Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, as the Minister has indicated, we have tabled Amendment 84ZLA in this group. Its aim was to reinstate the rights of students and staff to be represented on FE college governing bodies. As the Minister has described, last night we had a useful meeting on this issue with John Hayes. I think it was acknowledged at that meeting that the proposals had arrived rather late and that there had not been time to consult the stakeholders effectively on the implications of these changes.
I am therefore grateful that the Minister has agreed to reconsider this issue and to come back with a form of words that will reinstate the right to student and staff representation at Third Reading. On this basis, we are prepared to withdraw Amendment 84ZLA. We of course reserve the right to return to this issue at Third Reading should we feel that the new proposals are lacking in any way, but I am sure that that will not be the case. For the moment, I thank the Minister for the progress made on this issue.
In the mean time, we are still absorbing the wider implications of these governance changes. I should be grateful if the Minister could clarify whether one consequence, intended or otherwise, is that governors of FE colleges will be able to be paid in the future. If he does not have that information to hand, perhaps he could write to me.
Moving briefly to the issues covered by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, in Amendment 83, this issue was well aired in Grand Committee and very much supported by us at that time. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, said during the earlier debate, colleges should be,
“a dynamic nucleus within their communities”.—[Official Report, 12/9/11: col. GC 141].
FE colleges have worked hard in the last decade to advance strong partnerships with local businesses, and have the inside track on local employment markets. Their links with local youth services are now more important than ever, as resources shrink.
The Association of Colleges has argued that while it highly prizes the work that local colleges achieve in their communities, this work will carry on whether or not there is a duty to do it. The Minister said something similar in Grand Committee. I would turn this argument on its head; if the work is so prized and so effective, should we not take the precaution of leaving it in the original legislation to ensure that it continues, rather than sending a signal that it is no longer a requirement on colleges, which might otherwise develop different priorities?
With these comments, I look forward to the Minister’s response to the debate.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I have two amendments in this grouping, Amendments 83 and 84. They do indeed pick up the issue that we spoke about in Committee, which is the duty on the part of colleges to promote the well-being of the local area.
I thank the Minister for bringing forward this raft of amendments. As he knows, I am chairing a commission on behalf of NIACE, the AoC and the 157 Group, which is looking into the role of colleges in their communities. The issue of the reclassification by ONS cropped up in our deliberations on this commission. Our intention is to promote the role of colleges. As the noble Baroness says, we have used the term “dynamic nucleus within their communities”—they should be proactive in developing partnerships and in promoting well-being and community cohesion within their communities. Since that is the case, we are very anxious that they should not be inhibited from this by a statistical classification, and therefore we have been backing the moves made by the department here. I put down some rather naive amendments in Committee in order to pave the way for this, and I am delighted that we have—I hope—managed to come forward with a way that prevents this reclassification.
In relation to my own amendments, I have spoken at some length both with the AoC and with the department about this issue. As I have suggested, the report, which is going to be presented at the AoC conference later this month, will in fact suggest a wider role for colleges within the community, and I think there is a fair amount of good will towards the promotion of this role. In the light of that, I have decided that it would not be appropriate at this time to press my amendments. There is good will on all parts, and the assumption is that colleges will be promoting the well-being of their local area as part of what they will be doing. There is no question of that, but it does not necessarily need to be in the Bill, so, as I say, I shall not press my amendments today.
“Academies: school teachers’ qualifications
(1) EA 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), in subsection (6) (schools to which this section applies), after paragraph (b) insert—
“(c) an Academy, including a free school,(d) a city technology college, or(e) a city college for the technology of the arts.”(3) At the end of subsection (6) of that Act insert—
“(7) Nothing in subsection (6) should prohibit a school’s ability to employ non-qualified individuals to provide educational support in relation to non-‘specified work’ in so far as it would positively contribute to pupils’ educational development”.
(4) Any individual employed under the terms of subparagraph (3) above shall be supervised in their work by a qualified teacher.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, Amendment 84A has a simple but fundamental aim—that is, to ensure that all teachers practising in the classroom have qualified teacher status. Until recently this was the case in all state schools but the Government have decided that this will not be a requirement for teachers in free schools. This was debated at length in Grand Committee and the need for teachers to be qualified, as I recall, had virtually unanimous support. For many noble Lords it was what I would colloquially describe as a no-brainer. During the debate the Minister said that the Government’s reasoning for this was,
“simply intended to allow the possibility of greater innovation at the edges of the maintained sector”.—[Official Report, 14/9/11; col. GC 227.]
He repeated this argument in a letter to me of 25 October. I do not think that many of us were convinced by this argument at the time. It was, with respect, completely lacking in evidence or justification.
The Minister then went on to argue in his letter that a skill in measuring the progress of each pupil and the delivery of good-quality subject materials were important elements of teacher training but that he,
“believes it is possible for a teacher to be proficient in them without having attained Qualified teacher Status”.
My simple challenge back to him is: how would he know? How would parents or even head teachers know if these people were truly up to scratch?
This issue goes to the heart of the professional standing of the teaching profession. Whereas most sensible participants in this debate—including the teachers—would argue that the challenge is to drive up standards in the classroom and increase professionalism, the Government seem to be pulling in the opposite direction.
In our earlier debate, a number of noble Lords contrasted the status of teachers with other professions. For example, we wondered whether allowing doctors in certain hospitals not to be qualified would enable “greater innovation”. We wondered what concerns colleagues would have about the standard of patient care in those circumstances and what would be the impact on successful treatment rates. Of course, you can make a similar analogy with other professions.
It is difficult to see why positive innovation is more likely to come about where people are not trained to the required standards in their profession. It is all too easy to see, in the case of unqualified teachers at free schools, how cohorts of children could be failed by teaching quality below the expected level of a qualified teacher.
Our amendment in part is about the Government showing to the teaching profession that they value and want to build on the professionalism in the sector. More than that, it is about ensuring standards in what we believe is one of the most important jobs that it is possible to have. It is in the interests of us all that the next generation is taught to a high standard by trained professionals, and it will do us all a disservice if it is not.
As I mentioned in Grand Committee, the reasoning for the Government’s position is unclear. I noted that the Secretary of State had said of free schools:
“We want the dynamism that characterises the best independent schools to help drive up standards in the state sector … In that spirit, we will not be setting requirements in relation to qualifications”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/10; col. 623.]
I question the presumption that a highly performing independent school is the result of the fact that its teachers do not need to be qualified, although of course many already are. Surely the more significant factors are those such as selection processes and smaller class sizes.
If the Government are serious about building on the successes of the previous Government in raising standards of teaching; if the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister are serious when they say in the White Paper that is indeed called The Importance of Teaching,
“no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers”;
and if the Government seriously want to learn from international best practice, about which the OECD says:
“many of the high performing countries share a commitment to professionalised teaching”,
how can the Government at the same time say that in some of our schools teachers do not need to be qualified to teach? As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, argued in Grand Committee, it is almost Dickensian.
As colleagues rightly said in Committee, we are not saying that everyone who stands in front of a class should be qualified. I recognise that, for example, trainee teachers are and should be permitted to teach as part of their training. I accept the points made that people without teaching qualifications, such as teaching assistants, add real value to the classroom and make a difference to children’s lives. What is important and what our amendment aims to achieve is that the progression of each pupil should be overseen by someone with a teaching qualification.
It is a basic right of pupils to be taught by a qualified teacher. Parents expect it and the teaching profession seeks it. There is no research or evidence to show that pupils will benefit from this change. I hope noble Lords will feel able to support our amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am seriously concerned about the issue of having non-qualified teachers in a classroom. Qualifications for teaching are not just about being qualified to teach maths, science or languages; they are about having some knowledge of child development. It is crucial for teachers to learn about how children grow, how they learn to think and how they learn at different ages. It is different if a parent or grandparent goes into a classroom to hear children read or other such activities. Those people are under supervision and fit in with what the class is doing anyway. I would not like someone who was not qualified to be teaching chemistry or physics. It seems quite a dangerous thing to happen. I certainly would not allow into my house an electrician or a plumber who was not qualified. Why would we allow people who are not qualified to teach children? My young nephew recently trained to be a soccer coach for young people. He had to learn not only the skills of teaching soccer but various techniques of teaching as well as first aid. Having non-qualified people in classrooms could miss out all those extra things that teachers learn.
I have some questions for the Minister. How will these non-qualified teachers be recruited? Who will they be? Supposing that they were predominant in a school, what kind of education would those children receive? This is a very serious issue. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, as other noble Lords have said, we have had a very good and wide debate on this issue. I ask noble Lords to read the wording of our amendment because it is not as stark as some people would have us believe and we have tried to craft the wording carefully. It is not saying that only qualified teachers can teach in the classroom. It says that people with all sorts of skills can come into the classroom—they can be inspiring leaders, or as the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, said, they can be specialists in teaching children how to operate lathes. All those people have a role in the classroom, but the wording of our amendment is that they have to be supervised by a qualified teacher. We feel that that is vital because of the arguments that have been made around the Chamber this afternoon.
You can be the best specialist in the world at maths, science or whatever, but you need to have some teaching and education in child development, behavioural issues and the different ways that people learn, adapt and interact with each other and a whole range of SEN issues. I do not think that someone who has had a professional job outside teaching would necessarily understand or know about those issues. The issue, which is carefully spelt out in our amendment, is that those people should have a role but that they should be supervised by somebody with qualified teacher status.
At the moment the proposals are at the margin; we are talking only about free schools and it may apply to only a handful of teachers. What signal is that sending? As a number of noble Lords have said, if this is so wonderful—as the Minister said, let us access the greatest pool of talent—will the Government say, “Great, let us extend that beyond free schools”? That is a very dangerous road to go down because, as people have rehearsed round the Chamber this afternoon, the issue of professionalism and driving up standards should be at the heart of what we are doing. We should not be trying to undercut and undermine the profession by deprofessionalising it.
The core point that I put to the Minister, which he did not really answer, is: where is the evidence that unqualified teachers provide better education than qualified teachers? The Secretary of State has put great onus on this in a number of his speeches. He likes research and likes everything to be evidence based, but that strikes me as being a stab in the dark. There is no evidence that in the independent sector it is the fact that teachers are unqualified that drives up standards. I am not convinced from what the Minister has said that there will be sufficient monitoring. It is almost as if we are entering a wild experiment with no terms of reference, no end date and no assessment of whether the experiment has been successful. We are doing that at the expense of a generation of young people, whose education could potentially be damaged by this.
For all those reasons, the proposals are going in the wrong direction. Our amendment says that there should be a qualified teacher who oversees the work of what happens in the classroom. That is a perfectly reasonable thing to request and it is in all pupils’ interests. I am not convinced by the Minister’s argument this afternoon, and I beg leave to test the opinion of the House.
(2) The consultation must seek the views of such persons as the person carrying it out thinks appropriate, but must include the views of parents of registered pupils, registered pupils, school staff and the local authority.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, under existing legislation, before a maintained school can convert into an academy, its governing body must consult those it thinks appropriate on whether the school should convert into an academy. However, Clause 55 allows a school to convert into an academy with absolutely no consultation with the pupils, the parents of the pupils, staff, the local authority or other interested groups. Our amendment would require consultation before a school applies for an academy order and require that consultation to seek the views of four categories of stakeholders: parents, pupils, school staff and the local authority. We regard it as a matter of courtesy, democracy and common sense.
As we made clear in Grand Committee, we do not seek to set out in legislation a long list of everyone who should be consulted, but it is our view that any Secretary of State considering granting an academy order would need to be assured that the views of the four key groups were being taken into account, so any consultation should be required to include them. Indeed, the Minister said to my noble friend in Grand Committee:
“I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that it is quite difficult to foresee situations where it would not be appropriate to consult the kinds of people that she mentions”.—[Official Report, 14/9/11; col. GC 242.]
I wonder whether, on reflection, the Minister has come up with a possible situation in which it would not be appropriate to consult these four groups and, if not, whether he will concede that, in order for any Secretary of State to make a well informed decision, these groups should always be consulted.
I also agree with the concerns previously raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that under the new proposals one of the bodies allowed to carry out the consultation, apart from the school’s governing body, is the organisation with which the Secretary of State proposes to enter into an academy arrangement. As she rightly pointed out, this is no guarantee of an objective or neutral consultation. We therefore believe it is important to build in some additional checks and balances to ensure that a new academy is truly desired by the local community. By requiring the consultation to include the views of these four key stakeholder groups—pupils, parents, staff and the local authority—those applying for an academy order will need to demonstrate to the Secretary of State that there is local demand for the conversion, not just from the organisation with which the Secretary of State has proposed to enter into academy arrangements but from the wider stakeholder community. If this clause was allowed to go forward unamended, it would be yet another example of those stakeholder groups being denied a voice.
I recognise that, strictly speaking, the granting of an academy order enables a school to convert into an academy only at a future time; it does not automatically trigger conversion. By denying the chance for parents, pupils, professionals and the community to have a voice before the academy order is made, to a large degree it presents them with a fait accompli. Indeed, our amendment would ensure that the key stakeholders were consulted on a timely basis so as to be able to influence a decision whether or not to apply for an academy order. It would mean that the Secretary of State would need to take account of those views when deciding whether or not to grant that order.
I hope noble Lords will recognise the sense and the democratic underpinning of this amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness and the Minister for their responses. Several issues are fundamental to this. The first is: how can we be assured that the Secretary of State is in the position to know that a full consultation has taken place? The guidance to which the Minister refers is fine, but we are seeking something that is more of a checklist setting out some of the fundamental rights for certain groups, rather than just the issuing of good practice and guidance. We feel that local democracy on this issue is important.
Our amendment engenders bringing the consultation forward to an earlier stage. We feel that that is right because the evidence appears to be that people feel that once there begins to be a head of steam around a debate about whether there should be a conversion, even if it has not formally been made, it is nevertheless more difficult for local people to put a brake on it or to raise disquiet, or for them to have a voice that is heard.
We do not believe that we have gone into too much detail. The Minister said that they do not want long lists. I said at the outset that we, equally, did not want a long list, but we did want to reassure some of the key stakeholders about their role in all this. As I say, this is very much about our belief in local democracy.
The noble Baroness asked what evidence there was. I would say that that is something for the department to respond to. I am not in a position to collect evidence. I can say, anecdotally, that I know of parents and local authorities who feel that there has not been sufficient consultation. I think that in part the onus is on the department to measure the level of complaints, and the Minister could perhaps respond at some level on this.
I do not think there is anything wrong with our amendment. I do not think that it is too detailed, that it expects too much of the legislation or that it spells out too much detail about what should be required. We have identified only four key stakeholders. This is, to us, a matter of principle. It would give enormous reassurance to people in the locality that their views will genuinely have a voice, and on that basis I beg leave to test the view of the House on this matter.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I very much welcome these pilots and I am very grateful to the Minister for having listened to the Special Educational Consortium and others who have been talking to him about this.
I have been asked by the Association of National Specialist Colleges to raise two issues which possibly have already been covered by the discussions that have been held, but as I have not been party to those discussions I would like to raise them and seek assurances from the Minister. First, in the original draft of the pilot scheme there was a suggestion that colleges could be asked to return an element of the funding to local authorities in order for them to make a direct payment to the students who were already attending the colleges. The Association of National Specialist Colleges felt that this was overly bureaucratic and was a somewhat artificial approach to the pilots. The suggestion does not appear now in the published information, but it would be helpful to know whether it has been dropped or whether it is likely to be retained in additional guidance as the pilots proceed.
