Children and Young People
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I shall try to get the words out in the right order now. I agree that many children in children’s homes have had failed foster placements. Our statistics show that 29% of children placed in children’s homes have had five or more previous placements. I have met quite a few children who have had over 20 placements. That is why we set up the expert working group: to look at how to improve the quality of support these children receive, building on good practice. This group has now reported to Ministers, and Ministers will make announcements on this shortly. We recognise Break’s impressive record—four years is an impressive average length of stay—and that is why we invited Hilary Richards of Break to be a member of the department’s expert group on quality.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, before he lost his job, the previous Minister for Children, Tim Loughton, said that it was a scandal that there remains under this Government,
“an enormous and widening attainment gap”,
between children in the care of the state and their peers, and that this is still evident throughout the school system and in further and higher education. In welcoming the noble Lord to his brief, which I think includes educational attainment, can he tell the House what priority he will put on the educational attainment of children in care and what steps he will take to close the attainment gap?
Lord Nash
The Government have strongly encouraged local authorities to have a senior educational officer known as a virtual school head to track closely the progress of every child in care and ensure they receive the support they need. Children in care are entitled to free early education for two year-olds, the pupil premium while at school and the new 16-to-19 further education bursary. Every child in care has to have a personal education plan setting out how they will be supported to fulfil their potential. Every school, including academies and free schools, has a legal duty to have a designated looked-after child teacher, and children in care get top priority in school admissions.
Young People: Staying Put Scheme
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I think that I am right in saying that the extension to the age of 25 for those who are in education was a fairly recent extension from the age of 21. I will take up the noble Baroness’s second point with my honourable friend Mr Timpson.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that none of us as parents would want to be forced to turn our son or daughter out of the house on the day of their 18th birthday but that is happening to thousands of young people in care. The Minister has effectively said, as the Government constantly say, that it is up to local authorities. However, this is a very special case because these young people are in the care of the state; the Government have ultimate responsibility for their well-being and cannot pass the buck to local authorities. Will the Government give young people in care the entitlement to stay in their placement after the age of 18, if it is in their interests to do so, and ensure that local authorities provide the support for that to happen? Will they further ensure that any planned changes to housing benefit and welfare reform being considered by the Government do not further disadvantage young people in care?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, it is not a question of the Government seeking to pass the buck to local authorities. As the noble Baroness will know much better than me, that is where the statutory responsibility lies and where we think that it should be. Given those statutory duties, I am sure she will have seen the recent Section 251 returns around the funding that local authorities are putting into looked-after children—it has shown a small increase over the past year, which reflects the priority that is being attached to it—and the statutory framework that is in place.
On the noble Baroness’s second point about whatever changes may be made to the benefits system and seeking to make sure that the interests particularly of this most disadvantaged group of care leavers are taken into account, she is right that we need to make sure that those concerns are properly considered. I know that my colleagues will be doing that as policy is developed.
Schools: Parenthood Education
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I think that the contribution that parents make to school governing bodies is varied. The connection between parents and schools is an important one, but that goes beyond the direct parental role and into the whole provision of education.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the latest figures for teenage pregnancy rates—that is, for the year 2010—were the lowest for 40 years. That was driven by the Labour Government’s strategy centrally, delivered locally by teenage pregnancy co-ordinators. However, the coalition Government have disbanded the very small teenage pregnancy unit in the Minister’s department, which led on that. A third of the teenage pregnancy co-ordinators have been cut, many in high-risk areas. Do the Government have any concerns about losing the considerable and very difficult progress made in turning this intractable and historic situation around? What action are they taking to ensure that the downward trend in teenage conceptions continues, including, but not exclusively, the provision of sex and relationship education in schools?
Lord Hill of Oareford
The noble Baroness is right that the trend has been falling. As she says, the figure is at the lowest level since 1969. That is very welcome and I recognise that it is obviously in part down to the work of the previous Government. It is obviously important that the work delivered through PSHE and sex and relationship education is carried forward. That is something we are reviewing as part of that broader review to which I have already referred. Also, on the delivery of these services, and the progress that has been made on bringing down teenage pregnancy rates by local authorities, the Government think that the local authority is the lead on this. There is a quite a variation between different local authorities across the country but I am certainly in agreement with the noble Baroness that we need to make sure that that work continues.
Schools: Classics
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, for initiating this debate and giving us the opportunity to listen to many interesting and informed contributions this afternoon—all passionately in favour and convinced of the benefits of having the opportunity to learn an ancient language or study classical culture. I share that passion. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to study Latin, despite going to a state school and coming from a very working-class background in which no one had any idea about the classics. None the less, and despite having a teacher unlike that of the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, called Mr Durden, who was very much like his name, he did not put me off and I came to love Latin.
I share the views expressed this afternoon about the benefits that spill over into other areas of activity and study. In my case, I have no doubt that the logical thinking, the accurate application of rules and structure, and so on, helped me in my subsequent university-level studies, which were not in the arts but in science. Like the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, I think that there is great crossover in the skills gained from classical languages into science and technology. As the excellent briefing reminded us, we perhaps all agree with the classic comment by Dawkins that what classics has always done is to teach people fundamentally how to think.
