Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Baroness Walmsley

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I see that the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is exercised by his inability to define what a parent’s responsibilities are. Along the same lines, he is looking for us to define what “fair access” is tonight.

I would like to speak to my Amendment 70 in this group. It is identical, I think, to the one that I tabled in Grand Committee when I raised this issue. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, said, we are making some changes in this legislation to the powers of the adjudicator. I was concerned that, since the adjudicator cannot look at wider issues but only at the complaints put before him or her, there was nobody who could take a view across the piece and see whether injustices were arising in different places in the country. Indeed, if one could see a pattern emerging, somebody ought to do something about it.

I followed up our debates in Grand Committee by raising the issue with the Secretary of State. I pointed out that we on these Benches do not usually want to give additional powers to the Secretary of State, but in this case we thought that it was necessary, partly because, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, the schools landscape is becoming more and more complex and diverse and many schools are now their own admissions authorities. So I am pleased to say that, along with my noble friend the Minister, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is of the view, as I understand it, that he already has these powers and duties. The only reason I tabled my amendment again was to give my noble friend the opportunity to put it on the record under which statutes the Secretary of State already has these duties. If that is perfectly clear, I see no reason to press my amendment.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendments and I, too, look forward to the Minister’s reply. I learnt last week that I cannot speak after him, so I may as well speak now in anticipation of what he might say.

I think that this is a really tricky issue. My noble friend was right to say that if more schools are becoming their own admissions authorities, that is when the problem sets in. The system can just about cope with one or two schools being their own admissions authorities, but, to recall a bit of history, the reason why the legislation that is now being repealed and changed got on the statute book in the first place was that some London boroughs were already in a position, mainly through the predominance of church schools, to make their own admissions arrangements. The sort of situation that my noble friend described of some children always missing out on the oversubscription criteria, through no fault of their own, is not something that he imagined; it actually happened in some of the London boroughs. That is why what I can see might look like a fairly complicated system of controlling admissions came about. It could be even worse if we move to a situation where nearly every school is its own admissions authority.

I have two or three points on this. I do not speak for my party on this because I know that this is not my party’s position but, frankly, I have never seen why being your own admissions authority is a freedom that one should have. Heads need freedom to run their schools but not to select the students who should go through the gates and enrol on the register in the first place. That has always been my view, even when my party was in power. Maybe one could live with it then because there were not as many schools with their own admissions arrangements, but I really cannot see the point of it. I cannot see what advantage there is to a child or a child’s parent.

The reason why this is so important is that we all know the trauma that some parents and children go through when unable to secure an appropriate place at the age of 11. We have all seen children whose start at secondary school is blighted by the fact that they did not get the place that they wanted. We have to live with that; life is not fair and not everyone can have their first choice. Imagine this, though: we create a situation where some child gets to the age of 11 and cannot get a suitable place because they do not fit the rules. That is not the same thing as not getting your first choice. No one wants you, and you end up getting your fifth or sixth choice, all because of this contradictory oversubscription criterion.

I come to the same conclusion as others, despite my relatively strong views on this. I do not say that this is a freedom that schools ought to be granted but, if I accept for a moment that that is to happen, I honestly cannot see how the system will work unless there is a referee in the middle putting down some ground rules. The amendments, containing an overarching duty to ensure fair access, are right.

My last point is this. Let us be clear: schools will play these rules for all they are worth. All the history of schools being their own admissions authorities shows that some of them—not all, but a good number—will seek to admit the children who they want to admit, and they are not usually the poor, the dispossessed and those who do not like turning up to school. I am not just making this up. There is no greater advocate or defender of teachers than me in almost all ways but all the evidence shows that, when the admissions arrangements can be controlled, the schools tend to do so in the schools’ favour and not in the pupils’ favour. We are not on a level playing field here. Schools will not play fair without some overriding principle, and the one that is in the amendment would suit the purpose very well. I support it.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Baroness Walmsley

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister for her reply. We would all agree with some of her opening remarks that there is strong public support for good behaviour in schools. We all know that that helps children to learn. However, I do not accept there is strong public support for this particular measure and like the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I, too, did some research over the summer with some ordinary parents and I had exactly the same responses as the noble Baroness.

The Minister said that schools must do this in a way which is most appropriate for the pupils with whom they are dealing. Where does it say that? It certainly does not say it in the legislation. It must say it, or something like it, in the guidance. My noble friend carefully went through the other duties that schools have to safeguard children, which have been laid into other statutes. I accept all that. Punishments have to be proportionate and reasonable and travel arrangements have to be considered. They are already there, but the question for a teacher looking at the guidance is: where are they? The guidance needs to have these duties clearly spelt out on the same page where a teacher is being told what they can do under this new law. It needs to be very clear.

