Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Massey of Darwen and Baroness Brinton

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Brinton]

I also support the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Laming. I confess that in the mid to late 1990s, I was chair of education in an authority where we had such an incident before the Act came in and there was a duty to co-operate. I remember at the time the deep shock as a fairly new councillor and certainly as a new Cabinet member at understanding that we had completely failed. The system had failed. I welcomed the Act when it came in.

I also echo the points that the noble Lord and others made—the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in particular—about a number of cases that have been reviewed since. I would say to my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury that I do not think you need to take a school to court. All you need to do is look at the serious case reviews where recommendations have been made to schools that have failed to ensure that follow-up happens.

I am sure that the many schools that want to co-operate will continue to do so. The problem is with the small number that do not believe it is in their interests. I am sorry to go back in time, but I remember some grant-maintained schools in the 1990s feeling that it was an absolute liberation to be free of the local authority and doing everything that they could not to co-operate with it. I fear that we might end up with that sort of encouragement again among academies and free schools were we to lose the duty to co-operate now. It is vital that we retain it.

I have one further point that is not about safeguarding in the sense that much of this debate has focused on. In many other areas local authorities, not just upper-tier authorities with responsibility for education and social services but district and borough councils, should have a duty to co-operate for services that children receive across the board. That has to include library resources, playgrounds and provision of school places at a strategic level. Where more schools can do their own thing and there is no longer a need for an admissions forum, a duty to co-operate at the highest strategic level to ensure that there is the right provision for children in an area is absolutely vital.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I want to make a small contribution to this excellent debate and thank the noble Lord, Lord Laming, for his introduction. I am a great admirer of the noble Lord. The Climbié report that he so admirably produced led to a great deal of rethinking on vulnerable children.

Some of the issues that he and others raised are about not being able to educate without looking at the whole child—a point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and a few other noble Lords. I also thank my noble friend Lady Morris for her potted history of education, which was very useful.