Obviously, over recent years, there have been many impediments to sustaining the teaching of classics. We are all concerned about the disparity that exists between private schools and the state sector, with many children in state education, unlike me, not having the opportunity to study classics. The removal of classics from the matriculation requirement of some of our major universities some years ago was significant, leading to fewer schools teaching the subject, fewer teachers being able to teach the subject and the Training and Development Agency for Schools, I understand—the Minister will correct me if this is not still the case—putting a cap on the number of teachers each year who can be trained for the postgraduate teaching certificate to teach Latin and Greek.
It is remarkable that, despite that rather hostile environment, the classics are clearly having a renaissance. There is clearly demand, including in the state sector, for the opportunity to study classics. The charity Classics for All, as the noble Lords, Lord Aberdare, Lord Stevenson, and others, have said, has played a major role in that. We have seen considerable evidence of some schools being innovative in experimenting with how they can provide classics teaching by joining together, providing after-school tuition and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, introducing primary school children to the classics, which is excellent. The stimulation of online resources, the e-course which the noble Baroness mentioned, and the Cambridge School Classics Project have also been very important.
Could the Government do more—arguably, by including ancient languages, at least, in the English baccalaureate? The Government have done more for classics, at least the languages, than they have for some other subjects, but there are still big issues about the supply of teachers, not having a comprehensive examination system and addressing the disparity that we have all mentioned with state schools. However, at least the Government have given their support in that way to the classics. If the Committee will indulge me, I wish that they had also done so for contemporary arts, culture and music, which we are now seeing disappearing from our schools because they are not included in the new performance management system, which is the English baccalaureate.
Schools: Pupil Premium
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
One of the important principles of the pupil premium is that schools can decide how to spend that money. If they are sensible they will go to a range of providers to help to narrow those gaps.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, it is welcome news that in the future schools will be required to report on how they spend the pupil premium but many pupils have already lost out because, according to Ofsted, the money that schools have had has been misspent. Will the Government go further now and ring-fence the pupil premium and give schools the proper guidance that my noble friend Lord Touhig referred to? That would ensure that the money really is focused on individual disadvantaged children with schools purchasing interventions that we know work.
Lord Hill of Oareford
Spreading good practice, yes, ring-fence, no, my Lords.
Education: Development of Excellence
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, on securing a debate on this very important topic which has such crucial relevance not only for the well-being of children but for so many aspects of our social and economic life. We have had an excellent debate, and I hope colleagues will accept in advance my apologies for not being able to do full justice in the limited time I have to the many knowledgeable contributions that we have heard today demonstrating the tremendous expertise across the House and the commitment to ensuring excellence for our children.
It has been said that much has been achieved in raising standards over the past 15 years, but how we achieve excellence for all children depends on our definition of excellence in education as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Manchester and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, reminded us. Exam results are crucial, but indicate only how well or otherwise a cohort of children has done. They do not tell us how far each child has achieved excellence or reached his or her potential, and that is primarily what we should strive for in excellence: the outcome for each child and whether it is the best that could have been achieved. Here I have great sympathy with the points raised by the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty.
It is important that we look at the Government’s record on this in the round. As we have emphasised around the House today, one of the key factors in achieving good outcomes for children is the quality of teaching, and therefore I applaud the Government’s decision to build on the measures introduced by my Government to achieve the best cadre of teachers ever. Raising the quality of new entrants, expanding the Teach First programme and focusing on continued professional development, which was rightly emphasised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, are welcome measures that will continue to have a positive effect on student attainment.
However, in respect of other government changes, the jury is out on whether they will improve outcomes for all children. Cutting all schools loose as academies and free schools, supposedly accountable directly to the Secretary of State, with no local accountability to parents or communities, will not necessarily raise standards for all. Indeed, I can see no evidence for the article of faith that is the Government’s mantra; namely, that we only have to set all schools and head teachers free in order to raise standards. If that were the case, we would have had a world-class education system decades ago when schools were left pretty much to their own devices. Instead, we had a two-tier system with excellence for a few, the rest written off as second class and a long tail of underachievement, the legacy of which is still with us today. The Government have not produced any evidence to support their changes, so we will have to wait and see whether the focus on the EBacc without an equally strong commitment to vocational and technical education—which was called for by the noble Lord, Lord Baker, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and my noble friend Lady Taylor—moving from modular GCSEs to linear courses of study, raising the thresholds on grades and returning to an outdated history curriculum will improve outcomes for all children.
However, there is one thread running through the Government’s measures that causes me concern; namely, that they are wholly focused on schools and what goes on in the classroom. Yet we know that the factors influencing attainment go beyond and start well before school. So far, we have not seen any priority given to effective measures to address the barriers to learning for disadvantaged children or giving all children the good start before school that is essential to their future development. Indeed, other government policies have seriously diminished the prospects of excellence for many of these children and young people, and I want to consider briefly two significant groups of children and how they stand now in relation to the totality of government actions.
