Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Morgan of Huyton Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Addington]

I thank the noble Lord for his support and appreciate that even he cannot be in two places at once—although he does a very good impersonation of it at times.

Unless you broaden, much of the hyperbole we have been getting and that all political parties indulge in about making it a broader experience is going to be missed. The academic model is great but it is always quantifiable; there are always changes and caveats. If you miss those, effectively you are labelling somebody who has done the best they can as failing, coasting, not achieving—call it what you like. Unless you give us an idea about how you are going to take the rest of this out, you are ignoring the real function; that is, the socialising function. Sport, arts and further adult life, basically—what is your foundation for expanding on here? If we do not get some definition, and it would be much better to have something in the Bill or something that at least directly tells you where to find it—big letters, nice and clear; we are bears of very little brain, show us where and show us the process by which you are going to change this—you are actually going to cause more trouble than anything else.

I hope that when the noble Lord, Lord Nash, replies, he will have something that really goes to the heart of this. If he does not, I have this vision of lengthy litigation and squabbling as we try to readjust and go forward. We have to know what we are talking about.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton (Lab)]

I also give my apologies, as I have to go to a charity reception at 3.40 pm and will not be able to stay later. It seems to me that we are in danger of making this rather too complicated, and I take issue with some of the amendments this afternoon. There has been an awful lot of noise about the definition, which has come rather late and has been a problem. The Minister’s letter is very helpful, but it would have been more helpful to have had it earlier. Nevertheless, it has made things much clearer.

All noble Lords who have dealt in one way or another with schools in various parts of the country know what coasting schools are: they are schools that kind of float along below the radar, and we have all had experience of them over the years. The interesting and the challenging thing is that this potentially will include a lot of schools around the country, which is something I will ask a question about later. They are the sort of schools that, superficially, often have very good exam and SAT results, but which, underneath that, are pretty unimpressive. We have never really put any focus on those schools.

Other schools of course may be doing brilliantly in terms of the entry levels of the pupils that they work with. Handled properly, this will allow us to praise the schools that are doing brilliantly with pupils and making extremely good progress. I speak with a very strong personal interest in this in a variety of ways, but particularly in terms of the work I am doing currently with Ark, which works with extremely disadvantaged communities. I would not want the sort of schools I work with to be let off the hook on pupil progress. The danger of including an awful lot of other stuff in the definition is that it would let schools off the hook again when it comes to making sure that we drive up standards for the most disadvantaged children around the country. I would be very concerned about that.

For schools to get good academic progress from their pupils, all of the things we have just talked about have to be included. I have been around an awful lot of schools in the last five years and have not seen many that deliver great progress without doing the arts and the range of other things that we are talking about. That is integral to a good school, and therefore I am a bit sceptical that we need to lay that all out again. The system now has a lot more data than it used to have, and there are a lot more data out there than used to be available. The encouraging thing is that we have the headline data, which all of us, in different ways, have had concerns about at times because it does not necessarily take account of progress. The key thing that has changed is that we now have good progress data for pupils, which we used not to have. In addition, we have Ofsted reports, although there is a problem with focusing too much on Ofsted reports, as I know from personal experience, in that sometimes they lag quite far behind; a school may not have been delivering in the period since the last Ofsted report. That can happen in particular with schools that have been outstanding for a long time and therefore have not been visited by inspectors for a considerable length of time.

I am very concerned about the idea of setting up another, completely separate set of quite complicated accountabilities. Although I understand the idea behind it from my colleagues here, there is a danger that if we start to take account of the curriculum, gender, sports, arts and so on, that creates extra pressure for a lot of head teachers and makes life more complicated and more stressful for them. I know from bitter experience that they are anxious enough about Ofsted inspections, so we have to be careful about adding to the complication.

If we were looking at only one year’s data, I would be really worried, because we all know you can have bad years or a cohort that does not perform. If we were only looking at progress for one year, I would be worried. But the combination of several years’ performance and, crucially, several years’ progress data is important and is a step forward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

Of course, Ofsted is focused heavily on a broad and balanced curriculum. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, said, schools that are good at sports, arts et cetera tend to do well on all fronts, but how on earth will teachers know where they are if we have a form of words which could, frankly, mean anything? I shall say a bit more about that in a minute.

The chief executive of the Burnt Mill Academy Trust, who was at the meeting on Monday—a very interesting lady called Helena Mills, who was extremely unsure about the whole academy idea in the early days and is now running a highly successful multi-academy trust and talks glowingly about the advantages—has said that,

“having a coasting definition which is based on performance over time, rather than snapshot judgement is really important”.

