Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, comparing schools is a complicated business and you have to take all sorts of things into account. Exam results are part of that. To have the marks finely graded makes them a better part of measuring how schools have behaved. When the system gets used to it, such information will be better for students in that they could show that, for example, they are in the top 1 per cent nationally or that they only missed a C by one mark. In either sense, students would benefit from being able to display them.

Students can get the marks under certain circumstances now. If you ask for a regrade, you get to see what your marks have been but, because you cannot see everybody else’s marks or what the universe of marks looks like, there is very little you can do with that. So they exist but they are not disclosed.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I want to make a couple of comments. First, much of the anxiety about the current grading system is because people have lost confidence in the way that the examinations are marked at the moment. I remember that, when I was doing O-levels and such-like many moons ago, there was much more confidence in the marking system and the legitimacy and accuracy of the examination boards. Maybe that was misplaced but that was certainly how I was brought up. Perhaps the scandals in recent times about the quality of the marking and so on have raised concerns and people want to dig deeper to know the underlying marks, which is understandable.

I am anxious, however, as to how this would work in practice. If the grades and the marks are published and if some children will only be two or three marks below the next grade up, if you run that parallel system of marks and grades, you will engender a lot of new appeals because anyone who is a short step away from the next grade up will flood the market with appeals. Unless we have a mechanism for managing that, therefore, there will be more discontent than satisfaction. I am not sure the system can run in parallel in the way the noble Lord is proposing. It may be, however, that the famous e-mail, which I should have seen but have not, spells out what the Government intend and will satisfy those points.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, my noble friend has made strong arguments for making comprehensive, transparent information on exam results and school performance available to all and we are committed to increasing the amount of information available so that people can build their own measures and reach their own views about progress in the education system. We have already published more information than ever before.

The 2010 tables enabled users to download the school-level data underlying the table so that they could carry out their own analyses. In January 2011, school spending data were published alongside performance information. In March 2011, we published school-level information on attainment in individual GCSE subjects. As has been stated, in relation to exam marks, the candidates do have the right to request their marks. In practice, awarding bodies do provide marks—and, where requested, exam scripts—to schools and candidates. That means, for instance, universities can ask applicants to provide individual marks in order to differentiate performance within a grade.

In relation to publication of marks in data sets, we want to make as much information as possible available about exam results, and we are happy to commit to considering the practicality of obtaining and publishing marks as part of the national school-level data we are releasing. I understand my noble friend will be speaking to officials about this at a meeting on 25 July.

However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has said, there will be practical issues that we need to consider. Collecting individual marks rather than just grades would mean a significant increase in the quantity of data that the department would need to collect and process, which we would need to ensure we could manage without undue cost. That said, although it is the Government’s intention to collect and publish as much information on qualifications as we can, in relation to having both marks and grades it is the case that the same mark on a harder paper would represent better performance and it would not always be fair to candidates simply to add up the raw marks to give the overall result. A uniform mark scale puts all those raw marks on the same scale, which is then converted into the grade boundaries.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned confidence in exam awarding bodies. Ofqual was established by the previous Government to improve and strengthen confidence in the standards of exam awarding bodies. Ensuring that that confidence is restored is what Ofqual has at its heart. It may of course be that our memories of the olden days when everything was so much better have somehow managed to make us feel that it was better; I seem to remember from my days of A-levels that there were still quite a lot of queries to the boards, but we were much more intimidated in making those queries.

I hope that, with the assurance that we will give serious consideration to the practicality of publishing marks as part of the school-level data that we are making available to all, my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

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[Lord Lucas]

The amendment is self-explanatory. As I have had a very clear and supportive e-mail from the Government today, which I hope has been widely circulated, I shall leave it at that and beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I support the amendment and have read the helpful letter from the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I restate how much I agree that getting schools to apply for licences in the past has been a very unwieldy way to get them to put on fairly simple forms of entertainment. I very much support the Live Music Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to which the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred. I am very pleased to hear that the Government will be supporting it in its progress through Parliament. That obviously goes much wider than dealing with live music in schools; nevertheless, it will be helpful.

When I said to my colleagues that I was also very pleased that the Government had committed to looking at the Licensing Act 2003, they said, “You’re going to regret saying that, because it took us for ever to get a half-decent balance on licensing music and alcohol provision. Good luck to you”. My instinct is that we should look again at the Licensing Act. I am pleased that the Government will be doing that, and I look forward to that debate.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, my name is added to the amendment. I just say to my noble friend that, although I urge him to continue to look kindly on removing the need for licensing from schools and colleges, perhaps this is an opportunity to look more widely at some of the other places where young people need licences, such as small sports clubs, and so on, where if they have even a radio playing in the background, they must get a licence. We need to encourage young people, not make life more difficult for them. I hope that, in their consideration of the issue, the Government will look more widely than simply schools and colleges.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, about 5,000 English sixth-form school pupils a year take Open University modules, which is a very good approach to this matter and something that we will come to on the 25th. Those modules are not reflected in the performance tables, and the data on the performance of these children are not available to celebrate their achievements and those of their schools, as I think should be the case. It should be possible for children who are capable of taking on these things to be allowed to expand and flourish, and for schools to be rewarded for that in a way that they understand—that is, through recognition and, indeed, money. At the moment, the YASS scheme seems to exist on the good will of schools and their interest in the attainment of their brightest pupils, rather than on any great support from the Government.

It is wonderful for me to find myself agreeing with my noble friend Lord Blackwell. I have often found myself in opposition to him but I think that he has struck a very clear note here and I am very happy to support him. Of course, I agree with other noble Lords that there are many ways of doing this, and mathematics taught as a mixed-ability subject can be very strong. I recommend my noble friend to the works of Professor Jo Boaler on that subject. We know from the Oxbridge admissions statistics how much we are generally failing in this area. We need to do much more to give the brightest children from the poorest backgrounds the education and ambition that they deserve.

However, as it is fashionable to talk about international comparisons, I also point out that Singapore reckons that half of its most crucial entrepreneurs were in the bottom 10 per cent at school, so it is not just the bright children who need our attention.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, this debate has been a model of brevity. We have got in an enormous number of points in a very short period. Perhaps we could learn something from that. Therefore, I shall not prolong the debate, given the lateness of the hour and the fact that most of the points that I was going to make have been covered.

The debate has underlined for me that the whole thrust of the Government’s future schools programme is based on school autonomy and that we are rowing back here in talking about schools needing to co-operate. Someone pointed out that local authorities used to provide some of that element of co-operation for specialist education, whether it was for specialist GCSEs and A-levels or whatever. We are trying to reinvent the wheel when some of those mechanisms were already there to provide at least some of that.

I very much agree with what has been said. I had a similar question to that of my noble friend Lady Morris concerning what happened to the gifted and talented scheme.

My only other concern relates to the wording of, particularly, Amendment 106, which talks about,

“high ability or aptitude for learning”,

as being the only area for which we should make special provision. Again, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and others, who said that talent goes far beyond academic talent. If we are to pursue this, I hope that the mover of the amendment will look to broaden it out. I am not trying to water it down, but talents and gifts come in all sorts of forms. As much as we need leaders who are academically bright, we need sports men and women who are world leaders, and there are lots of different ways in which we want our children to excel and eventually to provide leadership in this country. Therefore, I have a concern about the wording of the amendment, although I think that there is an enormous amount of agreement around the Room about how we should go forward on this issue.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

86A: Clause 26, page 27, line 13, at beginning insert “Subject to subsection (7),”

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendments 86B, 86C, 86D, 86E and 86F. These relate to concerns about the future of schools careers advice and to the increasing concern of professionals and employers that the Bill is failing to meet the real challenges facing this sector.

Before I continue, I acknowledge with thanks the letter of 8 July that I received from the Minister, which set out in more detail what is envisaged in the new career guidance service. I shall paraphrase it, although I am sure that the Minister has his own version. It says, first, that Connexions was not providing a consistently high-quality service to all young people and that it had to change. To a certain extent, I would agree with that. Secondly, the letter also goes on to argue that schools should be left to organise their own careers provision and be held to account only through what is described as a “destination measure” of where young people go when they leave school. We very much disagree with this approach and I shall explain why shortly.

First, I will deal with the end of the ring-fenced funding for Connexions and the transition to the all-age careers service, which is covered in our amendments to Clause 26. All the evidence shows that Connexions careers services around the country are closing as we speak. A desperately worrying scenario is developing of a cohort of young people being left with no careers advice at all, as one service ends and nothing substantial is yet in place to replace it. The department appears to have passed the buck on to individual schools rather than have a coherent transitional plan. As the ASCL has said:

“More than 2 million young people aged 16 to 19 could lose out on valuable careers services while the Government overhauls the national careers advice service at a time when young people’s unemployment is reaching record highs”.

Meanwhile, we are all still awaiting the detail of the design of the new all-age careers service: its duties, the services it will provide, where it will be located and how it can be accessed. In the Commons debate, the Minister said that the new service would be ready to go this September, with the full service in place from April 2012. In the mean time, the Secretary of State has stated that in 2011-12 school budgets will not rise to take account of their new legal responsibility to provide careers guidance for young people, as set out in this Bill. This lack of ring-fencing means that schools will be forced to find funds from existing budgets, leading to the inevitable conclusion that the Government intend to provide careers services on the cheap. Perhaps the Minister could explain what interim provision is being made for those young people awaiting a full careers service next year. I am sure that he will acknowledge that this is particularly fraught given the current high levels of youth unemployment. Our first set of amendments would achieve the simple but important aim of delivering continuity by requiring the Secretary of State to report to Parliament on the details of a transition plan before the new careers service can take effect.