The first group is disadvantaged children. The Government, and Nick Clegg in particular, have made much of the pupil premium as the measure which ensures additional help for disadvantaged pupils, including those with a disability or from black or minority ethic communities, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and my noble friend Lady Howells reminded us. Sir Michael Wilshaw, chief inspector, found that over half of schools said the pupil premium was having little or no impact on these pupils. Few schools could say how they were spending the money and, as my noble friend Lady Morris said, were not spending it on proven interventions for individual children. Leaving aside the fact that the pupil premium was not new money in the first place, the failure of most schools to use the fund to accelerate the progress of disadvantaged children must be of concern. Will the Minister say what action the Government are taking to ensure that all schools spend the money in the way intended and show demonstrable progress for these young people?
Not only is the pupil premium not working to the benefit of disadvantaged pupils but these same pupils have been adversely affected by other government actions: the abolition of the education maintenance allowance, which was referred to by my noble friend Lord Lea, the downgrading of school sport, art, music and creative subjects, including design, which was raised by my noble friend Lady Whitaker, and cuts in school support for deaf and other disabled children. Scope has reported this week that two-thirds of families with a disabled child are no longer getting the local services they need. There are cuts to breakfast clubs and after-school activities and teachers are reporting more and more children arriving at school hungry. The poor PHSE in secondary school, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, will differentially affect children at risk of social and economic disadvantage. When will the Government’s review of PHSE finally be published?
International research established a long time ago that disadvantaged children in particular need the opportunity to develop non-cognitive skills through a wide range of enriching activities in order to be able to make the best of their educational opportunities. Indeed, this should not be a surprise because the best independent schools—have always had extensive programmes of extra curriculum activities to support their pupils’ learning and to raise the high aspirations that the noble Lord, Lord Bates, rightly identified as important. Opportunities for disadvantaged pupils in state schools to have their needs addressed and to participate in enrichment activities outside the classroom are being severely diminished under this Government, and this will have a significant impact on their educational attainment.
The second group of children are pre-school youngsters. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Taylor for raising this. Again, research here and abroad has long established the importance of a rich and stimulating experience for the pre-school child who needs to be cared for by parents or carers who understand the importance of supportive social interaction between adult and child as the vehicle for language and speech and social and emotional development. The noble Lord, Lord Framlingham, mentioned the cat sat on the mat. I do not know about that, but I am rediscovering Doctor Seuss and The Cat in the Hat at the moment with my grandchildren, and I very much agree with what the noble Lord had to say.
This actually was the basis of Sure Start, set up under the previous Government, which was a drive to improve the quality of all early—years settings and to introduce support programmes for those parents who needed help to understand what their children needed. We know that it is in these early years of life—well before the child goes to school—that the brain undergoes one of its most critical periods of development.
New scientific research reported only this week followed a large cohort of children for some two decades. It found that pre-school cognitive stimulation significantly predicts the actual amount of grey matter in the cortex of the brain at age 17; and therefore determines the very capacity to learn and think. So early years experiences actually shape for better or worse the neurological development of the child. Yet the Government have seriously undermined the opportunity for young children and their parents to get the support they need for that best start for every child. In 2012, the Government cut the funding for Sure Start, rolled it into a single early intervention grant, with no ring-fence for the early years. That was bad enough and has already significantly reduced provision for the youngest children and their parents. Now we discover that the early intervention grant is being abolished, with the bulk being top-sliced to pay for the nursery places for two year-olds, when we were led to believe that this would be funded with additional money.
A much reduced sum for early years is now simply going into the revenue support grant for every local authority; it is not ring-fenced, so early years provision will have to compete with all the other spending demands a council might have. I just wonder what this says about the Government’s real commitment to the youngest children and this crucial stage of development. It is quite clear that, without measures to enrich pre-school experiences, and therefore support the neurological development of many of our youngest children, their later potential to excel in school will be permanently impaired.
This debate has been about the measures necessary to achieve excellence in education; we have heard much about school structure, exam arrangements and what should be essential subjects. These are all important, and the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, had some interesting proposals on this, including his support for citizenship education, in which I am very interested. However, changing the architecture of the system will not produce excellence for all children unless there are also measures to remove the barriers to learning for disadvantaged children in school and to enhance the development of children before they get to school. On these measures, I am afraid, the Government are getting worse and not better.
Education (Amendment of the Curriculum Requirements for Fourth Key Stage) (England) Order 2012
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the Minister for that detailed explanation of why the Government are proceeding in this way. I would not argue with Professor Wolf’s recommendation that a blanket one-size-fits-all approach to work-related activities has served its time, as I think she said. I also agree that work-related activities should remain a key priority for schools and colleges, including, I would argue, for those key stage 4 pupils who would benefit. Accepting those conclusions, though, is not an argument for abolishing altogether the statutory duty to provide work-related activity and for absolving schools from that provision. The definition of work-related activity in the legislation that the Minister read out remains even more relevant today.