The second issue was one of transport, which has always been a major issue for those with special educational needs because local authorities are supposed to provide the funding for such transport and very often they have been derelict in their duties. A direct payment allows for students to pay for transport. The Association of National Specialist Colleges has significant concerns about the lack of transport funding for young people with learning difficulties or disabilities to get to both specialist and mainstream colleges. Unless there is a transport budget available for local authorities to include within the direct payment, it was concerned that the ability of students to pay for transport, as well as other requirements, would be impaired. They wondered, therefore, whether there was any way of ensuring that the local authorities had included an allowance for transport in the direct payment before there was any expectation that the students would be paying for that transport. Perhaps the Minister could clarify those two points so that they are on the record.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, like many noble Lords in the Chamber, we welcome the direct payments initiative. It is right that it should be piloted and closely scrutinised. We will play our part in that. I hope that the Minister is able to reassure us that the outcome of the pilots will be fully debated by your Lordships' House in due course. I suspect that we will find that, as with many initiatives, it is the detail that matters and how the new powers are interpreted by parents and local authorities alike. We need clear advice and updates on how the pilots are working in practice. The outcome has to be an improvement in the provision of SEN services in schools and the pilots will need to demonstrate that all SEN children, not just those of middle-class parents, have an improved quality of service.
Noble Lords have raised a number of important questions in the short debate, but there remain some concerns that I hope the Minister will be able to help me with. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, I say that these points may have been covered in the discussions, but forgive me if I am not up to speed on some of the discussions that have taken place. First, how can we be assured that the payments will be enough to cover identified need so that the parents will not be expected to make up the difference from their own budgets? Secondly, how will other families be assured that other budgets will not be cut to fund these payments, thereby adversely affecting other services provided by the local authorities? Thirdly, how will the special position of looked-after children be protected? For example, foster carers will potentially administer the payments but might be perceived to have a conflict of interest, as they are also employees of the local authority. Lastly, on the level of support and advocacy provided to parents, which the Minister touched on, can he reassure us that that will be independent of local authorities because undoubtedly parents will find the system new, potentially difficult and overwhelming in terms of the choice and the bureaucracy with which they are faced? Perhaps he could clarify the level of independence that would be available.
A separate, procedural point is that we find ourselves, once again, tonight making policy on important issues on the hoof. These issues would have benefited from a longer period of consultation, both within the House and outside. The legislation, as drafted, has been placed in completely the wrong part of the Bill; it is in Part 7, which deals with post-16 education and I do not suppose that the Minister is suggesting that these payments are restricted to post-16. The Government should do better than this and, if they do not, they cannot complain when humble Back-Benchers follow their example and try to misuse the structure of Bills to put bits of legislation in the wrong place.
Notwithstanding all that, we support the intent of the Government’s proposals and we look forward to the future scrutiny which, we trust, will occur in due course.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I am grateful for the broad welcome from all sides of the House for what we are attempting to achieve with these pilots and for what we are trying to do to get a better system for the most vulnerable children in the country from all backgrounds. As a number of noble Lords have made clear in their questions, there are a number of important issues to get right and that is the point of the pilots. We shall work through some of the issues that have been raised as a result of the pilots.
The noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, raised the issue of evaluation. There will certainly need to be very careful evaluation. We would want to share that with noble Lords. I was very grateful for the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about the way in which we have managed to work with him, others and the Special Educational Consortium and I want that to carry on. The first evaluation results will probably arrive next April and there will be another report next September, but we want this to be an open process. I am very happy to share the findings as we go along and to work on ensuring that everything works as we want it to. As I said before, I think we are all agreed on the direction in which we want to go but, of necessity, difficult questions arise, some of which have been posed, about funding. The only way to answer those questions is to work through them with an open mind, and not to prejudge the outcome but to try to come up with solutions to them.
My noble friend Lady Sharp asked a couple of questions, first, on behalf of Natspec, in relation to the element of funding to local authorities. During the pilots, a local authority and a college will need to agree before a direct payment can be made. We think it is right to do everything possible to give students greater control over the services that they receive, so we are testing direct payments through these pilots to ensure that we learn everything about how to make them work in practice.
On transport, the pilots of direct payments will not affect current local authority duties or budgets, including those for transport, so if a local authority were to agree a direct payment for transport with a student, it would need to agree what the payment was for and exactly how much it would cost. My noble friend Lord Lingfield asked about top-ups: will parents be required to top up? The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, was concerned about that too. In no circumstances should the amount of the direct payment be set at a level that would require someone to pay from their own resources in order to secure part or all of the provisions set out in the child’s statement of SEN or the young person's LDA. If an individual wishes to purchase support that is additional to that needed to meet the assessed needs, it would be open to them to do so.
That links in to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, about what is in the statement, as the statement determines what is delivered, how much things cost and so on. We know that local authorities are currently required to specify the provisions necessary to meet the needs of a child in the statement, but we also know that the quality of statements and learning difficulty assessments varies significantly. We think that the process of establishing a direct payment should, by itself, help in this regard because in order to make a payment to a family, the local authority would have to quantify exactly what provision is required. Our experience with the individual budget pilot supports this view, and parents report the initial discussions to establish a budget as one of the significant benefits of the overall pilot. I think that will help address that concern. So far as the question about the independence of the support is concerned, I will follow it up and write to the noble Baroness with more particulars on it.
I am grateful to noble Lords for the support for this. I hope it will mark a significant step forward. We hope these pilots will work.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I end with a whimper and not a bang. As noble Lords will recall, we agreed four government amendments when we discussed school inspections last week. Those amendments to Clauses 39 and 41 mean that, with the exception of the first set of regulations made under the new powers inserted by these clauses, regulations will be subject to the affirmative procedure. I refer to the amendments that I introduced in response to the points raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath.
The two amendments before us are consequential to those amendments and were unfortunately overlooked. Amendments 89ZC and 89ZD make minor drafting changes to Clause 78, “Commencement”, so that it refers to the right subsections, including those applying the affirmative procedure. This does not affect the commencement of the clause. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I was trying not to get drawn into ending on a whimper as well. I was not going to say anything, because there is nothing to be said, except to thank the noble Lord for his courtesy so far. I look forward to Third Reading in due course.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Elton
My Lords, I had hoped to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, but I cannot do so because the debate has taken place in my absence. So I rise only to say in a very plaintive way that I left with a list of groupings which made it clear that I had time to attend to other business but having attended to the other business, I find that the business I wished to be here for had already been dispatched. I hope that is not going to become a regular feature of our proceedings because it is exceedingly inconvenient.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I have listened carefully to the debate. We have a great deal of sympathy with those noble Lords who fear that Ofsted’s role is diminishing to concentrate on academic achievement and behaviour at the expense of some of the wider social and personal development issues. As has been pointed out, these have an equal status in the classroom and they are sometimes a necessary precursor to the learning process itself. There is also quite rightly some concern that if these issues are not a key part of the Ofsted inspection regime, they will be given diminished status by teachers. I am sure the Minister will say that this is not the intention but we should be realistic about human nature and the pressures that teachers are under to deliver on so many different fronts. The Ofsted report is an essential guide for parents and schools are desperate to score highly on what they perceive to be the core measures of inspection. It is important that these measures are kept in the legislation.
We support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, which puts children’s well-being at the heart of the school mission. We supported a similar amendment in Grand Committee and we reiterate today that schools should not be simply about academic achievement. Schools should have a responsibility to provide a safe and happy environment where all children can thrive. That should include covering issues such as nutrition, exercise, relationships, respect for each other and tackling low self-esteem. In Committee the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Garden, said:
“Ofsted recently commented that well-being will be at the heart of the new framework, because it will require inspectors to consider the full range of experiences for pupils”.—[Official Report, 20/7/11; col. GC 491]
These themes were repeated in the Minister’s letter to my noble friend Lady Hughes. If this is the case and we are all in agreement, I see no reason why the Minister should not accept the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, so that the requirement can appear in the Bill.
In an earlier debate, the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made a powerful case for improved early years provision. He has echoed those themes today. He is rightly challenging us to identify the mechanisms that will ensure investment in early years so that every child, when entering school, has a capacity to learn and succeed. Again, these themes were echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, and other noble Lords. This is particularly significant when we read in the past few days that the Institute for Fiscal Studies calculates a 20 per cent cut in funding of early years provision. We have every sympathy with the position that he is pursuing, although it might be unfair to ask Ofsted to report on how school-ready pupils are on first arrival when the receiving school will not have had much opportunity to influence this. He is in effect making a case for more rigorous independent inspections of early years provision and this we would wholeheartedly support.
Finally, I share the concern of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, about the removal of social cohesion from the core list of issues to be inspected. She is right to identify that this goes much further than measuring the cultural development of pupils. We are blessed with living in a diverse, multicultural society, but it has its tensions, suspicions and hostilities, and we are not short of volunteers who stoke up conflict at any slight or perceived unfairness. Young people need to understand the roots that have brought us together and the advantages of strong communities living in tolerance. The school’s role in the community and its influence as a community leader cannot be underestimated so I hope to hear more details from the Minister about how this is going to be achieved in the curriculum and measured by Ofsted. In the absence of a convincing explanation, we will support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Flather.
I understand Ofsted’s concern that it is being asked to measure too many aspects of education. I also understand that at times of limited resources, choices have to be made. But this is about getting the balance right. It is about what parents can expect from their children’s education and how we want to shape and nurture the next generation of citizens. I do not think we have the balance right just yet.
Schools: Sex and Relationships Education
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge the consistent evidence that the teaching of sex and relationships education reduces, rather than increases, sexual activity? Does he agree, as I think he indicated, that teaching young people about relationships, and in particular young girls about the nature of informed consent in sexual relationships, is vital? Does he also agree that that is best achieved by teaching sex and relationships as part of compulsory modules in statutory PSHE education?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I think I was with the noble Baroness right until the very last bit of her question. I accept the thrust of her points but, as she will know because we have discussed it before, the overall aim in the Government’s plans is to slim down the curriculum, which we think has become overcrowded. Therefore, as she knows, we do not plan to make SRE a statutory part of it. The purpose of our review is to try to share best practice, to look at how we can raise the quality of teaching and to identify the core elements of PSHE which we think children should study.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, the amendments in this group aim to improve the careers advice to which young people would be entitled in the classroom. They cover different aspects of the provision that we think pupils have a right to expect. While each of our amendments has validity in its own right, they have also been consolidated into Amendment 57CA.
The Government’s proposals in Clause 27 amend the Education Act 1997 so that in the future maintained schools and pupil referral units would be required to secure independent, impartial careers advice for pupils aged 13 to 16. However, schools will be free to decide how best to fulfil this duty based on the needs of their pupils and as the Bill stands there is no guarantee that the advice would be from a trained professional, nor that it would be face to face. Our amendments would ensure that all pupils receive face-to-face careers advice from year 8 onwards. This is the year that the majority of pupils turn 14 and start to make decisions about their study options for GCSE, and it is vital that they understand the implications of those choices for their future careers.
Our amendments also require that advice is provided by a qualified provider, not a teacher to whom the responsibility has been given as an afterthought or someone employed by an accredited service provider who is none the less not personally qualified. This is vital to ensure a consistent quality of careers advice throughout the education system. We had an excellent debate on this subject in Grand Committee and noble Lords from all sides of the House recognised the need to drive up standards in careers advice for young people, and the need to influence them early enough to make wise choices about their course of study.
I acknowledge receipt, rather belatedly, of the Minister’s letter of 20 July, in which he tried to address those concerns. Regretfully, I do not think the letter goes far enough and I do not believe that his proposal of guidance to schools will give sufficient guarantees to young people who should have a right to these services. I do not believe that measuring outcomes via the destination of pupils or relying on a future Ofsted report, both of which would take time, gives pupils and parents sufficient reassurance about the provision that will take place now.
We all understand that careers decisions for young people are very complex these days, more so than when many of us were making our first career choices some time ago. There is increased competition for higher education places, a greater range of opportunities, including apprenticeships, and an awareness nowadays that jobs are less often jobs for life. Young people may need to equip themselves for a range of jobs and a degree of flexibility in their career plans. They also have to factor in the higher costs of staying on in education, which has not been made any easier by the cutting of EMA and the increase in tuition fees. Evidence shows that lack of information about the choices available is seen by young people as one of the main barriers to their participation post-16 and an even greater number see this lack of information as having placed constraints on their choices post-16. They need expert help and guidance on a regular basis to help them achieve their ambitions.
The Government believe it is sufficient to offer careers guidance by phone or online to the vast majority of pupils but we fundamentally disagree. Where a young person has access to a wide network of family and friends with a variety of careers, phone and internet advice might be helpful. Where a young person’s family is able to arrange internships and job trials for them, it might be helpful. However, phone or internet advice might be helpful but it is not enough. It does not meet the challenge of ensuring that young people get nuanced guidance, tailored to their talents, drive and ambitions. Of course, this is particularly true for young people who do not have access to a social network of people in a variety of jobs or who do not have role models in different careers, and even more so for young people from families where there is intergenerational worklessness.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I hope that the noble Baroness will forgive me for not responding to that point. We clearly want to see high-quality careers guidance for girls as well as for boys. We expect schools to want to do that. The noble Baroness’s particular concern may be to make sure that some of the career options that schools have not traditionally thought of as being suitable for girls get full consideration. I agree with her that one would very much want to see that.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, once again we have had a very good debate on careers. I think that noble Lords from around the House have recognised the need for us to provide an improved careers service for young people, particularly in the current economic climate. However, we have some disagreements that the Minister has not fully addressed. The case was very well made about the great advantages of face-to-face counselling for young people. As my noble friend Lady Morris so ably said, that is very different from providing information, which you can, of course, do online. Guidance and counselling need to be done on a face-to-face basis. Regrettably, the Minister did not sufficiently address that issue. We argue that it is a fundamental right for all young people. It is very hard to differentiate and start picking out categories of those who are disadvantaged or at risk as being the only categories who are entitled to that face-to-face counselling, which is such a big issue in terms of young people’s future prospects. The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said that in a perfect world we would all have face-to-face provision. I do not think that we need to talk about a perfect world here; it is too big a fundamental right for young people. It seems to us that it is reasonable and necessary rather than something to which we are foolishly aspiring.
As regards qualifications, the case has been that the provision of careers advice should be regarded as a skilled job. I accept what the Minister has said about organisations being accredited in the future. However, he did not address the point that I made about the people employed by those organisations. If we do not require everyone who is providing the face-to-face careers advice to have a qualification, I very much fear that, as I said, this task will be tagged on to the duties of teachers or will be carried out by people employed at short notice or who are on temporary contracts, although the organisations which employ them are accredited. Again, I argue that the Minister has not addressed the fundamental issue of qualifications.
As regards the guidance to schools, the Minister has, as we have said, written to us about the advice that he is going to send out. He has said that he will consult on that. However, the letter asks schools to consider providing face-to-face guidance for pupils who are disadvantaged and talks about,
“working with local authorities to identify young people who are at risk”.
To my mind, that does not provide any guarantees for any of those categories. We are being asked to jump blindly into a careers guidance provision on which we do not have sufficient guarantees and which is not sufficiently robust.
There is too much at stake here. We feel that we have had too few guarantees. There is too much reliance on research and on data about how the new careers advice service will be monitored in the future, but young people need a provision and guarantees now. They need guarantees that they will have access to someone on a personalised basis and that they will be given advice by a qualified practitioner. We do not accept that the Minister has given sufficient guarantees. I wish to test the opinion of the House on Amendment 57C.
“( ) is provided by a person who attends the premises, and has a relevant qualification in careers guidance who meets such quality assurance standards as the Secretary of State shall require,”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, notwithstanding the fact that my noble friend Lady Brinton is not moving this amendment, I should like to do so in her place. The amendment raises fundamental issues, which we debated previously, about the need for someone to be on the premises and to have a relevant qualification in careers guidance. We believe that those are both fundamental features and should be provided. I therefore wish to test the opinion of the House.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Willis and those who have spoken in favour of this amendment. There are two issues that are important. One is that this is not just about access to hardware. Yes, we are going to move to a situation where you no longer have a suite of computers within a classroom but instead young people have iPads and technology that is mobile around the classroom and around the whole school, and that will make for a much more flexible atmosphere within the school. Access to the technology is important. I think it was my noble friend Lord Willis, or it may have been the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who made the point that many of the disadvantaged do not currently have access to broadband or to mobile technologies, both of which are quite expensive. For those existing on a weekly jobseeker’s allowance of £90, it is one of the items that they have to forgo. It is vital, therefore, that our public libraries are open and available to such people so that they can have access through the public library system.