We move on to the next set of amendments in this group, which define and improve the package of careers advice young people should be able to access in the future. Our amendments are set against a backdrop of increasingly complex careers choices being faced by young people and evidence that lack of information is seen by young people as one of the main barriers to their participation in education or training post-16. We do not accept that the quality careers guidance that we all know is necessary can be delivered simply by the publication of data on pupils’ post-school destinations. For example, there will be a terrible temptation for providers to push young people into destinations which score more highly rather than those that play to their individual strengths and interests. At the same time, there will be a real challenge to keep accurate statistics and track the longer-term destinations of young people. There may be statistics on their destinations immediately after school but surely what we are interested in is the longer-term careers choices they make as a result of the careers guidance that they get.

The Government have indicated that going forward the duty to provide careers advice may be satisfied by phone or online services. While we recognise that this may have a role, we absolutely do not accept that this is enough to ensure that young people get tailored guidance in tune with their talents, abilities and aspirations. Young people are happy to talk on the phone to their friends for hours, but when it comes to talking to someone older or someone in authority, all too often they pass the phone to their parents and ask them to make that phone call for them. I genuinely do not think that young people will be confident enough to deal with quite complicated issues on the phone. In the same way as they require a face-to-face environment for mentoring or indeed teaching, this type of contact is just as necessary when young people are discussing their future job plans and their future life. Therefore our amendments would require schools to provide high quality, face-to-face careers advice.

This advice is particularly important to children from backgrounds where they do not have access to a social network of people in a variety of jobs, and even more so when the parents do not work or where there is intergenerational unemployment. Good careers advice can make a big difference in driving social mobility, expanding pupils’ horizons and helping them to see themselves working in different environments. We believe that these matters are too important to be left to schools’ discretion. We also foresee the possibility of a postcode lottery developing, with careers services around the country varying considerably depending on the resources available, thus mirroring some of the problems we have already identified with the Connexions service.

Our amendments also address the age range when young people should be able to access advice and the frequency at which it should be provided. The Bill limits careers advice to those aged between 14 and 16. That is not good enough. EngineeringUK, for example, has identified the need for much earlier advice through what it calls the “Year 8 dip”, which is when the appetite for tough science and maths decreases in young people. The organisation goes on to say:

“We believe that at this point, and at other critical points along the academic pathway, we need well informed careers advisers in schools able to inspire and inform young people about careers in engineering and other science, technology, engineering and maths areas”.

We agree with that analysis, and it could equally apply to other subject areas. One careers advice session held during the term when a student leaves school is too late. It should be provided at regular intervals before key milestones in a pupil’s academic life, and our amendments would provide for that.

Finally, the amendments also seek to ensure that only those trained in careers guidance can provide the formal careers advice to which pupils are entitled. Without these amendments, there is no guarantee that advice would be provided by a trained professional or that it would cover the full range of options, including academic and vocational options. I accept that in the guidance the noble Lord may well refer to that it is seen as something that is “desirable”, but our amendments would make it an explicit requirement.

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Overall, the arrangements for careers guidance that the Government propose are based on trusting professionals and freeing schools from bureaucracy, trying to give them the opportunity to secure the specialist support they need from the market, which is characterised by choice and diversity of provision. Points have been raised about age, which we will reflect upon, about reporting and about quality. I hope that noble Lords will recognise that we are taking those steps and that the underlying point of moving responsibility to schools, originally recommended to the Government in reports and which has been widely welcomed, will help take that forward. On the basis of that further information, I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, we have had a very good debate on this issue. If anyone was in any doubt before we started about the complexities of children’s lives and the choices that confront them, some of the examples that we have heard from around the Room will certainly have helped to open our eyes to just how difficult it is to be a child in school today, facing, as my noble friend rightly said, 85 years of career choices that they have to make. People say—this is a well known statistic these days—that you can now face three different careers in your lifetime. It used to be that you went into one job and that was your job for life, but now people often change careers two or three times during the course of their life.

The choices for young people facing their life ahead are complicated and require specialist knowledge. To give a quick example of that in terms of giving careers advice, wearing one of my other hats, young people who qualify with a degree in film studies think that they are all going to go off to be film directors, but fewer than 1 per cent of people with a degree in film studies ever get a job in that sector. A statistic said that about 34 per cent of those young people end up working in the retail sector. All the factors that have been mentioned today underline how important it is that we get this right.

The Minister has said that there will be a professional service. We understand that we may have a professional service, but the people who are providing the actual advice, online or face-to-face, would not have to be qualified under the Government’s scheme. Our point is that young people’s future lives are so important that these people should have some sort of qualification.

I underline that again. My noble friend Lord Layard has not commented on this—I am sure that he does not like people constantly making reference to him as being the happiness tsar—but if people at this age get this wrong then it is not just about them making the wrong career choice; it has an effect on their health and their mental health. The consequences of their making wrong choices are real and serious, and that underlines the need for people to be qualified before they are let loose on children in schools.

At the heart of our dilemma here is that the Government want to be enabling and we want to lay down duties on schools and rights for pupils. There is not so much of a difference between us, though; the Government have already said that there are some duties on schools regarding what they will provide. The Bill says that there will be duties for the service to be independent, which I think we would all agree with; to be based in schools, which I think is the right place to focus careers guidance; and to have a mix of academic and vocational provision, and a number of voices around the Committee have echoed the importance of both academic and vocational choices.

All we are attempting to do is add a few more duties, and the principle that we have already established is a way of going forward. Those duties include specifying the frequency of the careers advice, looking at a wider age range at which children can access careers advice and the whole issue of people being professionally qualified. We have established that there will be some duties, and we want more. I hope that the Minister will see that we are not so far apart in all this.

I am pleased that the Minister said that he will take the issue of the age range away and look at it further. We look forward to hearing about the outcome of that in more detail. I think that I understood him to say that he would be bringing forward some more short-notice guidance. Perhaps he could specify whether that will be available to us before Report, at least in draft form, so that we might know where we stand on that.

I like to feel that we are moving closer together on these issues, but there remains the issue of what happens in the transition. The noble Lord, Lord Boswell, said that he was not convinced there was a crisis, but I hope that he has heard some of the voices around the table saying that it is perhaps more of a crisis than he might have identified. Our understanding is that hundreds, if not thousands, of people who currently have training qualifications in careers advice are being made redundant around the country, so we are losing those skills and that expertise. It seems pretty strange to set up a new structure that starts from scratch when everyone has been scattered to the four winds, so to speak, with all the knowledge and experience that they retained beforehand. We need to look again at the transition and what else we can do to make it a smooth and well resourced one.

We have had a good debate. We would welcome some further discussions on this, but in the mean time I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 86A withdrawn.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I have quite a lot of sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. As others have said, the TDA has achieved a great deal. We changed its name from the TDA to the TTA about three or four years ago because it was to deal not just with teacher training but with continuing professional development. That is extremely important.

I worry about the degree to which the Department for Education can undertake all the tasks that it is taking unto itself. This is set up as an agency, to some extent at arm’s length from the Government; it has a very particular function to fulfil, and has fulfilled it very well. One of the areas where we as a coalition want to see expansion of recruitment is through Teach First. It has been doing a lot to bring in many extremely good young graduates into teaching. But it cannot do everything, and it does not propose to. We still need something like the TDA, and I worry that the department is being landed with so many tasks that it will not be able to take on this one as well.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I echo a number of the points that have been made and emphasise the question back to the Minister. It appears as though the numbers of teachers being recruited has dipped. I take the point of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that we need robust statistics in this area, but it also appears that there is a correlation with the stopping of intensive marketing. I will be very interested to hear the Minister’s analysis. Does he recognise that there is a correlation between those two facts? Where does he think that the impetus for the encouragement of that new generation of teachers will come from?

That brings me on to my second point. I do not understand where the demand for this change has come from. We had a very good and effective organisation that was delivering, yet it feels as if we have to be seen to be abandoning anything that happened before and starting again for the sake of it. I am sure that the Minister will have a different view, but it feels as if we are throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Thirdly, I am sure that the Minister will say that some elements of the TDA’s functions will be transferred to the new Teaching Agency, although my understanding is that the marketing element will not be. In his letter to us, he says that it is a complex task and requires sensitive handling. He has made himself an enormously big problem, which did not exist in the first place. I do not understand why such an upheaval is really necessary. Perhaps the Minister will answer that point as well.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I rise to speak to our opposition to the Question that Clause 18 stand part of the Bill. While we welcome the initiative of those who tabled Amendments 78A and 78B, regrettably we do not feel that they have gone far enough in maintaining a national framework of pay and conditions for support staff.

Perhaps I should also make it clear at this stage that I am an ex-UNISON employee, and spent many years observing in schools how the distinctions between teaching and non-teaching staffs have, quite rightly, been breaking down over the years. Support staff are increasingly playing a professional role. They make up a range of functions crucial to the whole school learning environment as teaching assistants, welfare support staff and specialist and technical staff. They make a huge contribution to improving learning outcomes, which was confirmed by Ofsted in its fifth report.

As we have heard, since its establishment the SSSNB has been playing a crucial role in preparing core documents setting out the wide range of non-teaching roles being carried out in schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, when it was established it was not opposed by any party. Since then it has received widespread support from teachers, heads, governors and parents. There was certainly no chorus of concern calling for its abolition. Importantly, its remit when it was established was to combine national consistency and local flexibility in pay and conditions, and it was working to deliver that model. However, when the clause was debated in the Commons the Minister argued that retaining it would involve,

“creating and imposing additional rigidity on schools” .—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 22/3/11; col. 595.]