It is instructive to hear what employers have to say. Recently I attended a listening event with small and medium-sized enterprises in Manchester. I declare an interest as a policy adviser to the Chambers of Commerce. It was salutary how many of those owners of businesses complained about the preparedness of students now for the workplace, not in terms of being prepared to do the specific job that the workplace was doing but simply in terms of getting there on time, being expected to work perhaps from 8:30 pm to 4.30 pm and the general, basic teamwork skills that you need to deploy to be successful in the workplace. They were arguing that many schools prepare students very badly for that, even with work-related activity as a statutory duty.
Today I was sent some comments about this proposal from the Federation of Small Businesses. It says that it is disappointed at the proposals to remove the statutory duty to deliver work-related learning at key stage 4, and argues that the concept of work-related learning should be broader than purely work experience placements and should encompass helping students to gain a range of experiences and skills that they will need in the workplace, such as writing job applications, and work-based skills of the sort that I mentioned, such as timekeeping and so on, improving young people’s understanding of potential careers and jobs. In fact, the FSB argues that work-related skills and an understanding of business and enterprise should be gained at as early an age as possible. The statement that it put out today repeats the contention that we should start early with work-related learning, maybe in small doses, in order to embed some of those skills and knowledge about the workplace in our young people.
The FSB goes on to say:
“This is not to say that work related learning and work experience for young people is perfect and cannot be improved but in our view we cannot see any significant justification for its removal which outweighs the benefits of introducing young people to work related knowledge and experience at Key Stage 4. In our view this is an area of learning that needs to be strengthened rather than watered down”,
and it is concerned that:
“Removing it from the statutory curriculum will inevitably lead to it being sidelined”.
The British Chamber of Commerce has said that it endorses the FSB’s statement, so there is a range of concerns from employers and it would be good if the Minister addressed them when he replies.
A second concern is the consultation, which produced the result that 89% of the just short of 600 respondees said that they were opposed to the change that the Government are making, and gave various reasons for their concerns, which we can see in the consultation document, all of them reflecting some of the points that I have just raised and which the FSB has talked about. I found it rather—I was going to say “insulting”, and I am sure that the Government do not mean to do that. There is a great deal of detail about the kind of responses that people gave and their reasons for opposing this measure. Yet the consultation document simply says, in terms of next steps, that the Government have decided to proceed with removing the duty, without engaging in any way with the concerns that people have expressed and the reasons why they are opposed to the action that the Government are taking. That is something that the Minister may want an opportunity to develop.
There is a range of concern in the world outside, and I would like to bring all that down to four questions for the Minister, if he would be kind enough to think about them. First, if work-related activity continues to be important to the Government, as the Minister says that it is—I understand about the evaluation work that is going on, and the models that are being tested by colleges—why, then, are the Government abolishing the statutory duty to provide it rather than amend that duty to allow schools to be more flexible and to extend it for 16 to 18 year-old, for example? I know that the Minister has said that abolition fits in with the Government’s mantra about liberating schools and freedoms, but a lot of people are concerned that anything that is not in the national curriculum will be sidelined, as the FSB contends. Therefore it would be possible for the Government to have amended the duty rather than abolish it altogether. Why have they chosen abolition?
Secondly, why are the Government ignoring the overwhelming views of the people who took the trouble to respond to the consultation with very little explanation? Thirdly, will Ofsted specifically report on the extent to which schools are providing effective work-related activity, and on the quality of those experiences that the students are getting?
Finally, given that the Government are undertaking this evaluation and working with colleges to experiment on different models, at least for 16 to 18 year-olds, will they at some point produce guidance to illustrate what that best practice has been found to be? When the results of those projects are available to inform ideas about best practice, will the Government consider making that guidance statutory, so that schools and colleges at least have to follow what has been discovered to be the best alternative way of doing them? I would be grateful if the Minister could address those points in his reply if at all possible.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I preface my comments on the order with this: when one sits in this Room, sometimes, listening to the debate on an order that has been listed prior to one’s own, one often hears interesting things. I heard of something today called “rural proofing”, which I had never heard of before. It struck me that about 18 months ago, the Minister for Children, Sarah Teather, hinted that we might get child-rights proofing of policy before very long—or at least before this government comes to an end. Will my noble friend write to me to say how that is progressing?
On the order, I do not agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, that early experience of these issues is necessarily the best. They become more relevant later to the young person, when they get a bit nearer to leaving school and considering whether they are going on to further or higher education, or some training in employment. Of course, that is not going to happen before the age of 17 next year, and before the age of 18 a couple of years after that. Schools really struggle to find enough places for 14 year-olds. Many employers do not see it as terribly useful to have 14 year-olds knocking around their place of work.