My second point is that, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, mentioned, the pedagogy is changing rapidly. The technology is interactive and when you use this interaction, because the learner can respond, you get a different and much more motivational form of learning. It is vital that our teachers are trained to use this pedagogy, recognise its development and move forward with it.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, we had a very good debate on this issue in Grand Committee, and I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Willis, and my noble friends Lord Puttnam and Lord Knight for distilling our earlier debates into what we might label a call for action that can be included in the Bill and would ensure that the Government took some of these important issues forward.
Before I go on, though, I have to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. He is completely wrong on the previous Government’s record on this. A lot of the groundwork and preparation for what now gives us a launching pad was laid down by the previous Government. We have been given mixed messages so far by the current Government: they do not have technology or ICT in the English Bacc or in their plans for the core curriculum. I understand that Michael Gove has been saying some warm words on the issue, but the gauntlet has now been thrown down to the Government to actually follow this up and act upon it.
My noble friend Lord Puttnam has faced us with the challenge of employability for the next generation if we do not get this right, while both he and my noble friend Lord Knight have once again inspired us with what is possible in terms of revolutionising teaching if we do get it right. The fact is that some schools are already way ahead of the game, and our challenge is to make sure that every child has access to the advantages that technology can bring to the classroom. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Willis, who said in Committee that,
“to deliver a 21st century curriculum we have to have 21st century methodology and 21st century equipment”.—[Official Report, 11/7/11; col. GC236.]
There is a massive range of benefits. The most obvious one is that if you have sophisticated equipment as a teaching aid, children’s knowledge of technology applications is enhanced. However, it goes much further than that. Children’s research skills are improved and their access to information multiplied. Homework becomes easier and quicker. They no longer have to rely on the availability of often scarce books in the library. As we have heard, it is transformative, engaging and enthusing. Even the most isolated schools can be linked up with others to share learning experience and to interact. Teachers can be linked together to share best practice, swap teaching modules and experiment with and improve materials. As my noble friend Lord Puttnam rightly pointed out, this change can be delivered at scale across the sector.
When we last debated this, and indeed in the debate we have had today, the importance of computer access for all was a strong theme, and I am sure that we can all agree with that. There is still a worryingly high percentage of families that do not have access to a computer at home and are therefore becoming more isolated and excluded. It is also true that we need to address the training of technology teachers if we are to reap the potential benefits that could come from all this.
There is a tendency to look at this problem in terms of narrow unit cost, whereas we should really apply a much broader cost-benefit analysis that compares the advantages of providing high-quality technology in the classroom and in the home with the damage done if a generation of young people is outsmarted in the global information and communication race. I very much support the amendment and hope that the Minister is able to give the simple commitment to delivering the technology plan by 2012 that the amendment requests.
Schools: History
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Luke, for initiating this debate. He has raised some challenging questions about the future of history teaching and the need, which he rightly identified, to narrow the knowledge gap between rich and poor so that all children can excel. We have also, thankfully, had a measured and extremely well informed debate today. I did not realise that there were quite so many history teachers in your Lordships’ Chamber but I have certainly found the debate enlightening. I have also very much welcomed the tone in which the debate has taken place. All too often when these subjects are debated they can dissolve into myth and political discourse.
We have also had some passionate contributions about the wider role of history in establishing truth and fact. I particularly commend the exposition from my noble friends Lady Andrews and Lady Bakewell on the wider benefits of a good grounding in history. I also look forward to hearing the response of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, who I understand is also an expert on this subject. I am sure that he will also give a thoughtful and reflective analysis of the problems which we are now confronting.
We all understand the importance of history in helping us to understand progress, the development of our society and our place in the world today. We also recognise the academic and personal skills that flow from learning to analyse and question, and to differentiate between historical fact and fiction. As my noble friend Lord Morgan rightly pointed out, it gives a good intellectual training.
As several noble Lords pointed out and argued persuasively, it also gives us a sense of identity and belonging and creates a memory of a nation. It also sometimes, as the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, pointed out, scandalously writes some of our citizens out of history, and that cannot be tolerated. As politicians we are keenly aware that we need to learn from history and that the two disciplines are closely intertwined. We are also aware that even in the hands of the most careful practitioner history can be subjective and distorted. This is why individual politicians should be wary of interfering in the shape of the syllabus. I am very pleased that Michael Gove enjoyed studying history at school. He obviously enjoyed a particular style of teaching, and I have no doubt that it works well for some people, but this does not justify him recreating his own teaching experience in every school in the country. Surely he should, instead, be drawing upon the best professional advice as to how children learn effectively and the best academic experience of history teachers in the classroom. It may well be that the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Bew, of a national advisory body of historians could provide focus for this.
Several noble Lords have quoted Simon Schama, who is one of the advisers brought in to shape the new syllabus. I understand that he will be working with Andrew Roberts and Niall Ferguson, notable academics in their own right. They have been very vocal in their criticisms of the current teaching of history, so at least that has helped to provoke a debate. However, as my noble friend Lord Davies argued, they have a particular ideological focus, which is raising some concerns among teachers and parents. Particular alarm bells rang for me when I read that Niall Ferguson had created a war games video to teach young people about the Second World War. He described how his two young sons had enjoyed playing it, but that his daughter had shown no interest in playing war games. That is no surprise. I found myself thinking that Michael Gove might have been better advised to ask some women to join his team of advisers. They might have had a better idea of the sorts of issues which would inspire the imagination of young women in learning history.
Nevertheless, on some things the advisers are right. We all are concerned about the fall in take-up of history GCSE. While history remains a statutory part of the curriculum up to the age of 14, the numbers taking the subject beyond this have been reducing, as we have heard, with only 30 per cent of students taking the subject at GCSE in maintained schools. As both Ofsted and the Historical Association have identified, there are a number of reasons for this. First, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, there is a lack of specialist teaching in schools, leaving many young people with little or no teaching from history graduates trained to teach the subject. Of course, this problem becomes self-perpetuating as the lower numbers taking the subject to A-level and beyond affect the future supply of qualified teachers.
Secondly, there has been a reduction in the time allocated to the subject as the curriculum is squeezed with other priorities or history is combined into a more general humanities course in which the specifics of the discipline can be lost. Thirdly, there are restrictions placed on the subjects that some young people are able to study at GCSE, with history not being an option, or only available if other humanities are dropped. Finally, there are concerns about the inconsistency of exam boards regarding marking, course materials and the criteria for assessment, which puts some students off. So there are undoubtedly a number of structural problems with the curriculum offer which militate against a large uptake of history at GCSE. Incidentally, I am not sure that these problems will be solved by the introduction of the English baccalaureate, which specifies that only one humanities subject should be part of the award.
This issue of the time available to teach particular subjects is more fundamental than might at first appear. It may be that the previous Government allowed the curriculum to become too crowded, but there is always pressure, as we have heard, to add new and justifiable subjects to the list. Conversely, it is rare for anybody to make a case for a subject to be dropped from the curriculum; and just as that applies to the curriculum as a whole, it also applies with individual subjects. I have listened carefully today to the many persuasive contributions on what should be included in the history syllabus, and it would be easy to agree with everyone. Issues raised have included the significance of the French Revolution, the origins of the slave trade, our links with Afghanistan, the history of our relations with the Middle East; the need to understand people’s history, social history, local history, the history of the four UK nations, the history of English literature and art; the development of science and technology and the history of multiculturalism, to touch on just a few. I endorse all of those. They all have a legitimate place in the curriculum. However, we also need to be realistic about what can be achieved in, say, two hours a week up to year nine and maybe three hours a week at GCSE over a 38-week academic year. It is simply not possible to have both the breadth and the depth that we might all desire.
This dichotomy has led to one of the central failings in the teaching of history, which is identified by Ofsted and on which we can probably all agree. It reported that pupils were being let down by a lack of chronological understanding of the subject. In particular, it reported that pupils at primary schools,
“knew about particular events, characters and periods but did not have an overview. Their chronological understanding was often underdeveloped and so they found it difficult to link developments together”.
I very much support the idea that a stronger strand of chronology should underpin the history syllabus, but this is very different from the Secretary of State’s apparent mission to return to learning dates by rote. At a time when our challenge is to excite pupils and capture their imagination about the past, there would be nothing more dull and uninspiring than to force feed them with dates of wars and of births and deaths of kings and queens.
It is an accepted fact among most educationalists that individual children have different techniques for learning and remembering. The real skill of a classroom teacher is to teach in such a way that every child can get the maximum benefit from the lesson. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, pointed out, the current history syllabus meets many of the concerns that have been raised today. The noble Lord, Lord Cormack, disagreed, but this matter can easily be resolved by looking at the facts. The Ofsted report was much more positive about the current history provision than we have been led to believe by some commentators. It is an area in which myths have been flourishing. Just as it is not possible to avoid being deported by owning a cat, it is equally not true that Henry VIII and Hitler are the only individuals studied in the syllabus. In fact, as we have heard, the syllabus is littered with leaders, explorers, inventors and dissenters. As the noble Lord, Lord Addington, rightly pointed out, on any named subject at any time, we always believe that it was taught better in the past and are nostalgic for the way that we were taught it at school.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Perhaps many of the noble Lord’s colleagues remain so. However, we need to scrutinise objectively what is happening in the classroom. In its report earlier this year, History for All, Ofsted praised the teaching at key stage 2, describing pupils as having a,
“detailed knowledge derived from well-taught studies of individual topics”;
while at secondary level it described how,
“effective teaching by well-qualified and highly competent teachers enabled the majority of students to develop knowledge and understanding in depth”.
It went on to identify that students displayed,
“a healthy respect for historical evidence”,
and had the skills to apply critical judgment to support their analysis. Throughout the Ofsted report the skills of the specialist history teachers who knew their subjects well and were able to inspire their pupils were a common theme. Surely we should value and celebrate the contribution of these teachers rather than alarm them with talk of further upheaval.
In conclusion, I hope that the Minister agrees with me that there is a need, first, to tackle the structural reasons why history teaching is in decline and is fighting for space in the school week. Secondly, we need to look again at how the syllabus can be adjusted to allow the chronology and sweep of history to be better understood. Thirdly, we need to engage with history teachers, value what they achieve and listen to their ideas for reform. Politicians should refrain from meddling in an educational agenda fraught with ideological divides, and should perhaps also recruit some women to advise on the really significant events in history and how they might be taught. Then we might inspire a new generation of young people to study history, develop the skills of analysis and apply the lessons learnt so that they can better interpret their lives today.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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“( ) In subsection (1)(b), at the end insert “and has been trained— (i) in the need to maintain the pupil’s dignity and right to privacy in carrying out the search, and(ii) on additional requirements for searching pupils with special educational needs and disabilities;””
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our amendments cover training for schools in the awareness of issues of pupil dignity and discipline when pupils are searched without consent in schools and, similarly, in FE colleges. They also cover the requirement for a witness to be present and, finally, the need for clarity on the school rules regarding which prohibited items can be confiscated in schools.
First, on Amendments 6 and 11, we had an excellent debate on training in Grand Committee and, with respect to the Minister, we very much felt that the weight of the arguments was on our side. This is why we have tabled similar amendments on Report. I also thank the Minister for his letter of 12 October, enclosing draft advice on searches. It picked up on some of our points raised in Committee but we do not feel that it goes far enough. For example, those guidance notes explicitly say that there should be no need for staff to be trained. It was said earlier that we very much welcome the plethora of letters that we have had from the Minister over the past few days. I echo our thanks but I believe this is going to be a pattern of the coming debates on Report, because the Government are keen to sideline some of the issues that we are raising into lengthy advice and guidance notes, whereas we feel that a much clearer and simpler direction on many of these issues needs to be in the Bill and would be much more helpful to heads and teachers alike.
Going back to the detail, our first amendments seek to ensure that any staff who undertake searches are appropriately trained to search with special educational needs and disabilities in mind and to search all pupils in a way that maintains their dignity and right to privacy, and so to foster a school environment of mutual respect. The Bill removes important checks and balances that have been in place to protect both pupils and teachers. As I understood the Minister's argument in Grand Committee, he accepted that training of staff was necessary but felt that heads should be free to decide whether and when staff should be trained. We take a different view. Of course, heads should have some flexibility in deciding the right courses for their staff but we also believe that the issue of pupil searches is so sensitive, and the opportunities for things to go wrong so stark, that there needs to be a requirement in the Bill to ensure that proper training happens.
As we reported in Grand Committee, our views are supported by a number of children's charities, which felt that staff doing searches should be trained in and given guidance on the effects of searches on young people, including on their self-esteem and confidence. In addition, organisations specifically concerned with special educational needs have expressed particular concern. For example, Ambitious about Autism highlighted the need for proper training to carry out safe searches on children with autism so that the children’s potential issues around physical contact, for example, were understood.
From the perspective of a child, searches can be very invasive and frightening experiences, causing children embarrassment, anxiety and humiliation. As adults, we sometimes forget what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a physical intervention from someone in power. These concerns can have even more pronounced implications for children with a history of physical or sexual abuse, children with a disability or special educational needs or children from different cultural backgrounds. For example, I was very struck by the intervention in Committee from the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, when she raised the negative impact of searches on the disproportionate number of black children who are currently being disciplined. In addition, our amendments would give a welcome protection to staff who might otherwise face allegations of improper behaviour.
For all these reasons, we believe it is right to insist that appropriate training takes place for all staff who may be required to carry out searches and that this requirement be spelt out in the Bill. Although I have referred specifically to schools, we believe that the same principles should apply to further education colleges. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the similarities that cross over those two areas so that we do not have to have two separate debates on this.
We then have a number of amendments on the issue of a witness being present at searches. They are Amendments 7, 8A, 9, 12, 13A and 14. They follow on from our discussion in Grand Committee in which the dangers of unwitnessed searches were starkly spelled out and, with due respect again to the Minister, we did not feel were adequately counteracted. We therefore felt it was necessary to return to these issues today. Again, I acknowledge that these issues have been picked up in part in the draft the Minister has issued but we feel that the issues he has raised in the letter do not adequately address our concerns. Our amendment, which leaves out lines 32 to 33, removes the part of the Bill that says that if there is an emergency there does not need to be a witness present.
As we have previously made clear we support moves that would continue to support schools to improve behaviour and discipline, building on the measures brought in by the previous Government. However, despite debates in both Houses, it is still not clear why the removal of the requirement for there to be a witness to searches would be a necessary addition to existing powers to search or to use reasonable force to control or restrain a pupil or if necessary to stop a pupil committing a criminal offence. The debate in Grand Committee drew strong support from across different parties and the Cross Benches. For example, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Jolly, tabled an amendment to remove part of the clause that is included in the aims we are pursuing again today. I am aware that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has tabled Amendment 13, which insists on same-sex searches. This is a position again that we debated in Grand Committee and we supported then and still have some sympathy for today. However, we acknowledge the difficulties that can arise in primary schools where very often there are not teachers of an appropriate sex available. We believe the presence of a witness provides in all circumstances the overriding protection both for staff and for pupils being searched. The witness is the most necessary requirement.
A common view has arisen from our debates that children’s rights must be paramount. A number of children’s charities have raised concerns about the safeguarding issues should this clause go through unchanged. For example, Barnardo’s has argued that the extension of the powers of school staff to search pupils without their consent is troubling and the existing safeguards to protect both the child and the teacher must remain. It also argued that searches must be witnessed, carried out by a person of the same sex as the pupil, and recorded.
In the earlier debate I was particularly struck by the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, who was able to give a practical insight into how the Bill would impact in the classroom. He said:
“If there is a crisis, the best way to deal with it is not to provoke the situation further but to calm everything down. My concern is that if a teacher carries out this act by themselves and no one else is present, it could put them at risk”.—[Official Report, 30/6/11; col. GC 261.]
As I also mentioned in Grand Committee, this clause gives school staff powers that go beyond the powers of the police in respect of stop and search. Can the Minister clarify whether this is in fact the consequence of the changes and has he consulted his colleagues in the Home Office to learn the lessons of the overuse of stop and search?