But that argument fails to recognise that the SSSNB was not like other negotiating bodies. It has the power only to recommend, not prescribe, and as such the local flexibility and autonomy is maintained.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly identified, in abolishing the SSSNB now, the Government are scrapping it before it has had time to finish delivering the job profiles that it was set up to produce. That is wasting good work. Already more than 100 support staff roles have been profiled and were being tested by schools; a school-based job evaluation scheme was being designed; and a pay and conditions model was being developed. Given that these job descriptions would have been recommendations, not prescriptions, it is hard to see how they would have hindered schools going forward. On the contrary, having job profiles could have been used as benchmarks, which would have cut the time and cost. Self-governing schools would otherwise have to use their own time to create their own job descriptions. Apart from the more general use for those benchmark job descriptions, schools and local authorities would then have a greater chance of avoiding being subject to equal pay challenges.

In addition, without the work of the SSSNB, there is a risk—perhaps even a likelihood—that the status of support staff in a largely female workforce will be undermined and that over time their terms and conditions will become less favourable in some schools than is currently the case. Ofsted itself identified that,

“members of the wider workforce and their managers were confused and uncertain about pay and conditions attached to the increasingly diverse roles that have developed as a result of workforce reform”.

It went on to urge the Government to provide more detailed guidance on pay and conditions. This is exactly what was happening. In the Commons Committee stage the Minister said:

“The Secretary of State has made it clear to trade unions and support staff employee organisations that he believes that there is a clear argument for completing some elements of the work begun by the SSSNB, on the basis that the outputs might be of some use to employers and schools”.

He went on to say:

“Those elements include the set of support staff job profiles, for example, and the associated job evaluation scheme. Should trade unions and employers deem that it would be a useful way to proceed with support staff pay and conditions to continue with that development work independently of the Government, I believe that that would be a positive outcome”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 22/3/11; col. 596.]

Once again, we seem to be playing the game of dismantling a perfectly good mechanism for dealing with a need in education only to have to assemble it in a different form. That point was made by a number of noble Lords on Second Reading. The Bill seems to be focused on structures rather than on improving educational outcomes, which we are all trying to grapple with. Can the Minister confirm whether those elements will be in place to continue the work that was established by the SSSNB; what organisation they have in mind to continue them; and by when? Interestingly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, the people who have been working on the job profiles have not gone away; they have simply been absorbed back into the Office of Manpower Economics, and are therefore available to carry on with the work where they left off, so there is no great saving to be had by abolishing the SSSNB.

Finally, I hope that I will be forgiven if I mention another injustice to support staff arising from the abolition of the SSSNB. Last year when the Chancellor announced a two-year pay freeze in the public sector, he promised that all staff earning less than £21,000 would receive at least £250 in each year. But the Secretary of State for Education says that he has no way of delivering this to school support staff despite having the power to direct it because the SSSNB has been unable to clarify who would qualify. As well as the indirect difficulties that this clause will cause support staff, it makes them all £250 a year worse off. We still believe that school support staff are entitled to fair pay and conditions. The SSSNB would have delivered a framework to make this happen and we believe that it is worth maintaining it to deliver that programme.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I very much want to speak against Clause 18 stand part, and I will talk to the other amendments in due course. I guess that it is just an occupational hazard of being an ex-Minister that when a new Government take over you hold your head in your hands as you watch some of the things that you slaved over to create for many hours, days, weeks and months being abolished at a stroke. There were quite a few in the first few months of this Government, but this is one that I found really hard when I heard that the School Support Staff Negotiating Body was to be scrapped before it really had had a chance to get going.

To some extent, that reflects a view—I am sorry to say a default view in Sanctuary Buildings—that you start thinking about schools in respect of secondary schools and secondary schools in London. You then start thinking about the workforce by thinking simply about teachers. We saw that in earlier clauses, such as Clause 13 which we discussed at some length in Committee, on false allegations being made against teachers not being extended to support staff. That reflects an attitude of mind. We heard in the excellent speech of my noble friend Lady Jones about the importance of support staff. They perform a vital range of functions in schools. An additional 130,000-plus since 1997 are working in schools, performing roles not just in classrooms as high-level teaching assistants. Many of the people in classrooms work one-to-one supporting those with special educational needs. There are also non-classroom roles, from school business managers and those assisting them in the school office, through to caretakers, crossing patrols, dinner ladies—or is it catering assistants? I cannot remember the correct term but dinner ladies will do.

A really important range of roles is performed and valued by schools and those in the school community, such as parents, pupils and staff. I have taken quite an interest in reflecting back on how we should improve schools in the future and the underachievement of white working-class boys, in particular. I have visited and talked to those who are running some of the particularly successful academies doing work in that area. The Richard Rose Federation in Carlisle in Cumbria has turned round a very difficult circumstance. The North Liverpool Academy in, as the name suggests, Liverpool, is within sight of both Anfield and Goodison Park football grounds in a very tough environment for schools to succeed. What was interesting was that, in both circumstances, they are now doing really well in narrowing attainment gaps for white working-class boys. When I asked them how they did it, one of the keys was the deployment of support staff and how they were using learning assistants and others to engage the home.

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[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

If things happen as have just been described and responsibility for working out these arrangements passes, as in the most successful schools in the world, to local bodies, to schools, who exactly are we talking about? Is it school heads and human resources people within schools who devise, buy in, outsource or whatever, job descriptions and all the rest of it and then apply them? Who will form the checks and balances against inappropriate practice or perhaps deficient practice in that area? Will it be the governing board, about which I am terribly concerned? The skills and competences around our table are hard enough to put together already. Where will the staff come from? Who will do the controlling if it is passed to a local level? Our local authorities are being diminished and sidelined. More responsibilities are coming on the governing board. Are we now going to be in a position where we have to check on the way things like this are being settled in the workplace?

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords—

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Perhaps I may respond to that point because we want to get on. We are proposing the perpetuation of the current situation. The people who are currently responsible, the local authorities and other bodies, would continue as now to be responsible. The legislative regulatory framework in terms of employment law, equality law and everything else remains in place. It is not the case that the proposed abolition of the SSSNB would change what we currently have going on. The change would have been if the SSSNB had gone ahead.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

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

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

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

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

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

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, this amendment intrigues me, and it raises a question that I hope the Minister can answer. I hope that the proposal would not in any way affect the positive cross-border flow of teachers between Wales and England and between Scotland and England. There are benefits to both sides at the moment.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, for giving us the opportunity to look at the issue of induction periods for staff and to consider who should have to go through that induction period and on what grounds.

Amendment 68, which covers international schools—or any “duly accredited school overseas”—seems to make eminently good sense. Obviously, the underlying issue is accreditation, which means that we need to be sure that the schools that are authorised to perform the induction really are able to provide the quality of teaching to the standards that we demand. However, given that young people these days, as part of their natural early adulthood, move around the globe far more than we ever did in our day, I think that it is perfectly reasonable to expect that young people might want to start their teaching career outside the UK and to bring those skills and experiences directly back into the teaching profession in the UK. Therefore, I very much welcome the intention behind Amendment 68.

On the other hand, Amendment 69 seems rather ungenerous of the noble Lord, because it implies that people who fail their induction will somehow use some underhand way of sneaking back in, so to speak, through the backdoor. When I read the proposal in the Bill, I saw it as much more a facilitative thing. As we have touched on in previous debates, some who start their training when they are very young may not really know in what age group or subject they want to specialise. Therefore, I can well imagine a situation in which some young people, having started off their induction teaching one age group, realise that that age group is not for them and, halfway through the induction year, decide to switch, for example, from secondary to primary or vice versa. I would hope that the regulations that will be set out would enable that to happen. It is not about allowing poor teachers who have failed to get back in; allowing that flexibility for young people to make different career choices seems eminently sensible. Therefore, I support the intent in the original Bill.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

They do not need NQT status in free schools or independent schools. That is not a change.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I am sorry to dwell on this, but I want to pick up the point that the noble Baroness made earlier about induction periods. She has confused me because the legislation states that regulations will be made,

“as to the number of induction periods that a person may serve, and the circumstances in which a person may serve more than one induction period”.

As I said in my original speech, that sounds perfectly sensible. The Government are now saying that they have already decided, and that it is one. The legislation implies a level of flexibility that the Minister is now saying does not exist. It is one induction period—end of story.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton]

My Lords, I rise to speak to the amendments in the names of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Jolly. This is a very simple amendment to provide the safeguard that parents know about, and agree to, a same-day outside school-time detention being given. We recognise the benefits of same-day detention. For the child concerned, the punishment is swift and close enough to the judgment of the incident for there to be a clear link, and it is important for the school as it significantly reduces the administrative arrangements that are required if the detention cannot be taken for a day or more.

I am mindful of the evidence of Sir Alan Steer to the Commons Bill Committee. He said:

“It is nonsense to be discourteous and rude to parents with no notice detentions. You are actually exhibiting poor behaviour. It is thoroughly unreasonable and designed to annoy the parent. The vast majority of schools will not do it because it would run against their principles and how they operate”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 1/3/11; col. 51.]

I absolutely accept that the vast majority of schools would talk to parents and take the view of Sir Alan Steer but, sadly, not all would, and therefore we believe that two key issues would give serious cause for concern should no further measures be put in place.