I, too, received a briefing from the Federation of Small Businesses. I do not think any of us would disagree with the list of knowledge sets and skills that the federation wants young people to have before they leave school. However, having had a number of teenagers doing work experience with me for a couple of weeks, I do not think that young people really get those skills. I did my best to give them the best experience that I could, but they were certainly not training to become Peers of the realm—unless they would be prepared to stand for election.
Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
That this House regrets that the Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/1293) are both unnecessary and counterproductive as they would undermine the principle of all public services being inspected on a regular basis; undermine the professional oversight that is an essential part of good school governance; and run the risk of damaging children in cases where schools that have not been inspected then go into decline.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the background to this Motion of Regret is the regulations that determine the framework for inspection of schools in England by Ofsted. Section 5 of the Education Act 2005 sets out the duty of the chief inspector to inspect schools at such intervals as are prescribed in regulations. The 2005 regulations made under Section 5 provide that the maximum interval between school inspections should be five years. However, the Education Act 2011, the passage of which we debated last year, now enables the Government to exempt specific categories of school from the chief inspector’s duty to inspect.
This is the first set of regulations to be made under the new power and has the effect of exempting from any further routine inspection any school that receives the highest Ofsted grading, which, as we know, is currently “outstanding”. Thus, in future, every school that is rated outstanding will not be routinely inspected further by Ofsted unless the school itself requests an inspection, in which case it will have to pay for it. The Government resisted amendments in Committee that would allow parents or local authorities to trigger an inspection.
The Government’s arguments in support of the change appear to be twofold. First, they say that exempting outstanding schools from future inspections will reduce, in the Government’s parlance, the “burdens” on such schools. Secondly, they say that it will enable Ofsted to target resources on less successful schools and so will have a cost benefit. Both arguments have some credence. However, for many years now, under successive Governments, Ofsted has moved towards a risk-based, proportionate approach to determining the frequency and intensity of inspection of particular schools. Successful schools can already expect to be inspected only once every five years. Therefore, risk assessments already enable Ofsted to target its resources effectively. However, to exempt schools from routine inspection entirely, and for schools to know that they henceforth they will be exempt, is not simply an extension of these developments. It is a significant qualitative change of a completely different order. It is wrong in principle and will have all sorts of adverse consequences in practice. I shall touch on both concerns—the principle and the practical implications.
The issue of principle derives from questions about the role of government in the delivery of our major public services. I would argue that the Government of the day have a duty both to the public generally, whose taxes pay for those services, and to the citizens who use the services. Surely the Government should be the guardians of both value for money and the quality of the public services provided. It is largely through regulatory and inspection regimes that the Government discharge their duty to service users and the wider public. That is why we have inspection of hospitals, GPs, police services, children’s homes and care homes. All major public services, whether provided directly by public bodies or indirectly through private, voluntary or independent organisations, are subject to inspection regimes to protect users and taxpayers. I know of no other services in which categories of provider are exempt. I would be grateful if the Minister could identify any for us, because I could not find any.
Because, for these very good reasons, this principle is so deeply embedded in the way we deliver public services; because many of these services are critical to people’s well-being; and because the people using them are often vulnerable in one way or another, it would be unthinkable for, say, excellent hospitals or care homes to be allowed to be completely exempt from future inspections. We can all predict the reaction if this were to be the case, so there are crucial questions that the Minister—with respect—has to answer, because they were not answered in this or the other place during the passage of the Education Act 2011. Why do the Government think exemption is acceptable for schools but not for hospitals, care homes and constabularies? Is this not an abdication of the Government’s duty to the public?
In striking the balance between the demands of inspection and the so-called freedom for schools, which the Government are promoting, have they not fallen too far on the side of the professionals and not sufficiently on the need to protect all pupils? The Minister may well say that the Government believe that they can trust schools to do the best for their pupils. We can for the most part, although not entirely, as experience tells us. However, that does not answer the point that it is wrong in principle for the provider of a service to be the sole arbiter of standards without any independent evaluation.
In addition to this fundamental issue of principle, there are a number of practical consequences to the exemption that I believe may have adverse effects on children and schools. I will mention three—other noble Lords will have other points—that are of particular concern to me. First, an outstanding rating at one inspection is not a guarantee of continuing excellence in standards of achievement. Outstanding schools decline. The 2010-11 Ofsted annual report reveals that 40% of the previously judged outstanding schools had declined at their subsequent inspection and three had plummeted to a rating of inadequate. For this reason, both the current chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, and the former chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, have publicly expressed concerns about the proposal to exempt, as did the Education Select Committee.
Secondly, it is quite obvious that inspectors need regularly to see the full range of performance during their inspections in order satisfactorily to benchmark individual schools. If excellent schools are progressively excluded from the inspection regime there is a real danger that inspectors’ expectations will drift downwards over time as they lose touch with the very best practice.
Finally, inspections cover much more than the quality of teaching and learning. They have an important, and I would argue vital, role in telling us how well schools are addressing the wider well-being of pupils and preparing them for life challenges. Exam results alone cannot tell us how well, or even if, a school is teaching personal, social and health education, for example; how extensive the extra-curricular activities are; or, most importantly, how effectively a school is implementing good safeguarding policy and practice.