Throughout the debates on the Bill so far no one has been able to come up with a convincing range of examples of the circumstances in which these new powers need to be used. Teachers already have powers to intervene in the classroom in an emergency and, in other examples, the situation of a lone teacher carrying out a search is likely to aggravate not dissipate a situation as well as putting the teacher at risk. There does not seem to be a clamour from heads or from classroom staff to have these new powers. In the absence of any compelling reasons, despite thorough debate on these clauses in both Houses as to why searching without a witness would ever be necessary or sensible, and recognising the risk to pupils and teachers that the removal of the witness requirement may bring, my amendment would simply make it a requirement for people to undertake searches with a witness present.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, this amendment seeks to ensure that if a school wishes to keep a child in detention after school, it must ensure that it has successfully contacted the child’s parent or carer. When we discussed this matter in Grand Committee, I asked that the school should get the agreement of the parent. I believed that I was offering a compromise when I moved towards simply asking that the school should inform the parent, but I understand that the Minister does not think so.
Clause 13 has the potential to put a child in danger and I hope that I will be given a strong reassurance by the Minister that this will not be so. While I trust the vast majority of teachers, surely the Minister must accept that it takes a while for a young teacher to develop the sort of good judgment and common sense that we believe would prevent them from putting a child in danger on the way home. That is why we need to make it abundantly clear in guidance that no teacher may detain a child after school without informing the parent if it in any way compromises the safety of the child.
My noble friend the Minister made the point in Grand Committee that schools already have a duty of care to their pupils under other legislation. That may well be so, but noble Lords know the difficulty of cross-referencing other Acts when we are considering a current Bill that makes changes to earlier legislation. That is why I am asking the Minister to ensure that in the guidance that accompanies this new power, the school is made aware, on the same page, that it must not use this power if it in any way puts the child in danger. In order to check on this, the school will have to find out what the child’s transport arrangements are and ensure that either the detention is so short that it avoids the child missing a bus or that other safe travel arrangements have been made. The school may also need to check on whether the child is a carer, where detaining that child after school may cause another vulnerable person in distress. Schools should already know which children are carers, but they need to be sure in this case. I also think the guidance should make it clear that it is good practice to inform the parents anyway by phone. I can envisage the distress of a parent, waiting at home for a child to step off the school bus, only to find that he does not. The parent will worry herself sick; I know I would have done.
I think that this provision is entirely contrary to the respect with which this Government treat parents otherwise. Only this week, we have received a letter about changes to the way complaints about school admissions arrangements are handled, which said:
“We believe that parents should be given the opportunity to be part of the system that holds schools to account, properly supported and championed by the local authority, the Secretary of State and independent adjudicators”.
At the same time, the Government seek to write parents out of their discipline arrangements by letting schools avoid telling them that their child is in detention. As I understand it, this idea has come from one of the head teachers’ unions, but not the other one. I can tell the Minister what parents want: they do not want this. They want to be respected and informed.
Points were strongly made in Committee that rural schools, if they adhere to their safeguarding duty, will not be able to use this sanction at all. Yet I can reassure my noble friend that children in rural schools will not run amok because of it. There are many sanctions already in the armoury to ensure good behaviour and most schools use them effectively. Most have maintained good discipline to date without this power. I question the competence of any school that feels it needs this power to maintain good order and discipline. Yet, in order to give them this power, the Government may risk the safety of children unless the guidance is clear, unequivocal and powerful. We want only one more case like that of poor Milly Dowler and the Government’s good judgment will be called into question, rightly or wrongly.
This is entirely unnecessary if the Government get the guidance right. Will the Minister assure me that our comments about the guidance, and the strength and clarity that it needs, are taken on board by Ministers and officials? Without that assurance, we will remain with the concerns that I have expressed. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our Amendment 34 is similar to the one so ably outlined by the noble Baroness. It is a requirement that schools should always give reasonable notice to parents or carers of any detentions and that before going ahead with a detention, they have received from the parent or carer confirmation that they are aware of the detention. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has described, we thought that we were eminently conciliatory in our amendment, that it was common sense and would be warmly welcomed by the Minister. Perhaps it still will be.
We return to this issue after a detailed debate in Grand Committee in which we felt there was consensus that this was a common sense position between, on the one hand, an instant response to bad behaviour, while on the other, ensuring that pupil safety is protected. As it stands, the Bill removes a requirement to give 24 hours notice of detention and as a result schools would not be required to give parents or carers any notice at all. We have had a letter from the Minister today setting out new proposals, but those ask teachers only to judge,
“whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.
Frankly, we do not think that that is good enough. We recognise that it is usually the case that the nearer the punishment is to the original incident, the more effective it is. However, as a number of noble Lords in Grand Committee recognised, this would potentially create a number of safeguarding issues, which the Minister’s letter attempted to address. It would also potentially damage the relationship between parents and schools and could have a knock-on effect on the success of the school’s broader behavioural policy.
A number of objections remain to no-notice detentions, specifically because of the damage to the school’s relationship with parents. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has outlined some of those, such as it being impracticable for parents to rearrange children’s transport at short notice when they might have other commitments —other childcare commitments, and so on. There could be unnecessary worry for parents in rural areas especially on dark evenings, when they are anxious about their child’s travel home. There could also be concern if parents think their child is travelling home alone, separately, because they are travelling later, rather than earlier with a group, when they are all leaving school together. There is also the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised about caring responsibilities, of which children might not always have made the school aware. Finally, and perhaps most importantly in this catalogue, there is the basic discourtesy to parents which this Bill would represent and which would do little to help schools forge strong partnerships with parents.
When we discussed this in Committee, the Minister expressed some sympathy with the arguments we had put forward, but went on to argue that head teachers already had to produce behaviour policies which were publicised to parents. She also argued that there were existing legal safeguards that protect children's welfare if they are given detention. However, we do not feel that these points adequately address our concerns and they put the onus on parents to object to the school’s actions after the event through the complaints procedure or through legal action. Surely this is making heavy weather over what should be a common-sense policy. To be frank, we have not yet heard any valid arguments against what we are proposing.
The simplest way through is to support our amendment —or, indeed, the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—which make it clear that schools can organise no-notice detention provided the parent has confirmed that they aware that it is happening. This will provide adequate safeguards for children and ensure that parents are kept in the loop and treated with respect. I hope noble Lords and the Minister will feel able to support this amendment.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I take the point the noble Baroness makes. However, we have to accept that schools take massive care of the children in their care and do not take these measures lightly. We are talking about short periods of detention after school for pupils who can get home safely; those who do not need to catch the school bus and so on. All those are already enshrined in the care and the regulation. We seek—and we hear the very grave concerns being expressed by noble Lords—to make quite sure the guidance is strengthened to ensure that child safety is never compromised by the school’s actions. We feel that the safeguards already in place strike the right balance between ensuring that children are safe and allowing schools to take proportionate action—to use their discretion and professional judgment—to establish the arrangements that work best for them.
We hope that my noble friends and the noble Baronesses will agree to work with us to see how we can strengthen the guidance that goes with these measures and meanwhile will feel able to withdraw their amendments.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Before the noble Baroness sits down, I want to clarify when she is proposing now. We were sent a copy of a draft document on detention, which says:
“When judging whether a detention outside school hours is reasonable teachers should consider whether it is appropriate to give notice to parents”.
Is the noble Baroness now saying that is going to be strengthened or is that the wording that is on offer? I want to clarify that point.
“Register of teachers
The Secretary of State shall have a duty to maintain a register of qualified teachers.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, the Bill abolishes the General Teaching Council for England. However, in abolishing it, there is a fear that the Government are getting rid of some of the crucial features and functions that it has previously carried out. One of those crucial functions is to maintain a register of teachers.
The register and the requirement to be qualified, to which we will come later, are important for maintaining the professional status of teachers. The register of those qualified and entitled to teach in our schools has been successful in enabling employers to make recruitment checks and is valued by employers and teachers alike. Under the Government’s proposals, all that will be held is a database of those prohibited from teaching, which is a very different thing.
The Bill sets out that certain GTCE functions will transfer to the Secretary of State and others will stop completely. In his letter to us of 13 June, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, confirmed the Government’s intention that they will not continue to maintain a register of teachers. I acknowledge that he has subsequently written setting out how the Government believe that the database of teachers prohibited from teaching will be established. To be frank, we do not accept that that meets our concerns.
There does not appear to be any pressure from educationists for the register to be discontinued. Indeed, as I reported in Grand Committee, the ASCL told us that,
“abolition of the GTCE and discontinuation of the registers removes the public’s guarantee that all registered teachers are, ‘eligible, suitable, properly qualified and of good standing’”.
In Grand Committee we were also told that independent schools value the existence of the register. Parents and pupils want high quality, qualified teachers. They want an assurance that the profession is regulated. As I mentioned in Grand Committee, a survey showed that,
“93 per cent of parents want teachers to be regulated, to have an agreed level of training and to be registered with a regulatory body before taking up a teaching post”.—[Official Report, 4/7/11; col. GC 55.]
The GTCE has told us that it carries out something in the region of 676,000 checks on teachers’ registration each year, saving employers significant time and money. At the Committee stage in the Commons, the Minister acknowledged the benefit of a register of people with qualified teacher status and said:
“We recognise the central benefits of providing head teachers and employers with access to a central record of who holds qualified teacher status. We will explore whether and how to provide that in future”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 17/3/11; col. 498.]
Our amendment would go further than that and make the Secretary of State accountable for an up-to-date register.
If the register of teachers in England is abolished, we will be left with a farcical situation where up-to-date registers are maintained in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland but not in England. Those three nations have seen the sense in keeping the register. What are the implications of England not keeping the information? Will rogue teachers slip through the net? Will the lack of an English register undermine those being kept by other countries, as teachers move between the four nations? What does that say about how England perceives the professionalism of teachers, compared to the other nations?
The abolition of the English register is unnecessary and provocative. All other professional sectors in this country keep a register of those entitled to practise. Some—for example, the General Medical Council—share the information publicly on a website, along with details of any disciplinary action that has been taken against a doctor. Is this not the way that we should be moving if we believe in empowering parents?
The abolition of the register is a retrograde step that the Secretary of State will grow to regret. In the past, the GTC has administered the register, but it does not have to be this body in future. The Secretary of State is equally able to carry out this function. Given that he has been so keen to take on so many additional powers himself, we hope that he will see the sense in also taking on this responsibility. We trust that noble Lords will see the sense of these amendments and hope that the Minister will feel able to support them.
Lord Puttnam
My Lords, I rise to support both amendments in this group. I will not go into detail because they have been beautifully set out by my noble friend Lady Jones. I must point out that in passing these clauses we will effectively be officiating at the funeral of the General Teaching Council. It would be quite wrong of me, as a former chairman, to allow that to happen without saying a few words about why it is a catastrophic mistake.
It is not just a catastrophic mistake. I have absolutely no doubt that within 10, 15 or 20 years, this or another Government will come to the Dispatch Box and announce the creation of something remarkably similar to the General Teaching Council. The reason goes to the heart of the paradox that the Government have embraced in their approach to the teaching profession. Unless I misheard the Minister, he referred just now to the emergence of an outstanding generation of leaders, particularly in the teaching schools. I celebrate and support that. However, these are leaders of a very peculiar type: they somehow fall short of being allowed professional status. I am not sure that there is any other area of British public life where that is true: where we seek and promote outstanding leadership but refuse to acknowledge the professional status that ought to go with it.
I do not for one moment defend the clumsy and frankly inadequate legislation that led to the creation of the General Teaching Council. It was not good enough and I and many others suffered from trying to make it work. However, it was a dream and an ambition that was worth while. In rejecting and scrapping it, the Government must acknowledge that they are flying in the face of the ambitions for the profession of every leading educationalist of the 20th century, from Sir Alec Clegg onwards. Every single educationalist sought, promoted and fought for professional recognition for teachers.
There is a very simple line to draw. Skilled, professional teachers lead to well educated children, who in turn give us some hope of a successful society. The key is the skill of the professional teacher. The notion that you can have a successful education system without the wholehearted buy-in and support of the entire profession is a fantasy that all noble Lords in this Chamber would agree is unsustainable. We will not get the profession buying into educational reform and improvement until it comes to understand that it is just that: a profession.
The disastrous mistake that my Government made was in ever contemplating the notion that we could have a professional body that was not paid for by the profession. I am afraid that what is happening here—it is a tough thing to say—is the infantilisation of the profession. We are scrapping its professional status because no one has the courage to say to the profession: “Grow up, understand the responsibilities you have, understand that there is no possible success for this country unless a generation of brilliant teachers emerges, and understand that along with that responsibility comes the need to be professionals—and professionals pay for their professional status”. We will have something like the General Teaching Council. I hope it will be in my lifetime, but it may be after it. Today, I want to register the fact that this is a sad day for the profession, a sad day for the Government and a sad day for the future of education because, as I say, we will have to return to it. When we do so, I hope we will return to it in a more constructive spirit than the manner in which we are scrapping it.
Lord Hill of Oareford
That sounds a very sensible suggestion. I will need to check where we have got to on developing the two databases but that sounds eminently sensible because clearly one would want to make sure that there was read-across.
I hope in light of the reassurance about providing the information, which I accept there has been widespread agreement that we need, including from the party opposite, and about maintaining such a register, that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, may feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I listened to my noble friend Lord Puttnam with a great deal of sadness as he described the demise of the GTC and what it had originally intended to represent, which was a strong professional standard for the teaching profession and something that they could all aspire to. It is a very sad day that we are here reflecting on its demise. The Minister said very warmly to my noble friend Lord Puttnam that he would not disagree with a word that he had said about teachers’ professionalism, and he went on to say that he hoped that something would “well up” to replace it. That is not much of a response to the profession. In the intervening period, while we are waiting for this welling up, the teaching profession will have been sent a signal that the Government really do not think that it is terribly important and it has got to bide its time before anything appears from the ether to be a standard for it again as a professional body. I echo the comments that have been made about the messages that this sends to the profession.
My noble friend Lord Puttnam went on to say that we would end up recreating the GTC and I think that is really where we are ending up. As we have heard, we have got one list, or maybe two. Somebody is going to have to administer those lists. At a very basic level, if they are not a register then they are moving towards becoming a register, and I acknowledge that the Minister has made some gestures towards what we were arguing. The question that has been raised about whether they will speak to each other is very valid.
I also think that there is a difference between a database of those who are qualified to teach and a register of those who are currently teaching. A register of those who are qualified to teach would very quickly get out of date. It would become a moribund list of people who have potentially not taught for 20 years or more, whereas the idea of a register is as a current, lively thing that enables access to people’s current status. It seems that we have got two poor substitutes for what was a perfectly reasonable arrangement in the first place. More work needs to be done on this.
As for this applying only to England and what happens to the other three nations. I am not sure that I heard the Minister address that issue. Three registers are going to exist in the other three UK nations, and England will be the only one which does not have one. We have made heavy weather of this. It would have been a lot easier if we had just kept the register as well, and be done with it.
I am absolutely sure that the thinking behind this is that the GTCE, for whatever reason, was not in favour with the current Government, and this is why we have ended up where we are. A lot more work needs to be done on this, but I take on board the Minister’s intention to come back and clarify some of these issues. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Where subsection (1) applies, the employer must provide information about the teacher to the Secretary of State.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, as the Bill stands, where a teacher may have been dismissed due to serious misconduct or dismissed due to serious misconduct had they not already resigned, the employer,
“must consider whether it would be appropriate to provide prescribed information about the teacher to the Secretary of State”.
The same holds for teachers employed through an agency.
Also, as the Bill stands, the Secretary of State,
“must keep a list containing”—
the names which we have just been discussing, of those—
“to whom a prohibition order has effect”.
But as we have heard, under the Bill there is no requirement for the Secretary of State to maintain a register of qualified teachers. Again, this is an issue which we have just been rehearsing, and on which we require further clarification.