The first is safeguarding. If children are kept in school for a detention and walk home alone without a larger group of children leaving together and without their parents’ knowledge, we argue that parents must have agreed to this delay so that they can make the necessary transport or meeting arrangements to ensure that their child travels home safely. The press has, very sadly, been full of the recent trial of Levi Bellfield over the murder of Milly Dowler. I want to make it absolutely clear that she was not detained at school but she travelled home later and via an unusual route. Parents are rightly concerned to know how their children get home and at what time so that they can be confident that they will arrive safely.

Secondly, same-day detentions cause a practical problem for rural schools. Many children can access their school only by bus or rail, and often there is only one bus that they can take home. For parents who do not have cars and are unable to collect their children, there is an equity issue about short-notice detentions.

Our amendment is very straightforward. It aims to protect children by ensuring that their parents give consent to the detention and are able to make arrangements for the child to get home safely. We do not want to be prescriptive about how that consent is made—schools will know how best to reach a parent urgently. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I support Amendment 62, which very much follows on from Amendment 61 and has a similar intent to that described by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton.

We also recognise the arguments put forward by some school leaders that punishment is more effective if it takes place nearer to the time of the original incident. Therefore, we understand that there will be occasions when same-day detention is preferable if the necessary safeguards can be built into the child’s welfare. Indeed, that is why detention at lunchtime, which we introduced in previous legislation, is a very useful additional tool. However, to be safe, we regard it as essential that parents are properly informed for same-day detention when it is intended that it should take place after school.

Therefore, our amendment, in the form of a new clause, would require schools to give parents or carers reasonable notice of detention and to obtain an acknowledgment from the parent or carer within 24 hours. Where that acknowledgement has not been received, detention would still take place, but only after the original 24 hours—the current system.

A number of concerns have been raised about Clause 5 as it stands. For example, Ambitious about Autism made a point that I hope noble Lords will take seriously, which is that you need to prepare autistic children for the disruption to their plans and routines. Therefore, short-notice detention of children with autism is not only disruptive to their life and organisation but can cause them considerable mental distress.

Secondly, even Sarah Teather, during the progress of a previous education Bill said:

“For the record, we would not be in favour of removing the period of notice. It would be totally impractical”,

as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has said. Sarah Teather continued:

“In rural areas, especially on dark evenings, parents would not know what had happened to their child and would be extremely concerned. It is perfectly acceptable to give 24 hours’ notice, as it will allow parents to make other arrangements for travel … Anything else would be unacceptable”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education and Inspections Bill Committee, 10/5/06; cols. 855-56.]

Equally, we need to be aware of the needs of young carers who could be stopped from doing vital caring work at home, with no warning and no ability to make alternative arrangements. We need to be aware of the fact that some schools are not aware of the full caring roles that their pupils are carrying out when they get home, and the schools may thereby not be sensitive to some of the pressures that they are putting on the children.

The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, has made the case about rural areas and I shall not repeat it. Unamended, the clause could disrupt the relationship between schools and parents. The NUT made a good point when it said:

“Behaviour systems and policies always work best when they are fully supported by parents. Detention without notice does nothing to bring parents on-side”.

That is also important.

Our amendment therefore helps to redress the balance. It recognises the advantages of short-notice punishment while acknowledging the need to build parents into the disciplinary equation by requiring parents to be made aware of the sanctions the school intends to take. It fosters good relations with parents while allowing them to raise any genuine and practical concerns about a child’s late journey home. In the event that it is not possible to contact the parent or carer, it should remain that the default position is 24 hours’ notice. I hope that noble Lords will see the sense in both amendments.

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I am sure that the Minister will confirm that this did not rise just out of a vacuum and that a large number of teachers and teachers’ organisations have indeed been in contact to support this piece of legislation. It is hugely important that where punishment is going to happen in schools it happens quickly in order to be effective. This legislation will not actually place a duty on schools to do this but simply provide a power to do it. Some schools could decide in their wisdom that they want nothing to do with having detentions under these circumstances. Others could decide that only certain members of staff under considerably constrained conditions may do so. Therefore, we can expect a variety of responses among schools in order to do this. However, there is absolutely no doubt that this power is needed by schools—or at least by some schools. It is part of a series of new tools for the toolbox that I am sure the Minister will agree he is trying to provide, and sends a message to teachers, pupils and parents that a lot of the misbehaviour that we have heard so much about is being combated. It is not one thing—there are other things, all of which are hugely important. They send a clear message to those people that they are going to be supported by government under these circumstances, and that teachers will not have to put up with the kind of misbehaviour that we have heard quite a lot about.

According to the thrust of the Government’s position, these decisions should be left to individual schools. We trust individual schools to make these kinds of decisions. Frankly, it is good so to trust them. Given that kind of trust, the response is always more professionalism. We do not need any more safeguards built into this. Where things are, there they should stay.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Could I respectfully say to the Minister that this is not about powers and process, it is about message. If the message you want to convey is that you want to support schools and head teachers in whatever powers they wish, that is a message that will go out. But it will not be generally helpful in forging relationships between families, communities, parents and schools or indeed between children and their teachers. That is what it is about. It is about ethos and message. A better message is that these powers do exist. I am a strong believer in discipline in schools. Children learn much better if you have discipline. You need these sorts of structures in schools. But it is unhelpful to put into statute something which every speaker in this Room, even those who think we should do something, sees as unsafe and as poor communication with parents. I hope the Government will re-think how they convey that message of support to teachers without putting children into danger.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, I want to be clear what she is saying. Is she saying it is okay to have short-notice detention and not to tell the parents, because that seems to be the message? That raises all the concerns that people around the Room have raised. By all means have short-notice detention but make sure the parents are told. It seems she is saying it is not necessary. All our amendment is doing is to make sure the parents are told. That is a safeguard—the check and balance that is needed. I have not heard a convincing case why we should not insist that parents are told.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

We are talking here about a detention which might be as short as 10, 15 or 20 minutes after school. In that case there would not be time to get hold of most parents to tell them their child was being detained. If all the safeguards were in place to indicate that there would be no danger or damage to that pupil in detaining them, it might be a short, sharp shock that would just rectify a situation that was getting out of control. It is simply an additional power that the school would have, without all the delays. It will build up into a much bigger issue if you then wait and send a letter back to the parents or try to contact them. The whole thing might escalate into a much bigger punishment than giving a brief and immediate punishment on the spot to a young person who had committed some misdemeanour where all the safeguards were in place to make sure that that child would not be at risk for being kept back for a few minutes at the end of school.

We are obviously taking account of transport and all the other circumstances where this type of detention would not be appropriate. We are doing so in response to head teachers, who have indicated that they would welcome this power. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, this is, in a way, a message about something that could be available to them should they need it in very specific circumstances and when appropriate with all the safeguards surrounding it.

We hear the strength of feeling around the Room about this measure but I hope that noble Lords will see that it is a very measured proposal. Teachers would not be inclined to abuse the system but it could be extremely helpful in some circumstances to give an immediate punishment. It would show a young person that they had stepped out of line and that such a punishment was appropriate.

With that explanation, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment. However, we certainly have taken on board the debate on this matter in Committee and the strength of feeling that it has aroused.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Quirk]

My Lords—

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, a few of the amendments in this group are in my name and it may help the debate if I speak to them first. I apologise for interrupting. I shall speak to Amendments 64A, 64B, 73A, 73B, 73C and 73D.

We have considerable sympathy with the intent of noble Lords who have supported Amendment 64. We believe that there is a need for government to send out a much stronger, more positive message to the teaching profession about their value and status. Therefore, we believe that a body carrying out the key functions of the GTCE should remain in the Bill.

Like my noble friend Lord Puttnam, we fully acknowledge that the GTCE has struggled to fulfil parts of its mission. However, in abolishing it, we are in danger of losing other functions which it has delivered well and which would be lost to the profession as a whole. For example, in abolishing the GTCE we will deny the teaching profession a self-regulated professional body on a par with virtually every other professional body in this country. As the GTCE itself says:

“The Bill would remove the professional infrastructure that is standard for other professions such as medicine, law and nursing, and for other teachers”.

Equally, teachers themselves are calling for the continuation of such a body. For example, the NASUWT says the abolition,

“will damage the status of the profession”.

Meanwhile, as we have heard, the Government talk endlessly, and quite rightly, about raising the status of the profession. However, if they are serious, it would surely be a regressive step to take away the professional body.

The Bill describes how certain functions will transfer to the Secretary of State and others will stop completely. I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, for his letter of 13 June setting out in more detail which of the GTCE functions will stop. In that letter he said:

“The GTCE functions which we do not propose to continue include: maintaining the register of teachers; investigating cases of professional incompetence; undertaking a range of surveys and research about the teaching profession; disseminating research and statistics; supporting teachers’ continuing professional development”.

Taking some of those examples, we believe that it is vital to maintain a professional register of teachers, as other professions do and, indeed, as the comparator bodies in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland will continue to do. The register of those qualified and entitled to teach in our schools has been successful in enabling employers to make recruitment checks. Under the Government’s proposals, all that will be held is a database of those prohibited from teaching.

Organisations such as the Association of School and College Leaders and the National Association of Head Teachers have made it clear how much they value a register of all qualified teachers that is accessible by schools. The NUT echoes that, saying that it would be a waste of resources if this work were abandoned now. The ASCL said 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”.