I know that if this exemption goes through—as I am sure it will—Ofsted has said that it will desktop assess outstanding schools regularly. However, that desktop analysis cannot possibly find out what is going on underneath exam results, and clarify and highlight whether there are any areas of concern, particularly in safeguarding and similar aspects of school life. For these reasons, and others that I suspect will be raised this evening, I believe that exempting any schools entirely from the inspection regime is a failure to children and parents. I beg to move the Motion.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on setting out her concerns. We know that she speaks from a very deep concern for the welfare of children and has a wish to see excellence in education, an aspiration which we all share. I know too that she has real concerns about the possibility of a school degenerating from outstanding to something less.
I want to take both aspects she mentioned, the practical and the principle, and to say a few words on why I believe that this set of regulations exempting some schools in this way is the right move. First, on the practical, I think the noble Baroness rather overemphasised the picture of schools that were never inspected. This is not what is going to happen. They will still be included in national surveys, with subjects and aspects of education, so her concerns that the people in Ofsted will no longer have the opportunity to see excellence is more than answered by the fact that they will still be able to see excellence across specific subject areas and specific aspects of education.
Secondly, the chief inspector’s risk assessment will be annual. It will be regular and look at more than simply exam results. It will look at any concerns raised about the outstanding schools which are exempt and will then, if necessary, trigger an inspection. The noble Baroness shares my concern that there is always a danger of a change in a school’s performance when a new head comes in—either for the better or for the worse. The regulations cover that eventuality. The chief inspector’s risk assessment will be speeded up after there is a change of leadership in the school. There again, any anxieties one might have have been addressed in the regulations.
There is a pathetic faith in the value of inspection. I say that as one who spent 18 years as an inspector. In the 20 years or so that Ofsted has been pursuing its inspections, this country’s young people have moved in their performance from being in the top five, six or seven by comparison with other countries to being down in 25th, 27th and 28th place in different subject areas. Although Ofsted, I am sure, has been pursuing its aims with the best of intentions, and no doubt the Government’s very tight regulations, particularly the previous Government’s regulations, for how Ofsted should go about its business, were all done with the best of intentions, it simply did not work in the way that it was hoped it would. The standards of performance in our schools have degenerated quite disastrously in comparison with the standards of performance of other countries over the period of Ofsted’s work. We need to start inquiring very deeply, rather than have a mantra of “inspection is good”, as to exactly what really does achieve quality in schools and education.
There is plenty of evidence that people perform at their best, whether professionally or in other areas, when they are trusted and feel valued. My very strong experience of talking to teachers and heads over the past decade or so is that they have lost that feeling of trust. They feel they are bound by an overweening inspection regime which has breathed down their necks. They are watching their backs and feel that the Government are permanently on their backs telling them things. That has been part of the Ofsted culture. I am happy to see that that is now being changed under the coalition Government. Ofsted is being changed very radically and made much more professional and much more limited in its inquisitorial role. That is a good thing. Nevertheless, for most teachers and schools, there is still a sense of being watched rather than being trusted. I believe passionately, as well as having seen the research evidence, that trust and value enable professional people and others to perform at their peak.
There must be accountability to balance autonomy. The more freedom that we give to exempt schools, the more it is essential that we decide what their autonomy should be. I would very briefly say that I think that there are three levels of autonomy that we should trust. The first is the professional code, to which teachers themselves rightly aspire. The conscience of the teacher in wanting to give his or her absolute best is the first level of accountability. That is what we must foster, help and encourage by giving them more freedom to do that, because it is the real guarantee of quality. It is only when teachers really feel that they are responsible for their own performance and that they are required to give the best to their pupils that the quality can really be guaranteed. The second level is that the head of the school and other senior people in the school are responsible for the quality of education in that school. We must foster that. Instead of their thinking that somebody is going to come from outside and judge them, they should take responsibility for themselves and be prepared to make those judgments and deal with any underperformance.
Finally, we have forgotten the role of governors here. The last port of call, rightly, is and ought to be the responsibility of the governors over the quality of what goes on in the school. If things start to go wrong, it is the governors who should blow the whistle and start taking action by changing the head or the other staff of the school. It is a matter of absolute principle that we should stop thinking that the Government are always the best judge of things and people. I love the phrase in the department’s Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations where it says:
“The intention is to give the best schools the power to manage their own performance and to be more accountable locally to their communities, rather than to central government”.
That is what I believe should happen.
Lord Hill of Oareford
First, inspections into faith schools concerning the arrangements that those schools make around their religious education will continue in any case, even for exempt schools. If there are concerns of the kind raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, about individual schools, whether by parents, local authorities or others, those would be referred to Ofsted and Ofsted would need to take a view as to whether it needed to act.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister and my noble friends and noble Baronesses opposite for their very thoughtful and detailed contributions to what has been a very important debate. It has boiled down to three crucial questions. I will be brief because I am mindful of colleagues who want to carry on with the main business. I will not delay the House but I would like to bring these three items to our attention.