The original requirements that this clause now removes were put in place to ensure that any future potential employers were aware of previous dismissals for serious misconduct. It protected employers from a safeguarding and quality perspective and it protected the pupils in these schools. We believe that these protections are still essential. Our amendments would make it compulsory and not discretionary for employers to inform the Secretary of State about cases where an employed teacher or an agency teacher has been dismissed due to serious misconduct.
If the Bill went through unamended, there would no doubt be a variation in treatment from employer to employer, and the picture held by the Secretary of State on the database that we have been talking about would be incomplete. It would mean that checks by potential employers would not be complete, and the risk of employers unknowingly hiring teachers previously guilty of serious misconduct would rise. This would reduce confidence in the whole referral system. And more importantly, it could put pupils at risk.
In Grand Committee, the Minister argued that the proposals made no change to the duty on all schools to refer any cases of serious misconduct relating to children to the Independent Safeguarding Authority. But this does not appear to provide the safeguards that are necessary. For example, what about other cases of misconduct, for example financial misconduct? And what does the ISA do with the information that would stop the teacher being hired by an unwitting employer in the future?
The proposals are a recipe for confusion, with employers not being clear where to send information on misconduct, and a danger that several agencies will end up holding partial records. Surely the safest way out of this is to require all information to be held in one place—in this case, as we propose, to be held by the Secretary of State.
I know it has been argued that the current system does not work well in that different employers are providing different levels of information to the GTCE. But surely the solution to this is to provide a clear national obligation on employers to inform the centre not to give them even more discretion and therefore make an even more patchy picture of what is happening out in the schools.
This issue is too important to brush aside. It is not about the bureaucratic flow of information; it is about pupil safety and the guarantees that parents rightly expect as regards proper checks being carried out on teachers before they are employed. That can work only if the Secretary of State provides clear leadership to schools and ensures that his department receives a consistent and comprehensive picture of the misconduct issues taking place in them. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support our amendment.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I do not think I have that in my back pocket, but I will rootle in my clothing after this and see what information I can find. If there is relevant information which would shed some light on this I will, of course, send it to the noble Lord and circulate it more widely.
I will briefly set out the Government’s overall proposals on teacher regulation to try to put them in context. The GTCE currently deals with referrals for both incompetence and misconduct. I start with that because it touches in some way on the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Knight. There is pretty clear evidence that the approach taken by the GTCE on incompetence has not been working and this is one of the things that drove us to try a new approach. In 10 years, the GTCE barred only 17 teachers for incompetence, and research has shown that employers are often reluctant to make referrals relating to competence to a national regulator. As we have discussed, they have previously only had a nuclear option and this has discouraged heads from making referrals, on the understandable basis that someone who might not be guilty of serious misconduct, but might need to move on and try teaching in a different school, finds himself grinding through the GTCE process. We are therefore seeking to separate issues of competence from issues of misconduct.
So far as dealing with incompetence is concerned, we want to put that into the hands of head teachers. To help them carry out this responsibility, we are also currently consulting on some streamlined arrangements for performance management and capability procedures. So far as misconduct is concerned, we certainly think there is a role for a national regulator, but we also want to try to give head teachers an appropriate level of responsibility, with only serious misconduct cases that may warrant the ultimate sanction—a bar from the teaching profession—being dealt with by the national regulator.
On the issue of safeguarding raised by my noble friend Lord Storey, the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is partly a response to that. Our proposals will not alter the current arrangements in relation to child protection. The legal duty on employers to refer any issues that relate to safeguarding to the Independent Safeguarding Authority will remain. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, asked what happens when the Independent Safeguarding Authority is informed. If a person is barred by the ISA, a flag would appear on their CRB check and a head teacher carrying out a check would then know.
The present regulatory regime requires head teachers to refer all teachers who are sacked as a result of misconduct to the national regulator. The regulator then investigates those cases and imposes one of a range of sanctions depending on the severity of the misconduct. Our basic position is that we do not think that a national regulator should need to administer intermediate sanctions such as restrictions on the use of the internet on school computers. The purpose of the national regulator should be to investigate the most serious cases in order to decide whether a teacher should ever be allowed to teach again. Under the current system, only 10 per cent of referrals have resulted in prohibition orders. In other words, a lot of the GTCE’s time—and a significant amount of money—has been spent investigating cases of a lower order of significance. Similarly, the current system requires head teachers to go through the process of referring a teacher, even if they believe that there are no grounds for barring them from the profession. This is inefficient and risks placing a perverse incentive on head teachers not to confront issues of conduct, because they think it is inappropriate and unnecessary to refer the case to the national regulator.
The amendments effectively seek to reverse the changes we are proposing to make to the role of the national regulator in relation to misconduct. The reason that I am resisting them is because experience of the current system has shown that requiring employers to refer all cases has had two undesirable consequences. First, as I have said, it means that the regulatory system has spent too much of its time focusing on cases that are not sufficiently serious to warrant the teacher being barred, and secondly, that heads have avoided sacking teachers for misconduct because they know it does not warrant an investigation by the regulator and they would not want them ending up on that path.
There is a point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, about inconsistency, which I accept. I agree that arrangements for teacher regulation should seek to achieve consistency, but I do not believe that the current duty which she prefers is delivering that. Research published in 2008 found that between 2001 and 2008, nearly one-third of all local authorities had never made a referral for misconduct. Even when we take into account the different numbers of teachers employed in different local authority areas, the variation of referrals among local authorities indicates significant inconsistency in the current system. To reduce that, and to support head teachers in exercising their discretion, we are developing prohibition advice which sets out the kinds of misconduct that should lead to a teacher being barred from the profession. I circulated a draft on 12 October. We are currently carrying out a consultation on the guidance, which we intend to publish following Royal Assent. I would be happy to receive comments on that consultation from noble Lords to see whether they think it will help us to deliver greater consistency.
We are taking those steps and I hope, by explaining the rationale behind wanting to move to a more differentiated system, that even if the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, does not accept my reasoning she will withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Storey, made a powerful case on the issue of consistency, and I think that it is the key word in this. We are grappling towards a system that is best going to deliver that consistency. The Minister said that it did not work in the past and that incomplete records were provided by different authorities. My answer to that is that what he is proposing now will make it even more inconsistent and patchy. The draft regulations he has recently sent out show that it will very much be discretionary rather than compulsory for employers as to whether they feed information into the centre. The onus of the wording is that employers “may” decide whether they wish to inform the Secretary of State, members of the public “may” be able to refer cases to the Secretary of State, and the police and the Independent Safeguarding Authority “may” also refer cases to the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State will have a very patchy and inconsistent picture, and I do not know that that helps anybody. What we really want is a resource that future employers can access and in which they will have some faith.
I understand the steps the Minister is taking, but we need to revisit the draft regulations. We need to make a much better attempt at trying to find a consistent and useful resource for future employers. I do not think that this is it, but there is room for further dialogue. On that basis, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
“School teachers’ qualifications: definition of “school”
(1) EA 2002 is amended as follows.
(2) In section 133 (requirement to be qualified), in subsection (6) (schools to which this section applies), after paragraph (b) insert—
“(c) an Academy, including a free school,(d) a city technology college, or(e) a city college for the technology of the arts.””
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, this amendment would require teachers in all state schools to be qualified. Specifically, it will remove the ability for teachers in free schools not to be qualified. This country has great teachers. Under the previous Government, Ofsted said that we had the “best generation ever”—a proud achievement meaning the best quality teaching for our children. This Government talk about standards and the importance of teaching. The Secretary of State says that the importance of teaching cannot be overstated, while in the foreword to the schools White Paper, the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister say that,
“no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers”.
I agree with that but it is difficult to see how the Government’s actions, which would allow teachers in free schools to be unqualified—unlike the teachers in any other state school—support these statements. I believe that a core purpose of education reform should be to drive improvements in standards and raise professionalism, but it is difficult to see how this move does either. Can the Minister explain why the Government think that by lessening teacher professionalism in certain schools, standards will increase? What evidence does he have to support this?
We have already discussed in the Grand Committee the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England, a body that was set up to improve standards of teaching and the quality of learning. We have also raised concerns that the Government have done so without putting in place satisfactory arrangements on teacher registration or on maintaining standards of teacher professionalism. We have raised similar concerns about the abolition of the Training and Development Agency for Schools, which among other things had responsibility for the development and maintenance of the professional standards framework for teachers. This is beginning to create a disturbing picture, so does the noble Lord think that these moves, and the move to allow publicly funded teachers to be unqualified, will lead to an increase or a decrease in educational standards?
The model funding agreement for free schools simply indicates that teachers should be “suitably qualified”, and while the model funding agreement for existing academies includes provision that teachers are qualified in line with the expectations of maintained schools, that is not established in statute. Our Amendment 124B will ensure that all schools, including academies and free schools, would be subject to the same legislation as other schools when it comes to qualified teachers. The Secretary of State has said about free schools:
“We want the dynamism that characterises the best independent schools to help drive up standards in the state sector … In that spirit, we will not be setting requirements in relation to qualifications”.—[Official Report, Commons, 15/11/10; col. 623.]
However, where independent schools are high performing what evidence does the Minister have that it is the lack of qualifications that drives up standards rather than the lower teacher-to-pupil ratio, the size of the school or other factors?
In every profession, it is a given that standards are increased by professional qualifications so why are the Government so keen to make an exception of education, and what sort of message does this send to the existing teaching profession about how its skills are valued by this Government? What next—unqualified doctors? If the Government release doctors from the bureaucracy of getting qualified, do we think that would drive up standards in the NHS? If accountants are given the dynamism that the Secretary of State thinks comes from a lack of qualifications, would standards rise in their sector? Would lawyers freed from the shackles of professional qualifications do a better job?
International evidence shows that the status, expertise and professionalism of teachers have an important impact on standards. The OECD report Viewing the United Kingdom School System through the Prism of Pisa states:
“Importantly, many of the high performing countries share a commitment to professionalised teaching, in ways that imply that teachers are on a par with other professions in terms of diagnosis, the application of evidence-based practices, and professional pride”.
On a more populist level, those of us who watched “Jamie’s Dream School” earlier this year will have seen the shocked realisation of some the participants—all of whom were experts in their own field—when they realised that teaching is a highly skilled profession.
It is a mystery where the demand for this policy has come from. It is certainly not from parents. A ComRes poll in April this year found that an overwhelming 89 per cent of adults surveyed preferred their child to be taught by a university graduate who is a qualified teacher, 86 per cent believed that any school receiving public funding should employ only qualified teachers to teach pupils and 82 per cent disagreed with the coalition Government and said that they would not want their child to attend a free school that did not require its teachers to be fully qualified. Parents should be able to choose the type of school that is best for their child, and they should rightly demand high standards of teaching in every state school. They should be secure in the knowledge that all publicly funded schools will employ teachers with relevant training and qualifications.
Finally, I note that there is nothing in the coalition agreement on allowing unqualified teachers in our state-funded schools. It only states:
“We will support Teach First, create Teach Now to build on the Graduate Teacher Programme, and seek other ways to improve the quality of the teaching profession”.
This amendment would ensure that free schools and academies are covered in legislation by the same requirements regarding teacher qualifications as other schools. It is simple and a clear guarantee for parents that whatever school they choose for their child, they will know that qualified teachers will be employed. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to support this position.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with this amendment. My experience as a head teacher for 26 years is that one of the reasons that standards in schools have risen is because of the quality of teachers, the quality of entrants going to university or college and the quality of the qualifications they received. We have to think very carefully about where we are going on this. Are we going to have unqualified people who, for example, have no child protection training, no safeguarding training and no special education training? If we do, we do a disservice to our education sector as a whole.
That is not to say that there are not people in schools who are not fully qualified as teachers. For example, currently teaching assistants with NVQ level 3 can teach, provided that the work is prepared by a teacher. Teaching assistants with a higher level qualification can teach and prepare the work, but there is a teacher at hand. The notion that in free schools you have people with no qualifications teaching children is a retrograde step. It is almost Dickensian. It goes back to the pupil teacher. I hope that the Government will look at this very carefully. I am not opposed to the notion of free schools. In fact, the first free school can be traced back to the 1960s in my home town of Liverpool, but it was opened with qualified teachers.
The other day, I was listening to a programme on Radio 5 about a school where all the people providing the teaching—I cannot use the term “teachers” because they are not qualified—are going to have a military background. I have nothing against that, provided they have qualifications to go with that role. I hope that we will look at this closely and return with some proposals that we can all accept.
Baroness Benjamin
My Lords, at a seminar in Birmingham recently, many parents from the black community were in favour of an alternative system of education, because they felt that schools were failing their children. They favoured free schools because, as I said, they felt that the present system was failing their children. They wanted education to strengthen their children’s identity, and found that sometimes that comes from individuals who can assist the teachers in the classroom by giving them support. So unless the teaching curriculum changes and reflects the needs of these children, we might need to have unqualified teachers in the classroom.
I know of one particular unqualified teacher who already helps to teach in the classroom. She says that she has made a great difference to the children’s lives, giving them confidence and self-esteem, especially young black Caribbean boys. She says that she has had all the checks and has had everything done in terms of training and child protection. So in some cases like these we need to consider having unqualified teachers in the free schools, because there are lots of black communities out there begging for this to happen, for we feel that we are failing our children.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I am interested in the noble Lord’s response because, like my noble friend Lady Morris, I felt that he was almost trying to have it both ways. To be honest, I do not think he addressed a number of the key points I originally raised because the quote I gave from Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, and the signals he has sent out are about more than just fraying the edges. This is not about doing things on the margins. The signal the Secretary of State has sent out is that he thinks that there is a model in the independent sector that we should embrace wholeheartedly in the maintained sector because there are all sorts of lessons we should learn.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, we have to adjourn immediately. The Committee will resume in 10 minutes.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Skelmersdale)
My Lords, I understand that the Grand Committee was debating Amendment 124B and that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was in full flow when she was interrupted. May she continue.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
Thank you. I will recap my first point. I thank all noble Lords who contributed to the debate and would emphasise that the Minister cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that there is a grand new model out there based on the independent sector that we are going to embrace, but on the other hand say that this is something that will happen only on the margins on a few occasions. The problem with primary legislation is that it enables far more than just a few individuals around the edges: it enables a whole coach and horses to be pushed through if you set the ball rolling. I realise that I have just used a number of clichés one after the other. I apologise for that, but I am sure that noble Lords got the gist of what I meant.
My second point is: are we going to tell parents who opt to send their children to a free school that this is part of an experiment, of which we do not know the outcome, and that it is not in any way evidence-based? Another thing that the noble Lord did not give me was any evidence as to why this could be justified. Will we admit to parents that we do not know the impact of letting untrained teachers loose on their children, but say that it will be a very useful experiment and that, at the end of their child’s education, which may have been the worse for it, we will assess the experiment and decide whether to carry on with it? Parents should be told if that is the case, rather than let them assume, as most parents would, that if their child goes to any form of maintained school they would be in the capable hands of a qualified teacher.
My third point is that the noble Lord talked about there already being protections in the legislation for vulnerable pupils. One issue that we have explored in debates on previous issues is that often vulnerable children, children with special educational needs and those with behavioural problems go undetected. A qualified teacher has the training and experience to be able, as best they can, to identify the children whose special needs might otherwise not be identified and properly addressed. It is not good enough to say that vulnerable children are protected anyway, because it is difficult to quantify how they are categorised.
Finally, the noble Lord did not address the crucial issue of the morale of teaching staff. We are saying to them: “Of course we value you and of course you are important members of society, but people who have not gone through the training and qualification process that you have will come and work alongside you, will be paid the same and will have the same status”. That sends a very poor signal to teachers who are feeling very unloved at the moment. It would be very simple for the Government to send a signal that they recognise their professionalism, qualifications and rigour and do not feel that the sector’s professionalism should be watered down. I am not convinced by what the noble Lord says, so we will return to the issue on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
“( ) Part 1 comes into force in relation to England on 1 January 2012.””