It is not just the public’s but parents’ rights to the same guarantees that matter. For example, as part of my other life, I carry out some paid work for the General Medical Council, and I listened with great interest to what my noble friend had to say about it. Not only have I seen how much doctors value the General Medical Council’s register but I have seen how important it is for patients to access details of their doctors’ registration in an open and transparent way. Surely parents deserve the same rights? In a recent survey, 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.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

I shall speak also to Amendments 21, 22, 23 and 24 in my name which are grouped with Amendment 13. We ended our session on Tuesday by reaching Clause 2. We had a very interesting debate about whether there should be statutory training for any teachers who are considering doing a search of a child. This and the subsequent group of amendments refer to other aspects of the measures which extend the powers to search. This group is about tightening up what can be searched for and for what reasons; the next group is all about whether you can search alone and children of a different gender.

Amendment 13 probes issues concerning the burden of proof and highlights the potential problems that arise for schools as a result of the expansion of the powers. I am sure that head teachers and other members of staff would wish to have that power clearly defined and be without fear of contravening the Human Rights Act or prosecution for an offence against the person. Teachers are not law enforcement officers and they have no reason to risk assault upon them by insisting on searching a pupil who is capable of a violent reaction. Equally, few teachers will wish to use the power if they feel that it will jeopardise their relationship with pupils and generate a climate of suspicion in their school.

A simple Google search of the phrase “primary school rules” illustrates the need for more careful consideration of these provisions. They vary enormously. I wish to insert “reasonably” so that the Bill will say that a search can be made for,

“any other item which the school rules reasonably identify as an item for which a search may be made”.

Some school rules do not allow toys to be brought into school, but it would be quite disproportionate to body-search a child for a little soft toy brought in for comfort. As the Bill is not clear on what exactly is meant by school rules, many schools might feel that they need to revisit their rules, such as: sweets, cans and glass bottles are not allowed in school. When they do so, I would remind them of their duty to consult the pupils. In any case, rules are more likely to be followed if the children have been involved in their drafting and have signed up to the need for them.

The Joint Committee on Human Rights has called on the Government to issue guidance which makes it clear that,

“only items capable of being disruptive to teaching or learning, threatening to the safety of pupils and teachers, or which breach criminal law can be identified in school rules as items for which searches of pupils can be made”.

That is the sensible approach, and inserting “reasonably” indicates that schools must not go over the top.

Amendments 21, 22 and 23 were suggested by the JCHR in its report on the Bill. The committee criticise the very wide powers to examine and erase data or files on a mobile phone or other electronic device. We all want to give heads and teachers the powers they need to keep discipline and to prevent bullying, which is why I do not oppose the extension of these powers. It is clearly legitimate for a teacher, if he has reasonable cause for suspicion, to see whether there are any files on a confiscated phone that could be used for bullying or distribution of images that the subject of the images would not want the world to see—even pornography. However, we need checks and balances. The JCHR points out that there is nothing in the Bill to restrict the scope of the powers in relation to the purpose for which the power is to be exercised. That should be linked to the reasons for the search and the justification for the suspicion that an offence has been, or is about to be, committed.

Given the potential for serious interference in the pupil’s rights to respect for a private life, the JCHR proposed Amendments 21, 22 and 23, about which I questioned the Minister at Second Reading. In the absence of an answer, I have tabled them myself. The amendments make it clear that it must be established that the device is likely to be used for something that is either unlawful or contrary to the school rules.

I tabled Amendment 24 because I remained concerned about the power to erase files. There may be all sorts of things on the phone that are very private to the family—things that the family would rather the school did not know. There may also be things on the phone that the pupil may not want the school or his parents to know—for example, that he or she is gay. Let us bear in mind that the pupil and his phone may be entirely innocent. Indeed, pupil A reporting to a teacher that pupil B has some questionable images on his phone may, in itself, be an act of bullying by A on B—trying to embarrass Bill or get him into trouble. Pupil A may want to expose the fact that B is gay. I would call that homophobic bullying, and this Government have made clear their determination to stamp that out. I have tabled Amendment 24 to ensure that guidance includes consideration of the private life of both the pupil and his family, and the circumstances in which it is appropriate to involve parents in the deletion of files.

I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the Government will conduct a review of the existing search powers—as was recommended by Sir Alan Steer to the previous Government, but not carried out, before they extended the powers. We need more post-legislative, as well as more pre-legislative, scrutiny. Will the Government publish draft guidance relevant to the search powers before Report stage? Will such guidance be statutory? Will the Government accept these amendments? I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. I shall speak also to our Amendment 25. As has already been identified, under the previous legislation school staff already have the power to search for and seize from pupils prohibited items, including weapons, alcohol, drugs and stolen goods, and we are very conscious of the sensitivities in extending those powers.

Therefore Amendment 25 places on the Secretary of State a requirement to give more explicit guidance as to what should be included in the school rules, and on the items for which searches can be made. This amendment would very much enable some of the concerns of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, to be followed through. I also echo her point that if guidance were to be produced, it would be helpful if it were in the form of draft guidance on which we could all comment.

In addition, there is currently a statutory definition of school rules in maintained schools, but there is no statutory definition of school rules in independent schools, which will, in due course, include academies and free schools. Therefore, this underlines again the case for the Government to consider and advise very carefully on what can and cannot be banned under school rules for all state-provided schools. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has mentioned, this was picked up in the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which said:

“There is a risk of the new provision falling foul of that requirement”—

to protect pupils—

“unless the new power to search is circumscribed in some way by reference to the purpose for which such a search may be made”.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, quoted some useful paragraphs from the report, but that one is also helpful.

When we debated this on the first day in Committee, a case was well made on the issue of mobile phones. For one person a mobile phone is some sort of weapon or something that can be used in a derogatory way; for others it is a teaching aid. We need to be clear about pupils’ reasons for carrying mobile phones in school. In some cases it is a link to important caring responsibilities and so on. Therefore, we must be very careful about proscribing some of these things and the wording that is used.

We have seen the 15th report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, which was handed out as we came in. It draws the attention of the House to the fact that the department’s own memorandum on its delegated powers,

“does not explain why it is thought appropriate that the list of articles in section 550ZA(3) that may be searched for … should in future be capable of being supplemented by the school in question, apparently to include any kind of article whatever”.

Again, the Delegated Powers Committee questions the extra powers that the Government are trying to give themselves without being explicit about what the articles should be and what it is appropriate to take into a school. Therefore, I hope our Amendment 25, which makes it necessary for guidance to be produced by the Secretary of State on what is and is not to be prohibited by school rules, is a common-sense measure. I hope the Minister will agree and that he and noble Lords will feel able to support the amendment.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 14 in this group, which addresses two angles of concern. The first is about definition. My noble friend Lady Walmsley said that it is not clear what is meant by school rules. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, also said that they needed definition. That is the purpose of my amendment, which requires a definition to be made by the Secretary of State. I say this trailing my coat, since there may well be a definition of school rules buried somewhere in law. The waving of the corn on my left suggests that that is the case. However, it is not only a matter of what is in the school rules, but of whose authority those rules have. School rules can be made by head teachers on their own in solitary majesty, or by the head teacher with the heads of department, and with or without the endorsement of the school governors. Each would have an effect on what is in the rules.

My second concern is that rules, if they are to succeed, should have the broad understanding, sympathy and support of the school’s pupils. Should some guidance be laid down as to how that is to be achieved? Should it be through school councils, for instance? In small primary schools with small children, the rules could be talked through at the beginning of every term and agreed to by the children. The courts will want to know what the school rules are. I regret to say that we are on very litigious ground. It is essential that the courts should have a definition before them or a great deal of money and time will be wasted by the courts in arriving at a definition of their own. That time and money should be spent by us on deciding now, or by giving the Minister the power and responsibility to define what a school rule is.

With it, I would give him the duty to get advice from somewhere on what should be in school rules in general terms, and on how school rules should be introduced in a way that means they will have the support of the school’s pupils. This is not in the amendment, although I think it will emerge on Report. Children will then think that the rules are part of the way they live. Therefore, when some rebel child starts scrawling obscenities on the walls or doing other unsociable things, it will not be just him versus the staff with an interested group of children listening, watching and occasionally egging on the baddy; it will be the school community as a whole saying, “This is not the way this place runs. This is our home. Please look after it”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I want to pursue an issue that I mentioned in passing in my introduction: that of mobile phones. I refer not to whether a child could be searched but to whether they are carrying a mobile phone in the first place. My noble friend Lord Knight made the point that in the olden days pens could be scurrilous and used inappropriately, so we have to be a bit careful about what we are proscribing here.

I believe I am right in saying that the latest draft guidance on searching states:

“Ministers have already announced their intention to make regulations to add to the list of prohibited items (cigarettes and other tobacco products, pornography, fireworks and specific personal electronic devices (mobile phones and iPods etc))”.

I read that to mean that mobile phones and iPods will be included on the list of prohibited items. I hope that we can have a broader debate on whether that is sensible in the round because, as I said earlier, mobile phones can have a range of functions in a school, not all of which are damaging or unhelpful to the education process.

[Lord Storey]

I want to re-emphasise the importance of parents being aware of the school’s behaviour management policy and I welcome the fact that that duty exists. In that behaviour management policy, it will be an important responsibility of head teachers in schools to indicate the items that pupils should not be carrying on their person.

I also emphasise the dangers of mobile phones in schools—something that I have experienced on a regular basis. The amount of bullying that goes on, and the passing of offensive messages and images, is a real problem no doubt in secondary schools but certainly in primary schools. The fact that schools, parents and pupils—one hopes through the school council—are involved in putting together the behaviour policy and understanding that will be really important for our school system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I shall also speak to Amendment 28. We now move to some of the more delicate checks and balances in relation to searching.