First, is external inspection necessary, even if it is not of itself now sufficient, to assure quality of education for pupils and to reassure the public? Notwithstanding the contribution of the Minister and the views of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, I do not think we have had an answer to that tonight, even though the Minister said he would address the Motion—and the first part of the Motion is about the undermining of that principle of regular inspection of public services. In every other service, the answer to that question is yes. In some critical services, as we heard from my noble friend Lord Hunt, inspection is not becoming lighter touch; it is becoming tighter. We have not heard the argument for schools uniquely to be exempt from inspection. We have not heard the Government’s answer to that question tonight.
Secondly, do we have the evidence that, contrary to other public services, outstanding schools exceptionally remain outstanding once they have been judged so to be? The answer is no, as we have heard. All the evidence says that many outstanding schools decline in standards; some decline dramatically and quickly, as my noble friend Lady Massey pointed out. If they can fall dramatically in relation to educational standards, they can certainly fall dramatically as well in relation to safeguarding and those other issues particularly germane to vulnerable children that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was concerned about, and I share his concern.
Thirdly, the Government’s argument comes down to the fact that the safety net, the annual desktop risk assessment, is there as a catch-all. As my noble friend Lady Morris pointed out, not only is this becoming an edifice in itself, but in my view it can never be a substitute for directly observing what is going on and talking to parents and teachers. I am afraid what came to mind when I was listening to the arguments in favour of this as an effective safety net was the Baby P case in Haringey, when I was a Minister, when we learned that Ofsted had very recently completed a desktop assessment of social care in Haringey, which obviously had failed to uncover the very serious problems in policy and practice. It seems to be common sense that a desktop analysis of data is never actually going to reveal what is going on.
I hope that the Minister has at least appreciated the genuine strength of feeling and concern on this side of the House—and I suspect elsewhere. I am not going to press this matter to a vote at this late hour but I hope that the Government will reflect and monitor what happens as a result of this measure. If this measure has some of the negative consequences that we fear in even one school, many children will have their educational years blighted unnecessarily and avoidably, and I think we all agree that that would be a tragedy. I withdraw the Motion.
Schools: Careers Advisers
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
To ask Her Majesty’s Government why their guidance to schools on implementing the new duty to provide careers advice has not required schools to employ qualified advisers and provide face-to-face advice for pupils who need it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, the recent publication of statutory guidance on careers marks an important step, as schools prepare for the introduction of the new duty to secure independent careers guidance from September. Schools will be expected to work in partnership with expert careers guidance providers as appropriate to ensure that pupils receive impartial advice. The statutory guidance is clear; face-to-face careers guidance can help pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds, to make informed choices and successful transitions.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the Minister for his Answer. The Government have commendably continued the work of the previous Labour Government to establish a national careers service for adults, and the Business Secretary has specified the qualifications that advisers must have and that face-to-face advice must be provided to target groups of adults. Why, then, has the Education Secretary allowed schools complete discretion—because that is what the guidance does; there is nothing required of schools—in the quality of service provided to young people? Has not therefore the Secretary of State for Education really failed in his duty to young people by not setting even a minimum standard of service that every school must meet?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we had these debates at length during the passage of the Education Act. As the noble Baroness will know, it is the Government’s view, and our starting point—and it is what we are trying to do across the piece—to trust schools and heads and people running schools to make the best judgments in the interests of their children. That is something that we are seeking to do across the board. It is not the case that the guidance does not provide any framework at all in terms of what schools should take into account. It is clear, for instance, that they should secure access to independent face-to-face careers advice when they judge that it is appropriate, particularly for children who are disadvantaged and with special educational needs. I agree with her about the importance of careers guidance and advice, and there are a range of ways in which we are seeking to do that and to increase employer involvement in schools, whether through studio schools and UTCs or through getting 100,000 employers to come into schools to explain how children can prepare themselves for the world of work.
Schools (Specification and Disposal of Articles) Regulations 2012
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I apologise to the Committee, and in particular to the Minister, for being absent at the start of the debate. I mistakenly took a phone call at the wrong time and missed the change indicated on the monitor, which I had been watching. I hope that I missed nothing crucial—
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My apologies again. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, we debated the substance of the policy when the legislation was debated in Committee and I do not intend to reopen it. I shall confine myself to the regulations and I want to put two particular points to the Minister. The first concerns the guidance on the use of the powers, which will be forthcoming on the back of these regulations. I should be grateful if the Minister would clarify the current position.