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
First, I thank the Minister for his letter to my noble friend Lady Hughes. Our amendment concerns the raising of the participation age. The Minister's letter, as I think he will realise when I explain my reasoning, addressed one part of our amendment: namely, the date by which that might happen. It did not address the other part of it, which states that Part 1 of the Education and Skills Act should come into force on that day. We feel that we have had only a partial response so far. I hope that as the discussion goes on we will be able to explore the matter further.
Just to be clear about Clause 71, which, as I say, concerns the
“Duty to participate in education or training”,
and raises the training participation age, the relevant part of Part 1 of the Act sets out the duties: to whom the duty should apply, what the duty meant and the duties on schools and employers, for example, to promote and enable attendance. Clause 71, if left unamended, would enable the delay of the introduction of a supporting infrastructure to help young people stay in education and training, such as the duty on maintained schools to promote good attendance and duties on parents of 16 and 17 year-olds. It would also enable a delay of any penalties associated with non-compliance. We are concerned about the message that this would send to young people, to parents and to local authorities about quite how serious the Government are about raising the participation age.
Ours is a probing amendment. We chose the date of 1 January 2012 as the one on which all relevant provisions of the ESA 2008 should come into force, but another date may of course be more appropriate. Perhaps the Minister will say that there is a more appropriate date. What is important is not the date but that when that duty to participate is introduced, the infrastructure comes into force at the same time. Without this amendment we would be in the curious position whereby, for example, a 17 year-old would have a duty to be in education or training while there may not be the adequate support to enable them to do so—and there would be no consequence for the person if she or he did not comply.
In Committee in the Commons, Nick Gibb said:
“We aspire to achieve full participation, but without enforcement”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 5/4/11; col. 957.]
We have grappled with the question of enforcement and we recognise the problems of potentially criminalising young people. However, it is important that the right mechanisms are in place—the right pushes as well as the right pulls—to enable young people to participate. This amendment would ensure that the requirements relating to the supporting infrastructure for this duty come into force at the same time as the duty to participate.
To be clear, what the Education and Skills Act says may not be in force at the same time if our amendment is not passed are sections, for example, covering duties on schools and local authorities to support the rise in participation age and the duty on local authorities to identify people who are NEETs. It covers a duty to provide information to ensure compliance and attendance; for example, the duty on an institution to notify the local authority that they have evidence that a young person is not complying with their duty to participate. It covers an obligation upon employers to make appropriate arrangements for young people to continue attending courses while in employment. It also provides for parenting orders or contracts to be put in place where a young person is not compliant.
To re-emphasise the point, our amendment is simple but what we are keen to see happen is that Part 1 of the Education and Skills Act is implemented in its totality. It is not about the date per se but about making sure that we have all the ducks lined up so that when we announce the raising of the participation age, it can be delivered effectively.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, we will be withdrawing Amendments 145B, 145C and 145E. However, we have some sympathy with the point just made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. If the 2008 Act is narrowed down merely to Sections 1 to 10, there are some real problems as that leaves out the whole infrastructure which supports the raising of the participation age. The following sections are about not just criminal penalties but providing the infrastructure and giving young people the duty to participate. We need to back that up by the means to help them participate, so we very much support the noble Baroness on that point.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, let me start on that fair point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, and my noble friend. We intend to commence those support duties on local authorities and learning providers. The issue that we are considering today, which I will come back on, is the enforcement process. We accept that those support duties need to be commenced.
The latest statistics show that we had 96.1 per cent of 16 year-olds and over 87 per cent of 17 year-olds participating in education or training at the end of 2010. That is a sign, which I know that the noble Baroness will welcome, that more young people are seeing the value of continuing their education and that the education and training sector is becoming more flexible in meeting their needs. We agree with the previous Government’s plans to raise the participation age to 17 in 2013 and 18 in 2015, which was the timescale set out in the Education and Skills Act 2008. We are committed to continuing that. We think that that timescale to which various bodies—local authorities, providers, schools and colleges—are working is sensible and gives schools, colleges and workplaces offering apprenticeships time to prepare. I recognise the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that this is a probing amendment to look into these points. I do not think that January 2012 is actually what she had in mind. I agree with her that we think that that is not a workable suggestion but that the timescale set out by the previous Government is the one to which we will continue to work.
The amendment would also commence all the enforcement provisions in step at the same time as the leaving age was raised in one go. Those provisions would allow local authorities to issue attendance notices, bring young people before attendance panels, give out fixed penalty notices, and ultimately, as a last resort, prosecute young people in a criminal court. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said that she did not want to criminalise young people, and we certainly do not want to do so. That is our thinking behind delaying. We want young people to participate because they recognise the benefits that education and training will bring.
As it stands, Clause 71 allows us to delay the commencement of the enforcement process, and we think that is the right way forward to give the system time to adapt. However, I want to underline that we do not intend to remove the enforcement provisions altogether, which I hope will reassure the noble Baroness. We will keep this under annual review. We hope that participation will increase because of the quality of the training on offer and because young people increasingly see its benefits, but if necessary we will commence all or some of the enforcement provisions. The pupil premium and targeted financial support via 16-to-19 bursaries will help ensure that young people are supported to continue learning. We have a process in place, run by local authorities, that ensures that 16 and 17 year-olds receive an offer of a suitable place in learning and, as we have already discussed, we are implementing all Professor Alison Wolf’s recommendations to ensure that vocational routes generally are of high quality.
We are committed to raising the participation age. We will do it on the timetable laid out by the previous Government. We are not removing the enforcement process but are just delaying its introduction. We will commence the support duties that the noble Baroness raised, we will review the need for enforcement on an annual basis and we will ensure that it is introduced if that is appropriate. With those reassurances, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I thank the Minister for that. I think we have an agreement about the date, although the date is not the point here. I think that we would be happy with the original date and with working towards that plan. I am slightly anxious because he talked a lot about enforcement. While the original legislation had enforcement mechanisms, the whole point of our amendment is that it is not about enforcement. Raising the participation age will work only if the infrastructure and the enforcement go hand in hand. I do not want the Minister to go away with the idea that we would come along with a big bludgeon and demand that young people stay on at all cost. That is not the purpose of the amendment. Its purpose is for teachers, local authorities and employers—all the players in the education of young people—to put in place all the mechanisms to ensure that that encouragement takes place.
I am still a little unclear about what the Minister means when he says that they will commence the support duties. We may have to return to that, because if that is the case, we would like to see those duties on the face of the Bill, and it is not clear to us at the moment that they are. This is about a balanced approach, it is about infrastructure and making sure that young people comply with the new legislation in equal measure. I am not sure, as the Minister has set out the position at the moment, that we will achieve necessarily what the original legislation aimed to do, so we may well return to this matter. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Elton
My Lords, regarding the legislation passed in the previous Session, which enabled and made necessary the identification of people suffering from dyslexia and that group of disabilities, it would be helpful if the Minister could tell us to what extent the number presenting themselves as suffering from these disabilities has increased. That would give us an idea of the workload.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, again, I rise briefly to support the noble Lord’s amendment. Like my noble friend, when I originally read the amendment, I thought that it was self-evident. However, the more I have looked at it and listened to the debate this afternoon, the more it seems to me that, once all the other elements have been stripped out of the legislation and the provisions, we increasingly rely on Ofsted as the final fallback to guarantee standards.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, is right to say that if we are not careful SEN provision will be swept under the carpet and will not be seen as a major factor in provision within schools. Looking at this issue in the context of some of the other amendments that we will debate this afternoon, with the new emphasis on PRUs and alternative academy provision, if we are not careful there will, whether the Government had intended it or not, be a move to take a lot of pupils with specialist needs out of mainstream education into other provision, and the expertise that goes with it will be lost.
Therefore, the noble Lord’s amendment is helpful. It would be reassuring to have it in the Bill, and it would reassure people who see mainstream schools as having an essential responsibility to provide SEN provision and to make sure that it is high quality and high class. It would also reassure people about the intent in the other sections of the Bill.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I sympathise very much with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, but I also sympathise with the tensions expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. There are difficulties here. This is pretty much a sledgehammer amendment and I am not sure that I would want to go that far. However, I invite the Minister to say that he will take away the spirit of the amendment, as well as the comments, and look at how we can best improve the quality of SEN teaching. It is a very tall order to ask any school to be outstanding in all areas that might have to be dealt with under the general heading of SEN, and we might find a more subtle way of inviting them to apply for an outstanding rating in areas where they show expertise.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 122BZB, 122BZC and 122BAA. These four amendments fall into two groups, which are about linked but separate issues. I shall start by speaking to Amendments 122BZA and 122BAA and shall then move on to the other two. Both these amendments propose that we do not delete the duty on further education colleges and sixth-form colleges to promote the well-being of their local area.
I have put forward these amendments because I am currently leading a commission of inquiry promoted by NIACE, the National Institute of Adult and Continuing Education, the AOC, the Association of Colleges, and the 157 Group of large further education colleges to look into the role of colleges in their communities. This follows directly from last November’s two White Papers on skills—Skills for Sustainable Growth and the accompanying strategy document. Both these White Papers proposed a considerable freeing-up of colleges from the micro-management of the Learning and Skills Council, and this is now embodied in many of the amendments to Schedule 12.
The aim is essentially to free colleges to take their own decisions. There is particular emphasis on their working for and in partnership with local employers on the one hand and individual students on the other, and on making sure that they meet the needs of these two groups. However, the White Papers also refer to colleges meeting the needs of their local communities. Implicit in the deregulation is that the needs of employers, individuals and local communities vary from area to area and, therefore, that what is required also varies from area to area. My job in chairing the commission of inquiry is to put a bit of flesh on what the notion of serving the local community might mean for such colleges. We published an interim report in July and our final report is due in November. The outcome of our inquiries has been to highlight the potential of further education colleges to play a vital role within their communities in all kinds of ways.
For example, the provision of youth activities might be seen as important in relation to the riots that we saw this summer. Some colleges link up with local authorities to provide imaginative and extensive youth activities, ranging from sport and motor mechanics to drop-in clubs. These bring young people into the college to see the facilities and use the canteen. They then learn that the college is not such a frightening place. The evaluation of these experiments is that they have been very positive in reducing the number of local NEETs, drug-taking and youth crime. Likewise, in some areas colleges play a major part in outreach activities for ethnic minorities. They provide English classes for speakers of other languages, parenting, home-making and cookery classes, and classes in basic numeracy and literacy. These lead to other college courses and often to higher qualifications, so that many people in these communities move from being dependent on welfare benefits to sometimes quite substantial jobs.
On a different tack, some colleges run consultancies for small and medium-sized businesses, helping them with business planning, financial management and even a limited amount of R&D. The activities vary from community to community, depending on local needs. Many are run in partnership with other organisations. We have coined the phrase “colleges as a dynamic nucleus within their communities”. They are proactive, forming partnerships and companies and leading consortia. The Minister of State for Skills and Further Education, Mr John Hayes, is anxious to see colleges pursue this role, particularly in disadvantaged communities, to provide a focus for regeneration and generate a sense of pride in their local communities. Therefore, from the point of view of my commission, I am very anxious that this duty to promote well-being in a local area should remain. The best of our colleges do it already but it is very useful that there should be a statutory obligation to promote well-being to put pressure on those colleges that do not. I know that the Association of Colleges took the view that any good college would do it. Yes, good colleges do it, but it is those that do not that we want to put pressure on.
I turn now to Amendments 122BZB and 122BZC, which concern a different issue. The passage of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Learning and Children Act 2009, with which many of us around the Table were involved, established sixth-form colleges as separate entities. On examining the Act, the Office for National Statistics decided that both sixth-form colleges and further education colleges had been wrongly classified back in 1992 as being part of the non-profit sector, rather than as public sector institutions, and that the right classification for them was as public sector institutions. The deciding factor was that it is the Secretary of State who ultimately agrees and sets their articles of governance and has the right to dissolve them. If further education colleges are, however, classed as public sector, they will be required to obey all kind of Treasury rules about managing their finances. This effectively stops them from doing all the enterprising things—like setting up subsidiary companies and forming partnerships in their communities—that I would like to see them doing, in order to satisfy my remit in leading this commission, and in order to get things moving after that. The Office for National Statistics is sympathetic to this, and has allowed time for the legislation to be amended in this Bill, so that further educational colleges remain, as they have been, classed as non-profit institutions. The purpose of these two amendments is to have a shot at doing this, by helping to change their status.
Amendment 122BZB is about altering the articles of governance. The present legislation gives the Secretary of State—in the form of the Skills Funding Agency, the appropriate authority—powers to modify the articles of governance. The amendment shifts the ultimate decision-making power to the corporation itself, and makes the SFA’s role merely that of having to be consulted. Likewise, Amendment 122BZC places the ultimate decision on winding up the corporation on the corporation itself, although the Secretary of State, through the SFA, may have considerable influence on that decision, not least in refusing funds.
I am aware that these two amendments are not sufficient in themselves. My aim was to get this issue on to the agenda, because I am anxious that colleges should have the power to go ahead and be entrepreneurial in their own right. I beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
First, my Lords, we accept the Government amendments which have been tabled. As the Minister set out in his letter to me, they correct what ended up being an unintentional consequence of previous legislation, as it affected voluntary sixth-form colleges. On the presumption that these amendments have been the subject of consultation with the Catholic Education Service, which raised the concerns in the first place, if it is now content with the proposed changes, we echo that contentment.
Secondly, going back to the intent of the changes set out in Schedule 12, I have a number of concerns which I want to share with noble Lords today. First, on the issue of promoting economic and social well-being in their areas, I agree with the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp—there is a strong argument for sixth-form and FE colleges to play a role in their wider communities, and to link with local youth services. I was very interested in her concept of colleges as a dynamic nucleus in the community, a concept which I think is worth exploring. As she identified, one of the lessons of the recent riots is surely that those areas with the strongest embedded youth provision, providing positive alternatives to gang culture—something in which colleges can play a part—can be the most resilient to unrest and destruction, as they were over the summer. FE colleges have worked hard in recent years to develop robust partnerships with employers in their areas, knowing the local employment market, and tuning the curriculum offers to the needs of local employers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, says, a number of them already do that, but if we start to remove this provision of promoting economic and social well-being, there is a danger that we will be sending the wrong message: rather than encouraging that development, it will become a licence for colleges to turn inward and insular again, instead of embracing that new role.
Furthermore, on acquiring land and borrowing money by using existing property as collateral, while I would not claim to be an expert on the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, was raising, I do have concerns about some of the provisions set out in Schedule 12. I am concerned about the consequences of some of these new freedoms. It is not absolutely clear to me where the demand for this is coming from. It seems to me that the managers of FE colleges have many skills, but intervening in money markets is probably not one of them. My fear is that some well meaning college leaders will quickly find themselves out of their depth.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, we have three amendments in this group that I should like to address.
First, on the Question that Clause 49 stand part of the Bill, this clause was introduced during Commons Report stage and has not been properly scrutinised. It aims, as I understand it, to give PRUs more autonomy over their budgets and staffing. It also enables a majority of pupils to be referred by schools rather than local authorities. I acknowledge receipt of the Minister’s letter to my noble friend Lady Hughes but, nevertheless, we have a number of concerns that I hope the Minister will be able to address convincingly—particularly regarding the new management and funding arrangements, and whether they will perhaps be perverse incentives for pupils to be kept at PRUs far longer than is in their educational or personal self-interest.
Will the Minister clarify what safeguards will be put in place to stop these autonomous PRUs from keeping hold of the young people for as long as possible, rather than seeking to return them to mainstream education? Secondly, what safeguards will exist to prevent schools from referring to the PRUs children who would not previously have met the criteria for referral by local authority? Does the Minister acknowledge that there was a risk within a federational chain of schools that financial drivers could lead to more pupils being referred to PRUs. Thirdly, to avoid the danger of perverse incentives to keep pupils over-long in PRUs, will the Government ensure that there will be incentives, including financial incentives, for PRUs to help young people back into mainstream education, which I hope is what we should all hope would be their ultimate goal? Finally, can the Minister explain how the funding flows will work, particularly where there is dual registration of a pupil at their old school and the PRU? How will the funding be allocated and who will hold the ultimate responsibility for the expenditure?