The amendments would make it unlawful to search a child of the opposite gender and never, in any circumstances, without another member of staff being present. Amendment 16 refers to schools and Amendment 28 to FE colleges.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said on Tuesday, searches can be very invasive and unpleasant experiences that cause children embarrassment, anxiety and humiliation. In addition, searches might have different and more pronounced implications for children with a history of physical or sexual abuse, children with a disability or special needs, or children from different cultural backgrounds.

That is why I believe the person should always be searched by a teacher of the same gender and always with a witness. I am not so concerned about searches of property or lockers, although doing that alone can also open up a teacher to allegations of theft, but searches of the person open the door to allegations of improper behaviour if he or she is either alone or of the opposite gender or both. At a time when the Government have found it desirable to bring in reporting restrictions on allegations against teachers, which we will discuss when we reach Clause 13, why are they attempting to open up teachers to this sort of allegation by encouraging them to search a child of the opposite gender alone?

Clause 2(3) allows a member of staff to search a child alone if they believe that,

“there is a risk that serious harm will be caused to a person if the search is not carried out as a matter of urgency, and … it is not reasonably practicable for the search to be carried out … in the presence of another member of staff”.

I believe that those are the precise circumstances in which a search should not be carried out alone. Let us imagine the situation in which the child and the teacher are nervous and hyped up. The child might know that he has a knife or a gun in his pocket—in these circumstances, the police should be called anyway, as carrying a knife or gun is a very serious matter. However, nothing is more calculated to stimulate the child to do something silly than the pressure of an immediate and perhaps forceful search in front of their peers. It is much better to calm the matter down and send for a senior member of staff so that the search can be carried out more safely.

I know that most teachers would be entirely sensible and cautious about something like this, but we must not make bad legislation that has the potential for putting them and the children in danger by doing something entirely unnecessary. I can think of no circumstances in which it would be safe for a teacher to search a child for a knife alone and no circumstances in which it would not be possible to send for reinforcements. If the child is wielding a knife, there is no need to search for it—it is on full view. The teacher has a right under common law to defend himself and protect the other children, and so we do not need this legislation for that situation. However, even then, the teacher would be wise to send for some support.

I believe that these amendments are absolutely necessary, and I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, our Amendment 17 mirrors much of what is in Amendment 16, but with slightly different wording in that it reinstates the protections that were introduced with very good reasons in the first place. They were to have a witness and for searches to be carried out by members of the same sex. I very much echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has said in this regard. We have touched on these issues in previous debates—it has been a bit of a running thread—but it does not diminish the force of the argument or the need to firm up the checks and balances that we need when teachers are operating in day-to-day school life.

Head teachers already have the power to search pupils. The powers already give teachers and head teachers the power to search, to use reasonable force to control or restrain a pupil, to stop a pupil committing a criminal offence, to prevent injury or damage to property, and to maintain good order and discipline.

In the Commons stages, colleagues debated why these new powers were necessary in addition to the existing ones and when they would be used. The answers at that time from the Government were unclear, and the Minister, Nick Gibb, was unable to give a convincing example of when these new powers would be needed. For example, when would a teacher need to search a pupil’s possessions without a witness being present? Moreover, in the evidence-taking sessions in the Commons, Brian Lightman, the head of the ASCL, said:

“I have been a head for 15 years. I cannot imagine a situation where I would sanction any of my staff searching a member of the opposite sex without a witness present. In fact, I wouldn’t allow anyone to search a member of the opposite sex, full stop”.—[Official Report, Commons, Education Bill Committee, 1/3/11; col. 24.]

Similarly, the representation from the teaching unions made it clear that their members would be very wary of using these new powers.

Perhaps more importantly, children’s rights are paramount in this regard. Many of us will have received the mailing from an alliance of children’s charities raising concerns about the extended search powers. It rightly draws our attention to the protection of children’s privacy in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Act. It agrees with our position that the case for extended powers has not been made. Instead, it urges the Government to conduct a review of how the existing search powers have been implemented before commencing with any new powers. To me, that makes perfectly good sense.

In addition, these powers are so broad that they give teachers greater search powers than a police office would have under the stop and search provisions. For example, in the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 the police powers to stop and search require,

“reasonable grounds for suspicion, before they may be exercised, that articles unlawfully obtained or possessed are being carried”.

Under Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, stop and search must be based upon a reasonable belief,

“that incidents involving serious violence may take place”,

or that people are,

“carrying dangerous instruments or offensive weapons”.

We do not need to give teachers these additional powers. As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, rightly pointed out, if anything this will endanger the pupil/teacher relationship and put teachers at risk. In all these circumstances, we do not believe that the case has been made for opposite sex searches and searches without a witness. Therefore, we commend Amendment 17, as well as Amendment 28, which applies the same principles to FE colleges. I shall not rehearse the arguments, but we believe that the same ones apply.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I should like to know where the parents are in this. If I were the parent of a child who had been searched at school by a same or opposite sex—but particularly opposite sex—teacher, I think I would be mightily cross if I had not been informed. If I were a head teacher, I would hate to be on the receiving end of a parent’s anger at their child being searched. The witness should ideally be a parent. Has that been thought of in the Bill? Are parents excluded from this procedure? It is an issue that should be considered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

Before the Minister responds, I wanted to make a quick comment in response to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, who raised the crisis issue. That underlines our argument, which echoes what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said, that surely what we need to do is to review how the existing legislation has been working so far. It has been in existence for 15 years. If there were going to be crises, they would have happened by now and we should know about them. We should therefore know what extra legislation, if anything, is needed to deal with it. I can genuinely say that there does not appear to be a chorus of demand from the teaching professions saying, “We were in this awful crisis and we were constrained from what we could do by your really unhelpful legislation”. There does not appear to be that demand, but maybe it is out there. Maybe we should do what the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, is saying and find out what is happening on the ground, but without rushing into the new proposed legislation, which opens us up to other problems and repercussions, which we have not yet fully identified.

I wanted to make the quick point that we should review first and see whether there are those crises out there.

[Baroness Walmsley]

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, has stimulated me to emphasise the questions that I would like my noble friend the Minister to answer. I was saving them for my withdrawal speech, but it might be helpful to my noble friend if I emphasised them now. I really would like to know what sort of crisis we are talking about, because nobody has yet described to me the sort of crisis that would make it impossible for a teacher to send a child to fetch a senior member of staff or a member of staff of the correct gender.

Furthermore, what evidence is there that it is necessary to allow searches of a pupil alone, by a teacher of any gender? Like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I have not heard an outcry from the teaching profession telling us that the checks and balances in the current legislation need to be withdrawn to allow them the freedom to deal with the situations that they are being faced with. I am hearing it from some head teachers, though not all, but I am certainly not hearing it from teachers themselves. As I said at Second Reading, there is this disparity of opinion within the profession itself, which makes it very difficult for us as legislators and non-teachers—most of us are non-teachers—to legislate on what is right. Perhaps my noble friend can give us some evidence of the need to remove these checks and balances and a clear description of the sort of crises that we are talking about. Are we talking about a child with a grenade in his pocket and his finger on the pin? That I would describe as a crisis—but I have never heard of it occurring. But a child with a knife or a gun in his pocket and not with his hand on it and not wielding it is a situation that would allow you to send for somebody else. If a child has it in his hand, it is on view and you do not need to search for it. You have a common law right to remove it. But if you have to search for it, you have time.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 12, I wish to speak also to Amendments 19, 27 and 32 in this group. My noble friend Lady Jolly will speak to Amendment 20.

Clause 2 extends the power of teachers and heads to search pupils and repeals some of the safeguards in legislation regarding searches in schools. These searches constitute a significant intrusion into children’s privacy which is protected under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and under the Human Rights Act. Therefore, there is an enormous onus on the Government to justify them.

I welcome the Government’s commitment to give due consideration to the provisions of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child when making new policy and legislation. I urge the Minister to ensure that when this Bill leaves your Lordships' House it complies fully with this important convention. I am particularly concerned with regard to Article 28(2) of the convention which states that we must,

“ensure that school discipline is administered in a manner consistent with the child’s human dignity and in conformity with the present Convention”.

When the powers to search were extended in 2009 to include alcohol, drugs and stolen property, they went ahead without any published evaluation of how the previous powers were working. This is happening again, which causes me great concern. We need a thorough review of these powers with sufficient detail for us to determine whether any particular groups of children are being searched more frequently than others. It is essential to avoid any possible discrimination in the use of these powers.

The first group of amendments concern appropriate training. Amendments 12 and 19 seek to ensure that any member of school staff expected to search a pupil has had appropriate training before attempting to do so. My intention is to highlight the importance of proper training in such matters. When I was a teacher, I would not have dreamt of attempting such a thing without proper training, and I am sure that your Lordships would have felt the same in my position. Many teachers are currently reluctant to use the powers that they already have to search pupils, and would not have the confidence to do so even in the circumstances where it may seem necessary to prevent imminent harm to others unless they had confidence that they knew what they were doing. No teacher or member of staff should be expected to search a child without good-quality training, especially since current legislation allows them to,

“use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances”.

Training is essential, particularly in delicate situations where the pupil has special educational needs or has particular cultural or religious concerns or is of the opposite gender from the person carrying out the search, or there is no other member of staff present—although noble Lords will know that I do not approve of either of those last two situations.

It is not just about training. Information about the child is important too. How is a child who has been touched inappropriately or even abused going to react if someone approaches to search their person? That could escalate a fairly low-level problem into something violent and critical. Training should ensure that searches are conducted in such a way as to avoid harm to the child being searched, as well as to avoid unfounded allegations of improper behaviour by the teacher or lecturer.