When the guidance Screening, Searching and Confiscation, published earlier this year, was debated in the other place, the Minister said that it would be updated to reflect the more recent changes to the law and that new guidance would be published before implementation on 1 April this year. Will the Minister confirm that? The guidance written so far, which I have looked at on the website, says nothing about what will constitute the reasonable suspicion that a teacher must have to justify a search without consent. It says:
“The teacher must decide in each particular case what constitutes reasonable grounds for suspicion”,
and gives two examples. One is hearing other pupils talking about an item, which is fairly uncontentious. If a teacher hears talk from other pupils, that is fairly obviously reasonable grounds for suspicion. The other example is that,
“they might notice a pupil behaving in a way that causes them to be suspicious”.
That is fairly wide because it could be anything. Will the Minister confirm that the guidance will make it clear, as I believe it should, that after such a search without consent, the teacher must be able to say specifically what constituted the reasonable grounds for suspicion, and that that should usually be hard intelligence or evidence rather than the teacher just feeling suspicious? For example, what would be reasonable grounds for suspicion to justify taking away and looking through a phone, a laptop or an iPad? A pupil might be behaving inappropriately in a class, fiddling with the item or looking at e-mails, but surely that alone would not justify reasonable suspicion of, for instance, the presence of pornographic images to justify a search without consent. There is a lot of grey area here, and I should like to be reassured that the guidance will help teachers to define the thresholds for suspicion in such circumstances.
Regarding another point on the guidance, I could not see any distinction in the current guidance between the approach to situations involving children of different ages—younger children as opposed to older children—in secondary schools. Will the guidance also address that issue?
My second substantive point concerns recording and monitoring the use of these powers. In the other place, the Minister said that the Government had no plans to monitor the use of the powers or to require schools to keep a log of incidents in which the powers have been used. I am particularly concerned about the powers to search without consent. I am in favour of giving teachers these powers, but this extension of powers should require schools to keep a record of the incidents in which they are used.
One may think about similar situations, for instance, in children’s homes—and I have visited very many in a previous life. I always asked to look at the incident log to see whether discipline had been used and recorded appropriately. The use of police powers requires the recording of incidents. In any part of society where professionals in authority are given powers of search and confiscation over other people, it seems only right, and a necessary and visible counterbalance to those powers—necessary though they are—that a record should be required. The Minister may come back and say something about not wanting to burden schools, but this is not about burdening schools with unnecessary requirements. Keeping a record is a reasonable and essential counterbalance to the extension of powers, and we should require schools to do so.
Similarly, there should be a requirement that data using those records be kept for monitoring, so that, for instance, any differential deployment of these powers in respect of different groups of children will be visible. We know the concern that police stop-and-search powers are used disproportionately on young black men. We would want to know—would we not?—if, however unconsciously and inadvertently, these powers of teachers could be shown to have been used differentially in relation to specific groups of children rather than others. Yet, if the information is not recorded by schools, and is not monitored by the Government and inspected by Ofsted, we will have no way of knowing just how these powers are being used, whether they are being used appropriately and whether, however inadvertently or unconsciously, specific groups of children are the subject of these powers in a differential way.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on her ingenuity in raising some issues that are possibly within the scope of the regulations. I know her feelings on the subject, which we debated at length. The only thing that I would say is, as the revised guidance that she will have seen makes clear, the provisions that allow search by the opposite sex are very much to be used in exceptional circumstances, and the assumption is that in nearly every other circumstance that will not be the case. We had that debate previously.
So far as the PSHE review is concerned—again, the way in which my noble friend managed seamlessly to move from one of her favourite topics to another through the means of the regulation was a wonder to behold—she will know that we had hoped to be in a position at the beginning of the year to come forward with proposals on how we can improve PSHE, but the timescale on reporting back on the national curriculum generally has slowed down, and the proposals on PSHE are being aligned with that. All that I can say is that the issue is still work in progress, and proposals will come later in the year.
As for the guidance, which relates to a point made by my noble friend and by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, we are on track to publish it on 1 April. However, given some of the points raised, it would be sensible if I shared it in advance of publication so that we can ensure that it deals with the issue clearly and my noble friend can see whether it addresses the question of searching children with autism, for example.
On the point about recording and monitoring, the noble Baroness was right. It is our view that we do not need to set up a detailed and complicated system of recording and monitoring. On her specific point, I understand the concern about what might be a disproportionate effect on some groups—particularly, for example, black boys. The search powers have been in place since 2007 and were extended again in 2009. The fact that we have not collectively been made aware that there is a particular problem with the way that they are exercised gives some comfort. We would rely on parents, staff and others to make their concerns known. If they were flagged up with us, we would want to act on them because, like the noble Baroness, we want to ensure that the powers are used, first, proportionately and, secondly, in an equitable fashion.
On the noble Baroness’s fair point about what is the definition of reasonable suspicion, there is no definition of reasonable suspicion, for fairly obvious reasons. There are many things in legislation that it is hard to define precisely but, over time, practice and custom grows up. We do not have plans to specify that, but I hope that the guidance which, as I said, I will happily share with the noble Baroness, will provide some help in that area so that teachers will be clear on what they are able to do and what they are not.
I hope that that gives some satisfaction and that we will be able to approve the regulations.