We remain concerned that the transfer of power to schools to decide whether pupils should be sent to PRUs will lead them too easily to become dumping grounds for children with behavioural problems or complex disabilities, and we seek reassurance from the Minister that the appropriate checks and balances will be put in place to prevent this happening.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I turn to Amendment 124A. Clause 52, among other things, allows for the creation of alternative provision academies, which are defined as institutions,
“principally concerned with providing full-time or part-time education for children of compulsory school age who, by reason of illness, exclusion from school or otherwise, may not for any period receive suitable education unless alternative provision is made for them”.
Currently, pupil referral units perform that role, so the Bill effectively allows them to become academies.
Our concerns about these new proposals echo those that we raised in previous debates relating to excluded pupils; for example, the repeal of the duty of schools to enter into behaviour and attendance partnerships and the removal of appeals panels that can reinstate wrongly excluded pupils. They also mirror our concerns regarding Clause 49.
Pupil referral units which become academies could grow more isolated from other schools and be cut off from current partnership working, including with local authorities. I ask the Minister again how he thinks this will help excluded pupils to re-enter mainstream schools as soon as possible.
Our Amendment 124A would provide a fallback position whereby pupils could not stay in alternative provision academies for more than six months. If the Minister is going to argue that a time limit of this kind is overly rigid, what alternative safeguards will he propose to stop children being referred early or inappropriately and returned to the mainstream late? How long will they be left to languish in units because it is financially desirable for the institution concerned that they do so?
A different issue is covered by our Amendment 124C. As it stands, the clause includes a Henry VIII provision which gives the Secretary of State a wide-ranging power to amend by order any legislation passed prior to this legislation to achieve the objective of establishing the two new types of academy; that is, 16-19 academies and alternative provision academies. It appears that the Government have not thought out the necessary consequential amendments for introducing 16-19 academies and are relying on a Henry VIII provision to do so. As I am sure noble Lords around the Room will agree, such powers should only ever be used sparingly and in exceptional circumstances. When does the Minister envisage the provision being used and for what purpose?
The amendment, which would remove the Henry VIII provision, is probing. Colleagues tabled a similar amendment in the Commons but, as the Minister there was unable to give a full account of the reasons for the provision, we have tabled it again here. In the Commons, Nick Gibb explained that the power would be used to make provision for which bits of existing legislation would apply to these new models of academy and which would not. He went on to say:
“How the new educational institutions will fit into the existing legal framework is complex”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 5/4/11; col. 893.]
In short, it is not yet clear which legislation will apply to these new types of academy, yet we are being asked to pass the Bill regardless.
Nick Gibb also promised to provide more details of the Government’s proposals as the Bill passed through the House. Since then, we have had a number of government amendments tabled and a letter from our own Minister on the subject. However, as his letter confirms, despite the extra information that the Government are now able to provide, the Henry VIII provision remains necessary for the making of further amendments by order. The letter explaining the government amendments is not an explanation of each amendment but more a background note on the Government’s general approach. This is not the right way to go about making and scrutinising legislation.
If the proposals are too complicated for the Government to bring the details before us now, surely there is a real danger that they will be too complicated to be implemented effectively. We should have the complete legislation before us today so that we have the chance to debate and amend it with the thought and diligence that this Committee has already demonstrated.
I am not sure that the Henry VIII provision was ever intended to provide a way out when the Government had not got all their amendments written in time for the passage of the Bill. I therefore hope that noble Lords will support our amendment to delete the Secretary of State’s powers in Clause 53 to this effect.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we know that at any one time around 40,000 to 70,000 pupils are in some form of alternative provision. We know that there is an iron-clad correlation between those who are excluded, those who attend alternative provision, those who come into the youth justice system and those who go on to offend and reoffend in their adult lives. No one here accepts that it has to be like that. Alternative provision should provide an opportunity to support more young people to turn their lives around. That is why we are taking a number of steps to help to achieve this, including the changes in Clause 49. The Secretary of State has asked the department’s behaviour adviser, Charlie Taylor, to conduct a review to identify what further changes may be needed.
We are keen to give PRUs more of the freedoms that other schools enjoy to allow the professionals who run them to drive their own improvement. This clause will allow PRUs to manage their own budgets in a similar way to mainstream schools. Through regulations we are also giving PRU management committees powers over staffing similar to those that school governing bodies already have. Professionals working in PRUs have welcomed these changes.
In addition to these freedoms, our exclusions trials, in which schools will retain responsibility for excluded pupils, will assess how a new approach to managing exclusions could contribute to improving standards in alternative provision. I hope that this point answers a number of concerns raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch. If schools retain responsibility for the education and outcomes of excluded pupils, PRUs and AP providers will need to be more responsive to demand from schools for high-quality education. That should help to deal with the perception, raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that there are perverse incentives. We do not want perverse incentives for schools to exclude. We want, as I know she does, the right kind of provision to be made in a way that is suitable for individual children. By allowing for the creation of alternative provision academies and free schools, we also aim to bring the benefits of the academies and free schools programmes to the alternative provision sector.
Turning to Amendment 124A, I agree with the noble Baroness that returning a child to a mainstream school as soon as possible is, in most cases, the best thing for a pupil attending alternative provision. Like her, I do not want alternative provision to be seen as a dumping ground where children are put out of sight and out of mind. We know that some of the best PRUs have a strong focus on reintegration. They constantly monitor and review when it is appropriate for a pupil to be supported to return to mainstream education. We want to see all AP providers, including alternative provision academies and free schools, learning from this kind of good practice. However, in some cases it is possible that a longer period in alternative provision may be appropriate. For example, continuity can be important at key stage 4. A young person whose education has been disrupted or who has become disengaged might benefit from a longer period in AP, especially if they are responding well to this provision. Therefore, we argue, as the noble Baroness predicted, that professionals managing and delivering alternative provision, including in AP academies and free schools, are best placed to make judgments about the best time for a pupil to return to mainstream education. There should not be an arbitrary cut-off date that cannot take account of individual circumstances or that would trump the judgment of professionals who know the needs of pupils in their care.
My noble friend raised points about funding and her desire to make sure that academies and free schools are funded on a comparable basis. As she pointed out, PRUs are centrally funded within the local authority’s dedicated schools grant. When a maintained school converts to academy status, no funding for PRUs is taken from the local authority’s DSG and the academy receives no additional funding for this function. Therefore, maintained schools and academies are on the same footing in this respect. If a pupil is excluded permanently from a maintained school or an academy, the local authority is responsible for securing suitable education for them. Schools—maintained schools and academies—are responsible for securing full-time education for a pupil from the sixth day of a fixed-term exclusion. Some providers of alternative provision also provide early intervention places for pupils with behavioural issues. Local authorities and schools can agree between them how places in PRUs may be made available for pupils who are the responsibility of schools. This would include if and how the authority would charge schools for places, and we would expect them to do that on an equitable basis for all schools. With regard to safeguards on referrals by schools, I set out the position in detail in my letter of 8 September.
On the government amendments, I recognise the concerns that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, raised about the powers contained in Clause 53. They allow us to make changes to primary and secondary legislation that we think are needed in consequence of the creation of new types of academy under Clause 52. In the light of the concerns expressed in the other place, we have drafted and tabled as many of the amendments to primary legislation as we can, and I have written to try to explain those amendments in detail.
These are complex legislative issues and I concede that we have not resolved them all. We think that we need to take a residual power to amend primary and secondary legislation by order. The exercise of that power is subject to the affirmative procedure, so both Houses of Parliament would have the chance to debate the legislation when an order was laid. There is a precedent for taking this approach—there is a much broader power to make consequential amendments in Section 265 of the previous Government’s Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.
In addition, we have tabled minor amendments to Clause 52 of the Bill. Amendments 123A and 123B amend new Section 1A so that an academy school cannot be an alternative provision academy. Further amendments give the Secretary of State flexibility to apply legislation to this diverse sector.
Overall, as is the case for the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, we are keen to ensure that alternative provision meets the needs of the vulnerable children that it serves. It is important that funding should be on an equitable basis. With some of the assurances that I have given about the changes we are making, the funding and the Government’s intentions, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw her amendment.
Education Bill
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I rise to oppose the Motion that Clause 36 stand part of the Bill and to speak to the Motion on whether Schedule 11 should be agreed. These amendments go to the heart of the difficulties that we have with this Bill. In seeking to restructure education provision in this country, far from decentralising power to parents and local authorities, as we have just debated, the Secretary of State is taking decision-making away from them. Flexibility and parental choice are being restricted rather than embraced and welcomed.
Clause 36 and Schedule 11 illustrate this point perfectly. In future, there will be a presumption that any new school will be an academy. The power of local authorities to consult widely, to plan for a spread of school choices and to take account of parental demand is massively curtailed. Under this clause, when a new school is needed, local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent—
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, with great respect to the noble Baroness, yet another Division has been called. If she could curtail her remarks, the Grand Committee will be adjourned until 12.56 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees
My Lords, it is now 12.57 pm. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, was interrupted in full flow.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I could bore everyone by starting again, but I am not going to do that. I was talking about how under this legislation the power of local authorities to consult and to plan for a spread of school choices is massively curtailed.
Under this clause, when a new school is needed local authorities will have a duty to seek proposals to set up an academy and to identify a possible site. They must obtain the Secretary of State’s consent before publishing proposals for a competition to set up a new school, and the Secretary of State can intervene at any point to stop a competition early. Meanwhile, competitive academy proposals will no longer need to be submitted to local authorities for approval and can instead go directly to the Secretary of State. I do not think local authorities are left in any doubt about what will happen to their proposals if they put forward anything other than an academy to the Secretary of State. They might well wonder what happened to their strong strategic role supposedly defending the interests of parents and children, as envisaged in the schools White Paper.
I am intrigued to know how the Minister can explain how this central directive that new schools can be only one type squares with the concept of parental choice. Moreover, how would the Secretary of State know what represents the best type of school for a particular locality? If, as it appears, the Government think that academies are always the right solution, does that also mean that maintained schools, even the best performing ones, are in some sense second-class schools? It might be thought that as these provisions apply to new schools only, they will have relatively little impact on the overall architecture of school provision, but the proposals cannot be seen in isolation from other clauses in the Bill that allow the Secretary of State to close down schools more readily and to hasten the conversion of maintained schools into academies. From all these measures, it appears that the Government’s grand plan is that all schools should be academies. Perhaps the Minister can confirm that.
I am sure that the Minister will remind us at this point that the academies programme was brought in under the previous Government, and indeed it was, but it had a different purpose. Academies were seen as a way of targeting resources and focusing on struggling schools when other interventions had failed. As more and more schools convert to academies, they will lose the kudos, focus and additional resources that helped them succeed.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we have discussed more than once in this Committee the strong international evidence that greater school autonomy helps to raise standards. We know that the work of the academies programme, set up by the previous Government, is adding to that evidence almost day by day. Traditional academies, of the sort championed by the party opposite, are securing improvements in standards well above the national average. In academies, the attainment of pupils receiving free school meals is improving faster than in other schools—all the more impressive given that academies have tended to start from a low base and operate in challenging circumstances. That is at the heart of why the Government seek to take forward the idea set out in the 2005 White Paper: to make sure that there are more autonomous schools providing greater opportunities for the children who need them most.
We set up the free schools programme to respond to parental demand for new and different school places. That has seen many more parent-led proposals for new schools than there ever were under the previous model—and, if I may say so, significant numbers of teacher-led proposals, which is a welcome development. By requiring local authorities under Clause 36 to consider academies first, we simply want to ensure that all local areas enjoy the proven benefits associated with greater school autonomy.
My noble friend Lady Ritchie is concerned that these changes will make it harder for local authority commissioners to ensure diversity of school provision and that parents should be able to choose between schools that are different from each other, whether in their ethos, their curriculum, their pedagogy or other such characteristics. However, we have already seen great breadth in the variety of schools emerging from both the academies programme and from free-school proposals. As the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, rightly pointed out, our provisions acknowledge the fact that there may well not always be an appropriate academy proposal to meet the need for a new school. In those cases a local authority, with the consent of the Secretary of State, can obviously run a competition that can include all kinds of schools. If that competition does not produce an appropriate school, local authorities may publish proposals for a community school. It will also remain possible for groups to bring forward proposals for voluntary-aided schools outside the competitions process.
My noble friend Lady Ritchie was also concerned that the new process would be cumbersome for local authorities, but thanks to some of the changes made in Clause 36, such as reducing the circumstances in which a competition must be held, the time taken under our proposals to decide on the provider of a new school will be less than the 12 months it currently takes. We are keen to work in partnership with local authorities to help identify potential school providers who can respond swiftly and effectively to the need for school places that local authorities have identified.
The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, expressed concerns that the Government’s attempts to increase school autonomy may lead to an increase in extremism. I think that was her particular concern, which I understand. All groups submitting a free school application have to be thoroughly checked for their suitability to run a school as part of the approval process. Applications need to demonstrate that they support UK democratic values, including respect for democracy, support for individual liberties and mutual tolerance.
As with all other schools, each free school will be inspected by Ofsted. The department is working with Ofsted to ensure that inspectors have the necessary knowledge and expertise to determine whether extremist and intolerant beliefs are being promoted in a school. New arrangements for inspecting maintained schools, academies and free schools are being developed, and relevant training on aspects of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social, and cultural development will be provided to inspectors. All state-funded schools, including academies and free schools, must also comply with the admissions code and will be accountable to their communities for their admissions arrangements.
We had an interesting debate last night on the Statement on Building Schools for the Future, but sadly neither the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, nor the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, were able to be in the House for it. They have very properly raised today some of the issues that we touched on last night, which were also raised in proceedings on the Localism Bill. I agree with what the noble Baroness and the noble Lord said about the environment in which learning takes place. It must be conducive to and support education as far as possible. Good-quality buildings, classrooms and equipment are necessary for children to learn and to ensure that their school is a place where they can feel happy and secure. I recognise their points about the importance of design.
The noble Lord, Lord Howarth, in particular, asked a number of detailed questions. Rather than delay the Committee, perhaps I may write to him and to the noble Baroness and answer those questions as best I can. On the building regulations point, we said yesterday that we will consult on this in the autumn. After this Session, I shall try to pick up on the questions that I have been asked and come back on them.
As to the amendments, we are keen to ensure that unnecessarily high building and design requirements are not a barrier to new entrants to the market, including parent promoters of the new free schools. We are not keen to introduce new statutory requirements in this area, but I shall try to give the noble Lord such reassurance as I can.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked about the role of local authorities in planning. They retain the responsibility to meet the particular needs of groups of children under Section 315 of the Education Act 1996, and we are retaining the duty on local authorities to keep under review arrangements for special educational provision in particular.
I recognise the points that have been made. At heart, what lies behind Clause 36 is the wish to bring academy solutions to parts of the country where they are not being pursued because of the benefits that they bring to children—particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds.—and to ensure that they are able to have those advantages. On that basis, I ask the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, to withdraw her objection and that Clause 36 stand part of the Bill.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I thank the noble Lord for his interesting contribution. Is it the Government’s intention that in future all schools should become academies? I think the answer—although the Minister did not put it in these blunt terms—is yes. It was interesting that in his response to the very wide debate that we have had and the comments from around the Room he did not seem to mention parents and communities.
The Government have decided centrally that in future all schools should be academies and that local democracy does not figure in this brave new world that we are creating. That is sad because it means that all the local choice that the Government have been talking about will not exist in practice in the future. The Government are sending out a signal that high-performing maintained schools, of which there are many around the country, are being classified as second class: that they are not the current or future game in town. That is sad, because if you ask most parents around the country they would really like choice. Of course they all want high-quality, high-performing schools, but they want choice— and I do not see where choice figures in Schedule 11.
Under the current arrangements, without Schedule 11 we already have the opportunity for schools to transfer to academies and for new schools to become academies. The figures have already been quoted about how many existing and new schools are becoming academies—the process is already happening out there—and Schedule 11 adds nothing except to give the Secretary of State undue powers to instruct that this will always be the case.