Amendments 27 and 32 cover the same matters relating to searches in FE colleges. It is true, however, that most colleges have specially designated and trained security staff who would probably be called in to conduct a search if necessary. There are particular issues in colleges that may need to be addressed differently from searches conducted in schools, as many of the students may well be over 18. The current DfE guidance that was published in 2007, called Screening and Searching of Pupils for Weapons: Guidance for School Staff, mentions colleges only briefly, on page 4, which is insufficient.

Further training and advice are essential in order for staff to understand the powers under this clause. Such training should ensure that searches are conducted in such a way as to avoid harm to the child being searched, as well as to avoid unfounded allegations of improper behaviour by the teacher or lecturer. In colleges there may be only a very few years between the searcher and the searched. Such training could also usefully include managing potentially inflamed situations, identifying particular cultural or religious sensitivities, de-escalation techniques and risk assessment.

I know that the Association of Colleges is not keen on my idea of statutory training; it has said so. It says that unqualified cowboy operations will be set up to provide so-called training and might give teachers and lecturers an unfounded sense of confidence. My answer to that is that the college principal has a duty to ensure that all CPD is of good quality by getting recommendations and feedback and by checking qualifications. The association suggests that bad things can happen if people have been inappropriately trained. My opinion is that bad things can happen if people are not trained at all. We should put this requirement in the Bill. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, as a number of amendments are in our names, I thought that it would be sensible to get up at this stage and speak on Amendments 15, 18, 26, 29, 30 and 31. In introducing these amendments, I should make it clear that we understand and support the Government’s stated intention to support schools in improving discipline. As noble Lords will know, the previous Government took the first steps towards bringing in new powers to help teachers enforce discipline, and at that time they were broadly welcomed by the profession.

Our concern with what is being proposed today is that, although on the face of it the Bill seems to build on the legislation, it takes away the important checks and balances that had been built in to protect both pupils and teachers. It remains unclear why proposals to extend those powers have been put before us.

Many of our comments echo those of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. Amendment 15 seeks to ensure that staff undertaking searches are appropriately trained to search all pupils, particularly those with special educational needs and disabilities, in a way that maintains the dignity and rights to privacy of everybody, in order to foster a school environment of mutual respect. Amendment 18 also makes it clear that searches should be carried out by a member of the senior management team. In the Commons evidence that we read, this was described as good practice by a number of head teachers.

The Children's Society and the NUT, among others, made a compelling case for staff doing searches to be trained and given advice on the effect of searches on young people, including the effect on their self-esteem and confidence. In addition—I am sure that we will hear more about this—Ambitious about Autism told us that staff require proper training to carry out safe searches on children with autism so that they understand the children's potential issues, for example around physical contact. The Children's Rights Alliance for England reminded us that searches can be very invasive and unpleasant experiences, causing children embarrassment, anxiety and humiliation. In addition, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, children with a history of physical or sexual abuse have a very different experience of searches; there is a need for training in that respect. It is also vital that staff carrying out searches on children with special educational needs and disabilities have an awareness of those issues and make reasonable adjustments for those needs.

We are concerned also that the new powers could put staff undertaking searches at risk. For example, the NUT highlighted a concern that, without training, teachers could be vulnerable to unfounded allegations of “improper behaviour”. Again, this underlines the case that we made earlier for searches to be carried out by someone of sufficient seniority that their intention and authority cannot be brought into question when the searches are carried out. This may be best practice in many schools, but the amendments build in safeguards for all pupils, particularly the most vulnerable, to ensure that their needs are recognised and that they are treated with respect.

Finally, Amendment 26 would require schools to keep a written record of all searches, including equalities information on the SEN, ethnicity and disabilities of the pupils being searched. Just as the police powers of stop and search were found to be disproportionately targeting certain ethnic groups, there is a risk that the same thing could happen unintentionally in our schools. Without proper records, we will not be able to monitor and follow up on the consequences of those trends. This concern has been highlighted by the Runnymede Trust, which stated:

“Runnymede is concerned that this power could result in disproportionate numbers of Black children being searched. If Black pupils are searched more than other pupils or feel unfairly targeted, trust may be undermined, potentially leading to more negative behaviour in the classroom”.

The amendment will enable that record to be kept and research to be pursued to follow up on it, both within the school and more widely, to make sure that unintended consequences do not arise. It will enable us to ensure that minority ethnic groups are not disproportionately targeted, and that groups such as pupils with SEN or disabilities are also not disproportionately targeted unintentionally. I hope that the Minister will acknowledge the sense of the amendments and the comfort that they might bring by protecting the interests of vulnerable groups who are concerned about how the new powers will operate.

Other amendments to Clause 3 in this group—Amendments 29, 30 and 31—mirror the amendments that we laid to Clause 2 but relate to further education. The same arguments apply in terms of checks and balances, but as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, because of the potential narrowing of the age gap it is particularly important that teachers are trained to treat the students with respect and be aware of their vulnerabilities.

I have one final quick comment. I am aware that a guidance note is in full consultation from the department at the moment on the powers to search without consent. I am sure that the Minister will say, “Do not worry, because this document is being consulted on”, but it increasingly gives us concern that we are being asked to make legislation now, not further down the line when some consultations will come to fruition. It is asking a lot of us to trust that those consultations will come out with the right answer. We need to ensure that we get the legislation correct now, when we have the chance to do so.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elton]

I use just a second to pick up one phrase that my noble friend used earlier: discipline is not only about punishment. I hope that the Committee and the Government will bear in mind that in matters of keeping order and quelling disorder, punishment is the last resort. Good order depends on a whole school behaviour management programme understood and operated by the whole staff. We need to remember that that is the prime source of good order and that punishment is what has to be brought in when it fails.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I want to make just a couple of quick points, given the lateness of the hour. The first is that the draft guidance that seems to be floating around, the status of which I am sure that the noble Lord will know better than I, explicitly states under the heading of training for school staff that there is no legal requirement for a head teacher or authorised member of staff to be trained before undertaking a “without consent” search. That is a statement of fact because there is no legal requirement, but if you are issuing guidance, would it not make sense to say something like, “But we think it is a jolly good idea”? It is almost a prescription not to bother to do the training. I may have the status of the guidance wrong, but my point is worth taking on board.

The second point concerns the final issue that the Minister raised, which was about keeping records. There was a contradiction with what a number of noble Lords said about the need for consistent record keeping so that Ofsted can check what is going on and the department can have an idea of whether there are unforeseen consequences of the searches. We all want to know what the big picture is, and we can only do that if we have consistent records. The noble Lord said that we should trust schools to keep their own records, but there is a contradiction here—and also with the requirement under the Equality Act that he talked about. I will return to the issue about what schools should be required to do in terms of keeping records to comply with fairness and meet the requirements of the legislation. I do not think that we have fully fleshed that out.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, this has been an excellent and wide-ranging debate. I thank all noble Lords who contributed, and in particular the Minister for his reply. Before I make a few comments, I will make one correction. I mentioned that it was the Association of Colleges that was against the statutory requirement for training: I meant to say that it was the Association of School and College Leaders. I am sure that Hansard in its usual inimitable manner will correct that for me.

I will pick up on a few disparate points from the debate. First, a number of noble Lords raised the issue of what would happen if a child were wielding a knife. I believe that a teacher or anybody else in the room would have a common-law right to intervene to protect themselves or any child there: they would not need these searching powers. Anyway, you do not need to search for something that is in full view.

I thank the Minister for his assurance that no teacher will be pressurised into doing a search. I am aware that this was in previous legislation. However, the Government are repealing a number of checks and balances in previous legislation, so I was a little concerned that they might be repealing that.

I very much agree with the points made by my noble friend Lady Benjamin about stop and search. She made her points very passionately. These are things that we must bear in mind. I asked for a very detailed review so that we can make sure that no discrimination is occurring. Of course, if the incidents are reported and recorded, as the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, suggested, it will be very easy to collect the information. I know that the Government are trying to ease the bureaucratic burden on schools and are not implementing the duty in the previous Bill to record all incidents, but incidents of this nature are really quite serious and perhaps it should be suggested in guidance that best practice should dictate that these sorts of things are recorded under the school’s judgment.

Schools: Dyslexia

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I agree with my noble friend about the importance of input from higher education institutions. The Government are not saying that we do not believe that higher education institutions will play an extremely important part in teacher training. We are saying that, alongside that, there should be more opportunities for teachers to learn from other teachers, professionals and practitioners in the school. I very much take the noble Baroness’s point about the important role that higher education institutions play.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, can the Minister explain what requirement there will be in academies and free schools to ensure that teachers are supported in recognising and working with children with dyslexia?

Education: Academies Funding

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are the implications for funding of the academy programme of reports that errors in departmental calculations have led to some academies being overfunded.

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

My Lords, the current system of funding academies that we inherited is overly complex and needs to be simplified. We have therefore announced a review of school funding. Where there are occasional problems of classification in the current system, we look into them on a case-by-case basis. We want a system where schools with similar characteristics are funded on an equal footing and where academies are funded on the same basis as maintained schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he recognise that the overpayments that have been made are in some cases considerable, for example equating to around £300,000 per school in Hampshire? Does he agree with his noble friend Lady Ritchie, of the Local Government Association, who said last week that the overspends on academies arose,

“because the government has misinterpreted council education expenditure returns for purposes for which they were not intended”?

