding schools which become academies, as they have the opportunity to expand, will look to bring in children from way beyond their geographical catchment area—to extend that excellence to those parts of their surroundings that are not blessed with outstanding schools but are blessed with children who require additional attention and the best possible environment. That should be part of our ambition, as it has been part of the history of the academies programme to look first at those who are disadvantaged.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I added my name to and support very much the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Listowel. All the speeches I have heard emphasise the need for the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, about the need for a single admissions code. If there is this doubt—there certainly is, judging from the number of representations I have received about whether similar systems apply right the way through—surely there is a growing case for either having one system which applies to everybody and sticking to it or, as has been suggested, including it in the Bill to take away any misconceptions that still exist.

We should all congratulate the previous Government on their achievement on looked-after children. Quite a group of them have clearly benefited, the figure having moved from 1 per cent up to 9 per cent, which my noble friend mentioned as successes in education. We need to go much further. I understood from the Minister that instructions were already going out to ensure that the schools themselves had up-to-date instructions, but if not they would be put on the net. A number of us would have liked to have leapt to our feet to say, “Not just on the net, please—write a letter so that it is clearly available and everybody will know that there is just one system that really applies to them all”. I hope that he will address that point, although maybe he has done it already.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I very much support the spirit of the amendments. We have had assurances from my noble friend that the academies will be obliged to follow the admissions code, which is certainly the expectation that we have all had. I particularly support the amendment in the name of my noble friend Lord Lucas. As I said earlier, I feel strongly that if the academies are to fulfil their commitment of covering the whole range of abilities, something like a lottery system combined with the banding system will be the best way to do it—indeed, the only way of ensuring it. That would entail moving outside the immediate catchment area of the school and giving the academies an opportunity to produce a social mix of people from different catchment areas and to produce a range of abilities.

I know the Minister’s view is that this is outside the parameters of the Bill, but I hope that it can be borne strongly in mind. I passionately believe that some form of banding is essential if one is to get a full range of abilities within a school. One will otherwise have the problem, very cogently explained by our colleague from Northern Ireland, of a community either of privilege or lack of it gradually growing up contained and homogenised. That is something that none of us in any part of the House wants.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I have no wish, in what I am saying, to stray at all from the current arrangements for the pupil composition of church schools, which seem to me on the whole sensible, undogmatic and tolerant. Indeed, in the village of Brockdish and every village that I know of, of course schools do not discriminate on admissions. What the noble Baroness refers to is a very small number, as I understand it, of extremely zealous schools. I have no means of knowing whether she is right or wrong but, if she is right, that is something that we should address specifically. However, to mark the whole of the church school sector, which includes thousands of excellent schools, as carrying the imprint of the excesses of the tiny number that she is talking about and amending the legislation on that basis seems to me counterproductive.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

We should all be extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. He admitted his faith and I shall admit mine—I, too, am an Anglican. He has put forward a sensible approach on all this. The Church of England is part of the history of this country and part of the way in which this country has developed. It is perfectly sensible to want more Anglican schools—and schools of different forms of faith—to be set up. I certainly hope that the vast majority of them will apply the same open conditions of selection as apply to all maintained schools.

This is all crucial in what we are trying to achieve, which is better standards of education for all. I say in response to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that if humanism is a faith, belief or whatever she wants to call it, it is possible to set up schools along those lines. I totally agree that humanism has an ethical base and I would expect just that.

At this stage, I will take a different line. I come back to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, about what was understood under the Equality Act. I want to be absolutely certain that there is agreement. There was endless debate in your Lordships’ Chamber on this. There was agreement but it was not satisfactory to all sides. However, we all agreed to accept it. Any diversion from that in how staff are appointed or promoted would be very much a backward step. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure us. It is a difficult and emotional subject for most of us, but I am sure that there will be a way for him to deal with it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating debate, inevitably ranging over a lot of issues. I have been struck again and again by the firm agreement on the requirement for academies, in whatever form, to partner and to be the supporting school for schools in difficult situations that need that form of help. That is very important.

The other crucial thing is what has been put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. The two groupings of schools might not otherwise be considered to be within the scope of academies. I am tied up with some art schools and music schools and I know how difficult it is for them to get support from local authorities. Extra support and involvement in the academy status would be a good idea. I hope that I am wrong about the boarding school side of things. It is probably a bad idea to have too many children grouped in special needs circumstances. Certainly, to be in a school that can provide help, support and encouragement is excellent.

Above all, we must ask the Minister to work out a way in which he can satisfy us that, once the academy status is confirmed, these schools will partner deprived schools. On the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, a form of formal or informal monitoring after it has taken place might help as well, but we will need a report on how things are going.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, this is a hugely disparate group of amendments. We have covered a lot of topics and it has been difficult sometimes, despite the intelligence of Members of the Committee, to see any common thread in what has been discussed. I want to return to the issue raised by the amendments in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln. They deal with the absolutely key issue of the catchment area from where the academy will draw its pupils.

In recent years, I have been increasingly concerned over the whole issue of catchment areas, largely because we have seen that, where there is a good, strong school, parents who can afford to do so understandably—I do not blame them for it at all—cluster around the school and buy or rent houses in the area. There are even stories of parents being slightly economical with the truth in all sorts of interesting ways about where they live in order to claim that they are within the catchment area of a good school. Meanwhile, the schools most in need are in the most deprived areas. The people who live near those poor schools, often on local council estates, do not have the option of moving. They cannot buy their way into the catchment area of a good school.

This is one of the big issues for academies. I know that in Hackney the academies do not have catchment areas, but they do use banding and lotteries. I know that my noble friend Lord Lucas has an amendment—for various reasons, it is not in this group—that raises the issue of banding. I ask the Minister to think seriously about the issue of “wholly or mainly” in a local area and about the freedom which grammar schools have had since their inception and which grant-maintained schools had in their day—and which, as I say, many existing academies have taken—that allows them to go outside their area, maintaining the inclusiveness of the intake by means of banding but giving it a social mix or even a mix of talent.