The chief executive of Olympus Academy Trust has said that,

“a school’s context should certainly be taken into account when an RSC is deciding whether, and how, to act in a coasting school. But to add factors about a school’s context or judgements about a school’s arts and sports provision into the coasting definition itself would make the definition too complex, subjective and ineffective”.

That is the thrust of our argument.

At a recent meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Education, Dame Vicki Paterson, the executive head of Brindishe Schools, a federation of three maintained primary schools, also welcomed the notion of coasting. She said that it was positive that the coasting schools definition would take into account school performance over three years and, for primary, be based both on progress and attainment. At the same meeting, a representative from the Association of School and College Leaders reported that her organisation was pleased that the coasting definition would be a separate judgment from those made by Ofsted.

Critically, both Amendment 2 and Amendment 5 would move away from a concentrated focus on those schools where data show that they are failing to fulfil the potential of their pupils. We know that the outcomes reflected in performance data really matter. Our latest results show, as I said, that key stage 2 results are so important.

Of course, other aspects, such as those outlined in these amendments, are important. Ofsted already looks at a wide range of factors in forming its judgments, including how well prepared pupils are for training and employment; the use of the PE and sports premium; and the delivery of a broad and balanced curriculum. But intervention in coasting schools will not be automatic. The draft Schools Causing Concern guidance, which is currently out for consultation, is clear that while data will allow us to determine which schools fall within the coasting definition, RSCs will use Ofsted judgments, as well as a range of other factors, including those referred to in Amendment 2, to help inform their decisions about a school’s capacity to improve sufficiently. We have been clear that that list is not exhaustive, but the guidance already explicitly mentions factors such as the performance of disadvantaged pupils, the gender balance of the school, and pupils with special educational needs.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

The Minister has just outlined that the RSCs will take account of Ofsted judgments. Perhaps it would be helpful, rather than adding to the complexity of the definition of coasting, if the Minister was able to at least consider putting somewhere in the regulations that there will actually be a dialogue with Ofsted. One of the things that possibly is missing is that an Ofsted judgment might be quite old but because Ofsted has a regional structure, there may be some much more up-to-date information. People may have been in and out of schools without formally making judgments. That might be helpful in order to take account of the broader issues that have been raised.

[Lord Nash]

I assure the noble Baroness that dialogue with Ofsted does take place. I know that at least one regional schools commissioner shares an office with, or is in the same building as, the Ofsted regional schools team. I know that these dialogues take place regularly and I am sure no regional schools commissioner would intervene without talking to Ofsted, so that is something we can consider.

The noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a number of points about the information we have provided and when. We wrote to all Peers to inform them that the consultation on the coasting definition and the Schools Causing Concern guidance had been launched, as well as inviting noble Lords to the meeting on Monday that I have mentioned. I have also replied to the Constitution Committee, explaining my approach to coasting and why the Bill reflects maximum devolution. It is a pity that only one opposition Peer made it to the event on Monday.

The consultation that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to remains open, as he said, until 18 December. We first published illustrative regulations setting out the coasting definition in June, and the Minister for Schools made it clear that the model funding agreement had been amended in the other place; I referred to this at Second Reading. The model funding agreement that the noble Lord referred to has been in operation since September. The noble Lord is correct that this will apply only once this Bill receives Royal Assent but I am sure he will support the fact that we sought to amend the model funding agreement at the earliest possible opportunity and are now being clear with the regional schools commissioners that they will identify and challenge any academy whose performance falls within the coasting definition, whatever the terms of its funding agreement.

I greatly enjoyed listening to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and I am interested to hear that she is going to Lewes this evening. I remember there used to be a racecourse at Lewes which was rather oddly shaped. It was just a semicircle; it did not go all the way round. Sadly, I think it is now closed. In my younger days, I had a friend who was a stable lad and he was leading a horse round the ring. It was a National Hunt race and this horse had a hood on its head, which is most unusual in National Hunt, as I am sure the noble Baroness knows, so I asked him why. He said, “Well, it runs very well on the gallops but it does not seem to run very well in races so we concluded that maybe it does not like being around other horses, so we stuff its ears full of cotton wool and hope for the best”. We all got behind it and it won at 20-1 so I hope the noble Baroness has as happy a time this evening as I did then.