Can he explain how the overpayments to academies will now be clawed back? Can he guarantee that pupils in maintained schools will not be penalised by this error, and does he acknowledge that the error illustrates once again the folly of pushing ahead with policies without adequately consulting those concerned?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, as I said in my opening Answer, we inherited the system that we operate for funding academies and for trying to ensure that the basis of equal funding is maintained, and it is inherently complex. It has been in place since 2002 and because it is complex, sometimes the classification of returns under Section 251 leads to difficulties and some of the problems alluded to by the noble Baroness. Our aim is to make sure that funding is provided on an equal basis. Where there are problems of the sort that she mentioned, the department will look into them on a case-by-case basis and, if it is appropriate, make arrangements to claw back money or in some cases pay additional money. Sometimes, the way in which this complex system operates can lead to an academy getting less than it should. We will look at this, and I hope that the funding review of the whole system that we announced some time ago will help to address these problems and enable us to reach a sustainable solution.

Education Bill

Baroness Jones of Whitchurch Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to the Bill. He has done the best that he can to enthuse us but the Bill is heavy with structural change and light on what really matters—the delivery of high standards in every school for every child. At least the Minister did not fall into the trap of his boss, Michael Gove, who took his reputation for exaggeration to new heights in the Commons debate when he said:

“This Bill provides an historic opportunity for this country. It will help to guarantee every child a high quality education, which will equip them for the technological, economic, social and cultural challenges of the next century”.—[Official Report, Commons, 8/2/2011; col. 180.]

Regrettably the Bill does not meet any of those lofty aspirations. At a time when the debate going on in the country is about how to drive up academic standards, how to ensure that every child has a chance to excel and how to distribute resources fairly to compensate for deprivation, the Bill fails to meet the challenge. Instead, it seeks to redefine the relationship between schools, parents and local communities, diminishing accountability and dismantling the procedures that ensure fairness and equity. As such, there is plenty in the Bill to give us cause for concern.

This does not mean that we are opposed to all the clauses in the Bill. We can support a number of them and others we hope to clarify by amendment in Committee. I will say a little more on that shortly. I hope your Lordships and perhaps even the Minister will recognise that there is something slightly obsessive about a Secretary of State who produces a Bill that gives him more than 50 additional powers. It is an irony that, at the same time as we are debating the Localism Bill, this Bill is moving in the opposite direction, taking decisions away from parents, communities and elected local authorities and centralising them in a department ill-prepared for the raft of new responsibilities coming its way.

On this issue, as perhaps on many others in the Bill, I hope that we might have a common cause with noble Lords on the Liberal Democrat Benches as I see in their election manifesto that they were committed to,

“introduce an Education Freedom Act banning politicians from getting involved in the day-to-day running of schools”.

Not surprisingly, that did not make it into the coalition agreement. Am I the only person to suspect that when something goes wrong, as things inevitably do, and his department is held responsible for a bad decision or a failure to act on the new responsibilities, the Secretary of State will be noticeably absent? Either by then he will have been conveniently reshuffled into another department or he will just expect the Minister opposite to take to the airwaves to explain away the error once again. We are not happy about the centralisation of power. We will scrutinise these clauses with particular care and measure them against a simple yardstick of whether they are in the interests of pupils, parents, professionals and local communities.

As I mentioned earlier, there are some clauses in the Bill that deserve our support. We welcome the extension of free early years provision for disadvantaged two year-olds. We will in due course seek firmer guarantees that the provisions in the Bill cannot subsequently be watered down, but you would expect the party that introduced the universal entitlement for three and four year-olds to approve its extension.

We also welcome the clauses that give teachers anonymity when accusations are made against them. We all know examples of good teachers whose lives have been blighted and their careers damaged when false allegations are made against them. It has on occasions been used as a cynical tool of revenge by some pupils and it is absolutely right that teachers have the right to anonymity until allegations have been investigated and formal charges brought. However, we fail to understand why the Government have so far failed to follow the logic of their own arguments in this regard in extending the provisions to all school staff and those working in further education and the youth sector, who are equally vulnerable.

We will also support practical measures to give teachers more power to intervene in bad behaviour in the classroom. However, we remain concerned that the specific additional search powers in this Bill are not matched by the appropriate safeguards. Moreover, there is a danger that the new measures could be simply symbolic. I read with interest the oral evidence given by head teachers to the Education Bill Committee in the other place. They struggled to find examples of where these additional powers would be useful and the teachers’ unions reported that their members would be very reluctant to use them. Nevertheless, we will welcome alternative proposals that send a clear message to pupils that bad behaviour will not be tolerated.

The Bill is guilty of sending mixed messages to the teaching profession. On the one hand, it wants to strengthen their authority in the classroom while, on the other hand, it waters down their professional status through the abolition of the General Teaching Council for England. So far, the Government have failed to produce a credible position on this. We believe that there is still a need for a regulator with a degree of independence in this sector. Surely, the sensible approach would be to learn the best practice from other professional bodies and work with the teachers’ associations to find a better method of setting standards, regulating entry to the profession, maintaining a comprehensive register and managing teacher discipline.

What message does it send to parents and teachers about the importance of professional standards when the Government make it clear that free schools will not be required to employ qualified teachers? Surely, parents should be able to choose the best school for their child, safe in the knowledge that all publicly funded schools will employ teachers with relevant training and qualifications?

Equally, if we are committed to driving up standards in schools, what justification can there be for the abolition of the School Support Staff Negotiating Body? This organisation was halfway through producing job profiles for support staff which would have recognised their important contribution to children's learning experience in schools. It was a welcome development that school leaders and teachers alike have supported, so I hope that in Committee we will be able to persuade the Minister to reconsider that decision.

I do not intend to rehearse all the arguments around the clauses today, but I would like to highlight some areas of particular concern. First, the Bill dilutes parents' rights over school admissions. This is a massively sensitive subject and will continue to be so as long as parents detect that there are schools of varying quality in their area. The Bill abolishes local admissions forums and waters down the capacity of the schools adjudicator to intervene to ensure fair play. The new draft admissions code, published after the Bill had received its Third Reading in the other place, would allow grammar schools to expand beyond their current physical capacity, leading to a potential expansion of selection in the state school system. A weakened admissions system means less power for parents to ensure their child can go to the school they choose. A weaker system also risks unfairness going unchallenged.

Secondly, we support the Government’s aim to establish an all-age careers service by April 2012. However, the lack of a transition plan from the existing careers service providers, compounded by the impact of local authority cuts, means that most of the staffing and expertise will be lost before the new service has had a chance to establish itself. As the ASCL has said,

“More than 2 million young people aged 16 to 19 could lose out on valuable careers advice while the government overhauls the national careers advice service, at a time when young people’s unemployment is reaching record highs”.

There is a real danger that, in this vacuum, careers advice will end up being provided online or collectively, whereas we believe that young people need personalised, ongoing, face-to-face advice that is tailored to their individual skills and interests. They also need real choice between academic and vocational training, including access to good-quality apprenticeships.

Finally, this Bill rewrites the Academies Act passed last summer at breakneck speed and without adequate scrutiny in the other place. As a result, only one of its original 14 sections has escaped being replaced or amended. The model created by the previous Government to use academies to turn around failing schools in deprived areas has now been turned on its head. The resemblance between the old and the new is in name only; now, every school will be encouraged to become an academy.

The Bill could mean that by 2015 we would have an all-academy world: 20,000 schools, each with its own admissions policy, all being judged on the prescriptive English baccalaureate that is geared towards the top 30 per cent of children. Schools will have a clear incentive to admit the most able students and, with a weakened adjudicator and greater competition between schools, back-door selection becomes more likely. Such a world could be a dangerous place for less academic children or those with special needs.

In this new world, the role of elected local authorities in planning schools and services is marginalised. The strategic role envisaged for them in the education White Paper is abandoned. They will have no significant role and scarce resources to co-ordinate provision, whereas we believe that local people and local communities should be in the driving seat in determining what is best for their children’s education.

I said at the outset that this Bill ducked many of the key arguments about education today. While it is true that those do not appear in the Bill, it is also true that there are potentially profound consequences arising from the restructuring of education services being pursued by the Secretary of State. The expansion of academies, each with its own budget, will create a vast new marketplace for schools to buy services that have previously been provided without charge by local authorities. New private providers of education services are already moving into that void. No doubt some services will be able to be procured more cheaply, but schools will also be under pressure to save on the cost of expensive services for those who have special needs or require learning support.

No doubt the Government will argue that the pupil premium will help offset some of those additional costs. However, can we be sure that the money involved will compensate for the complexities of trying to provide an education service in a deprived area? What will be the consequence of the private sector supplying those support services? Can we be sure that they will be properly regulated and that schools will be protected from market failure?

What of the management of these academies? It is hard to imagine how the Secretary of State thinks he is going individually to manage thousands of academies, so it is rather convenient for him that they are already forming themselves into chains and federations. Instead of managing individual schools, he could ultimately manage contracts of large private providers—some no doubt bigger than the democratic local authorities they seek to replace. Those providers currently make a virtue of their charitable status being not-for-profit, but can we be confident that that protection will continue? Could we one day be facing the educational equivalent of Southern Cross, with all the challenges of maintaining continuity of education in the school system that could result?

When we scrutinise the Bill, we will be looking at the detail of the clauses as written, but we will also be mindful of the potential consequences of a market-dominated education system and what it means for the school system as a whole. We will put forward measures to ensure that the right checks and balances keep children’s interests paramount. We will aim to place the rights and priorities of pupils, parents, professionals and the public at the heart of the Bill, and reassert the right of communities to determine their children’s education. We hope very much that, in the course of the discussions, we can make common cause with noble Lords across the House, perhaps including the Minister, to strengthen the Bill on this basis. We look forward to the remainder of the debate today.