I would have liked to have heard more from the Minister on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, about the expansion of the school role and communities being able to respond rapidly to and having some control over what happens in the locality.
I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I was slightly disappointed with what he said. He seemed to be suggesting that we should not worry because there is a loophole. I would have thought that local communities want more than a loophole; they want the right to determine what should happen in their area.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
May I just clarify? That is the way in which the note is written. It seems to me that there is a power there that local authorities can use. There is an extra step—I concede that—but there is a power that they can use to create a school that meets the needs of the community if there is no alternative proposal that would meet them.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
If that is what we have to rely on, it is to be regretted. It should be much more of a forceful and enforceable right. I do not think I have anything more to say. In some sense this is an ideological difference between us. However, it is not about academies or no academies but about central and local control. We are very much on the side of parents, local communities and local democratically elected representatives. I do not think that the Government have fully acknowledged that. I am sure we will return to this subject, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Knight of Weymouth
My Lords, I wanted to speak to this group of amendments but not because I oppose any of them. In many ways, I can see the benefits in appropriate circumstances of parish councils being represented. Indeed, when I was the mayor of Frome, which was technically a parish council, we had nominations as a minor local authority on to governing bodies locally, so there is some precedent for it. I am certainly a strong advocate of the student voice in schools and see the benefit of students on governing bodies and similarly of staff local authority representation.
I wanted to take a couple of minutes to put it to the Committee, and particularly to the Minister for him to think about it, that we need to have a wider deeper debate about school governance. It is currently confused. I started a review of school governance that never quite concluded. Indeed, it was more difficult to get some agreement about the future of school governance than it was to get all the faith groups to agree about statutory sex and relationship education in our schools, so I do not underestimate the difficulty.
I certainly do not think that anyone in this Committee or elsewhere would want to give the message that the wonderful job that school governors do is being undervalued, when they are the largest group of volunteers working in our society. However, when people are essentially there as representatives rather than for the skills that they bring to challenge the school leadership, as you would when looking at the governance of organisations in other sectors, you have confusion between what an advisory body is, which is made up of representatives and stakeholders such as staff, students, parents and perhaps local authorities, and what a board of governance is, which is there to recruit and to really challenge the leadership of the school. I am afraid I do not believe that with 23,000-odd schools in this country, we have 23,000 excellent governing bodies that are properly challenging head teachers.
Indeed, most head teachers who I talk to tell me that their governing body is frankly a bit of an irritation. It is something that they have to work out how to manage, rather than something that properly supports and challenges them as leaders. That tells me that we clearly have a problem. The discussion, particularly by my noble friends Lord Touhig and Lady Howarth, on whether heads should serve on governing bodies is in turn a demonstration of that confusion, because points were rightly made about a conflict of interest and it probably being inappropriate for a chief executive to be a full member of the board if we were to use the suggested model from the third sector. The Government would be well served by looking at whether we can move to shared, more professionalised governing bodies, particularly as we see the emergence of clusters of schools, and proper councils or advisory bodies for each school.
That would be a significant and brave reform. However, academy sponsors tell me—I spoke to a leading one yesterday—that they strongly believe that the most important thing we did when introducing academies was to strengthen governance. It was not about autonomy as such, or about the freedom to pay teachers what they liked or about freedom in the curriculum being really important; it was about strong governance, and about getting sponsors in who appointed really good people for their skills in challenging heads and school leaders. It was about leaner, or smaller, numbers of governors, who could then gel as a group, much as the trustees of a charity or board of a private company might do. It is something that we urgently need to look at if we are to make the progress that the Minister and his colleagues in the ministerial team want to make in making every school a good school—and, in particular, in making sure that we attend to the biggest problem that we have with schools in this country. That is not how we fix failing schools and make them successful again—we have worked out how to do that. Our problem is how we stop average schools becoming failing schools. In the end, we do that by strengthening our governance arrangements.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I very much welcome the contribution of my noble friend Lord Knight, as he attempted to widen the debate. I was going to widen it but not quite as widely as he did, but I wanted to make the case for diversity on governing bodies. Although I support the amendments tabled in all noble Lords’ names, including those tabled by the Government, they go only so far. We very much welcome the fact that the Government have listened to the case made by colleagues of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, as she said, for there to be staff and local authority representatives on governing bodies. We made that case as well, and I am glad that it has been taken on board in part. However, the effect will be that a single local authority representative could be on each maintained school governing body, while at the moment there could be up to five local authority representatives on a typical community secondary school governing body.
In my experience, when I was chair of the governors of a secondary school for many years, the local authorities in my area used the opportunity to have a spread of places in order to bring diversity of community representation and people with different skills to the governing body. Governing bodies work best—and here I half-meet my noble friend—when there are strong, diverse voices from the community. What worries me about the legislation now is that it almost seems to want to curtail the spread of knowledge and skills. That might be something that the Minister can respond to, although I may have got that wrong. Diversity is very important.
The governors whom we have make up one of the largest volunteer forces in the country. We should be upskilling them, valuing them and making sure that they can make a greater contribution. Of course, if my noble friend Lord Griffiths was here he would say that we also need to take account of the fact that the ongoing work of being a governor is increasingly arduous and time-consuming, so we need to make sure that we have the support networks and the training to support it. It is a particular challenge for parent-governors who, with all their other responsibilities, as I know from my own experience, find being a governor particularly time-consuming and challenging.
I am anxious about what is to happen when the current governors, who are providing that spread of expertise, are told that they are going to be stood down. There seems to be a lack of a transitional plan. That might mean that it will be more difficult to recruit governors in future if the signal that is going out is that current local authority governors, or their range of skills, are not seen as the future. I hope the Minister can address the whole issue of diversity on governing bodies and how we are going to maintain that strong community voice so that it is not just the parents, teachers or head teachers who help to make the governing body strong but outside challenges and expertise.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our Amendments 114A and 122ZB would apply the same provisions to FE.
Under Clause 39, once a school was deemed “exempt”, it would never again need a Section 5 inspection. Like other noble Lords who have already spoken, we believe that freeing schools from any future inspection is a very dangerous step to take. Our amendments would therefore require regulations to provide for a range of local bodies to be able to trigger inspections where there are concerns. The most obvious of these would be local authorities and parents, but it is possible to imagine, for example, information from the police or appearing in the press being sufficient for Ofsted to decide that an inspection is justified. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, called it fire fighting, which may be what are talking about. We are certainly talking about recognisable incidents or failings which have triggered concern and therefore an inspection.
As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said, echoed by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, there is no obvious purpose behind the clause. It is not clear what the rationale is, where the demand is coming from or how the resulting inspection void will be filled. We have considerable sympathy, therefore, with the movers of Clause 39 stand part.
Section 5 inspection reports are not just about a crisis of some kind; they are also extremely useful to parents and pupils, whether the pupils are already at the school or prospective pupils. The reports help parents and local authorities understand the strengths of a school and the areas where improvement is needed. They mean that parents can send their children to a particular school with a high level of knowledge about the quality of the learning experience that their children can expect. They also help local authorities hold schools to account and support them. The benefits for parents and the wider community of exempting schools are therefore unclear. Perhaps the noble Lord can explain that to us.
It is also not exactly clear from the legislation what conditions would render a school or college exempt. I understand that it was indicated in the Commons that it would be when a school was judged to be outstanding by Ofsted, but it is not clear that they would be the only circumstances in which a school would be classified as exempt. Perhaps the Minister can clarify that. If they are the only circumstances, can the Minister confirm that it is quite likely that a school, once deemed to be outstanding, may not be subject to an inspection for six years or more? In other words, a whole cohort of children could pass through it without it ever being subject to inspection. Surely, as has been pointed out around the Committee already, there is a risk that once a school has been judged to be outstanding, its standards could subsequently decline.
We, and no doubt others, have received comments from bodies such as Barnardo’s, Children England and Save the Children, echoing concerns about making exemptions from inspection. For example, unfairly selective admissions processes, lack of support for pupils with special educational needs or support to improve their behaviour, or dips in attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds may not be picked up. In addition, a school’s ongoing performance as a newly converted academy, with all the change and upheaval that it might entail, may not be considered and identified.
During the course of the Bill, we have debated the future of a number of education quangos. Thankfully, the Government have recognised the importance of Ofsted and that it needs to continue. They have also recognised that Ofsted inspections are still considered to be the gold standard which teachers respect and parents rely on. If they are going to apply to only a certain proportion of schools, is there not a danger that that whole brand and that authority will diminish over time? One of the great strengths is that it is something that can be compared across the whole spectrum of schools as things stand at the moment. The clause allows exempt schools to request an inspection themselves, and a number of outstanding schools have already indicated that they may be forced to make such a request because they fear that parents will not be interested in reading a report about them that could be five years out of date. The fact that Ofsted will be able to charge for those inspections raises the spectre that there may be another fundraising subtext to these proposals, and I would be grateful if the Minister could debunk that suggestion.
As the Bill stands, local authorities cannot trigger an inspection, yet local authorities are the champions of education in their areas and they are very well placed to identify concerns within a school, either through direct experience or through receiving concerns and complaints from the local community. Local authorities and parents are losing out in the way that these increasingly fragmented inspection systems are being introduced.
Our amendment would enable parents, the local authority and other interested bodies to trigger an inspection on an otherwise exempt school. I recognise that if this amendment were agreed it would need to be worked upon to identify what the threshold should be for triggering an inspection. For example, would there need to be a number of parents or prospective parents requesting an inspection and how would Ofsted assess the seriousness of the concern raised? We believe that that could be spelled out in regulations. We hope that our amendments go some way towards providing some checks and balances, but we are also extremely sympathetic to the wider issue raised by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and other noble Lords in this debate.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, I have put my name to the Motion that this clause should not stand part of the Bill. I find it quite extraordinary that the Government are proposing that schools should be exempt from Ofsted inspections. I am not an uncritical admirer of Ofsted. Like the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, I have seen some inspections which have not done the required job and have often had a disabling effect on the teachers because of the conduct of the inspectors. None the less, overall, Ofsted inspections provide important safeguards for the public.
We are not told very much about the rationale for this. The Explanatory Notes state that this will allow the Secretary of State to exempt certain schools, and one has to look at the debate in the Commons or at the Minister’s comments at Second Reading to find that the intention is that outstanding schools should be exempt. Like my noble friend Lady Jones, I would like the Minister to confirm that. The noble Baroness, Lady Perry, suggested earlier that academies would be exempt. I would like the Minister to confirm that that is not the case and that it is, at the moment, the intention that only outstanding schools will be exempt.
At Second Reading, my noble friend Lady Morgan, the chair of Ofsted, commented on this. She said,
“outstanding schools and colleges will in future be inspected only where there is cause for concern”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 737.]
I have considerable concerns about this. The fact is that not all outstanding schools remain outstanding. The figures that Ofsted published in answer to a Written Question I asked a few weeks ago show that of the 1,155 schools judged to be outstanding at their penultimate inspection, 302 were judged to be grade 2 at the most recent inspection, 58 grade 3 and one grade 4, so over 30 per cent of schools experience a reduction in their grading on a subsequent inspection by Ofsted. What possible basis could there be to say that we will exempt outstanding schools for all time?
We are told that the Government believe that the risk can be reduced because Ofsted is developing this risk assessment approach to include a basket of indicators, which will flag up concerns. It will also be influenced by complaints from parents or local intelligence from the LEA—although given that the Government are taking so much power away from those LEAs, it is difficult to know how they will have much local intelligence in future.
We know that Ofsted is planning this matrix system, where data on schools can be checked to trigger an inspection, but we all know about data. In any case, the data will be historic so the risk is that when an outstanding school declines, the trigger mechanism does not come into play until children have been adversely influenced because of that decline. Given that top-grading already allows inspections to be postponed it is clear that nearly a third of outstanding schools take their foot off the gas when regular inspection is not imminent, so how much worse will that become if we have no regular inspections at all?
We have heard a number of examples. The most obvious is when the head and a cadre of senior teachers retire at the same time. I know that noble Lords will have seen examples where the school has declined rapidly in the event of that happening. Perhaps I might give another example, since the previous debate on governance was very interesting. There are outstanding heads who do not welcome strong governance and use their influence to make sure that weaker governors are appointed. My experience is that the person most influential in appointing governors is the head teacher themselves, so you can have a situation where there is a very strong head and a weak governing body. When the head retires, the governing body appoints a new head but then does not know how to deal with the incoming head, who may not be up to the job. The absence of regular Ofsted inspection means that there are fewer safeguards for parents than there would be if Ofsted continued to inspect those institutions.
The suspicion is that this is driven by resources and that a pared-down Ofsted will have to focus on the weaker schools, but surely we owe it to all parents who send their children to the schools affected for Ofsted to have a continuing role in relation to those schools. To give an example from the National Health Service—I declare an interest as a consultant trainer in the NHS and as chair of a foundation trust—NHS trusts have gone through a similar process of regulation, both by the Care Quality Commission and by Monitor. If you achieve foundation trust status, Monitor does not just go away and not darken your door for six or 10 years. We are in a quarterly reporting mechanism and if we fail to meet the top four or five targets, the chair and chief executive can expect to be called in at any time to account for the problems. I do not understand why the Minister’s department is taking such a different approach than to other parts of the public sector. I fail to see how you can justify not having regular inspections for all schools.
I also have concerns about the nature of Clause 39. Why do the Government not specify which category of schools is to be exempt in the Bill? The Bill could be used by the Secretary of State to exempt academies, if he wanted to, or faith schools, if he wanted to, or free schools, if he wanted to. There are absolutely no guarantees that he will not do that in future. Finally, why is the order-making power negative? I would have thought that something as important as the exemption of categories of school from Ofsted inspections would, at the least, deserve to be treated as an affirmative order. I hope that the noble Lord will reflect on these points. It is clear that there is concern around the Committee on these issues, as there will be among parents unless the Government are prepared to reconsider this.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I hope that your Lordships agree with me that it is vital to give full recognition to those teachers and head teachers who put a huge effort into taking children forward. Where there is a challenging intake, perhaps with high levels of special educational needs or numbers of children with pupil premium, it is important to recognise in achievement the distance pupils have travelled and not just their performance against all other pupils across the country. I would be grateful perhaps for a note from the Minister on how Ofsted inspections will look at achievement and fully recognise it in terms of the distance travelled by children.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, our names have been added to Amendments 115 and 118, so I will speak very briefly. First, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, about the narrow focus on educational achievement which ignores the wider role of education in providing a safe and happy environment where all children can thrive and be healthy and confident. We believe that well-being should include such things as nutrition, exercise, relationships, respect for each other and how to overcome low self-esteem. A good school will include all this in the curriculum, but it does not mean that we should exempt all schools from having that assessed and checked from time to time.
The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, gave a very coherent case for why Amendment 118 is important. It is important that we check that the Government’s rhetoric when they introduced the pupil premium can be backed up by independent assessment in the longer term, particularly in light of the new autonomous school structures. If we are not careful, disadvantaged children will get left behind. We need independent assessment to double- check that all is going well with the way that the money is being spent. I sense people’s frustration at the late hour and I will say no more at this stage.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I shall try to speak very quickly, which in no way reflects the seriousness and importance of the group of amendments we have just been discussing. The existing arrangements for inspection have become cluttered and crowded. Inspectors face the challenge of having to form a discrete judgment on just about everything schools do. The cumulative effect of this is that we have lost the sharp focus—which my noble friend referred to and the noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, picked up—on those things that are the fundamental responsibilities of schools.
Clause 40 seeks to address this by streamlining the reporting arrangements so that they focus on four key areas: pupils’ achievement, the quality of teaching, the effectiveness of leadership and pupils’ behaviour and safety. In doing so, inspectors must consider pupils’ spiritual, moral and cultural development and how the needs of all groups of pupils, including in particular those with SEN or a disability, are being met.
As far as Amendments 115 and 116 are concerned, schools themselves remain under a duty to promote pupil well-being and community cohesion. The provisions in Clause 40, including the specific requirements around behaviour and safety and spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, provide the right structure.