I often wonder where this idea came from. My noble friend the Minister has told us that it came from the ASCL. Why does the ASCL have such influence over this Government? The other head teachers’ union does not have the same influence and other ordinary teachers’ unions do not. I am afraid I have a nasty suspicion that this bit of the Bill seeks to enable legislation to catch up with practice, and that some schools are following this practice without giving 24 hours’ notice. I accept that notes in satchels do not always get to parents and that the current requirement for 24 hours’ written notice often does not reach the parent and the parent is not notified. We are asking for something better than that. We are suggesting a way of ensuring that the parent is informed to enable them to make other arrangements for the child to get home safely, if possible. If they are not able to do so, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, because they do not have a car and an alternative bus is not available, they can make the school aware that there could be a safeguarding problem if the child is kept in. It is then up to the school under the other duties that my noble friend has outlined to punish the child at a different time.

My noble friend suggested that some unco-operative parents may fail to answer the phone and let the message be recorded on the answerphone. I do not think that these parents have a crystal ball. When the phone rings, they cannot possibly know that it is the school ringing up to say that little Johnny will be kept in after school that day. That is stretching things beyond reality.

I am delighted that my noble friend has accepted that there is scope for strengthening the guidance. I was very pleased to hear that. She made it very clear on the record from the Dispatch Box that teachers should not do anything that compromises the safeguarding of the child. That gives me comfort. If we can work together to ensure that that is made crystal clear in the guidance, I will not feel that I need to return to this at a later stage. Can my noble friend nod and affirm that we can do that work and get the guidance to say something of that nature? It is vital that we help teachers to make good decisions about when to use this weapon in their armoury.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

Before the noble Baroness concludes, will she also reflect that essentially what we are setting in place is a two-tier style of punishment? If you think of it from the teacher’s point of view, what is underpinning this is that a detention on the same day as the crime that has been committed is more effective because it is closer in time to that crime. We will now have schools with two groups of pupils—those pupils who are eligible to receive that punishment and those who are not.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Baroness Walmsley

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I have a great deal of sympathy with the intention behind these amendments, but I have a few issues about the solution to the problem. I want to ask a particular question that the Minister might address in her response. In the past we assumed that very bright children will succeed despite school and that we should not put in a place a system where they could succeed because of their schooling. I am very much in favour of the proposal that all schools should try to meet the needs of all their students. I have often thought that the most able 2 per cent to 3 per cent of young people in this country have special educational needs in the broadest sense, and that they need to be supported. So I am entirely on board with the idea. I welcome the debate, and although I will have to look at the amendments more closely, raising the issue is a good thing and this should be a feature of our education system. We should ask schools to address the particular needs of this group of children just as we ask them to look after the less able.

I welcome what the mover of the amendment said in terms of not wanting to go back to selection, and I can see that the amendment is not about that. However, I think that there must be a more imaginative approach than creating what is essentially a high ability stream within a school. I am no great researcher, but I know that all the evidence shows that separating children in schools is not the best way of raising standards. With reference to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, work has been done about children working with those in the independent sector. I remember an innovative scheme that was set up under the Excellence in Cities programme in Manchester. Sixth-formers from state schools took an undergraduate module with students from Manchester University, or it could have been the Open University, I cannot quite recall. That was not an isolated scheme.

All I would encourage is more general thinking about how to provide for really able children who need to be pushed. What, in the first part of this century, can we do that has not been done before to raise standards? I would be much more interested in using new technology to set up master classes with the best in the world, even if they are located on the other side of the world. We should free this debate up in order to be more creative than we have been in the past, and therefore my question for the Minister is this: why did they abolish the Young, Gifted and Talented Programme? It was the one scheme that made every school in this country identify a number of students who were thought to be gifted and talented. It brought about cultural changes in schools; some schools had said, “We haven’t got any bright kids”, while others had said, “We’ve got too much on our plate with our struggling kids”, so there was a group of children whose needs were not being met. Over the years that the programme was in operation, we began to change the culture of every school in the country. It was not perfect, but it got on to the agenda in every school that the needs of the most able, by ability or aptitude, also have to be met. It was sad that the Government chose to abolish and destroy the programme, which would have been a good hook on which to continue the debate. I would not mind an explanation of why it was done and what will take its place.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, perhaps I can just warn against being too prescriptive. It is important that schools do this in a way that is most appropriate. I certainly join others in encouraging schools from different sectors to co-operate with each other, but I will give just one example of why I think this is so important. I have two grandsons, one of whom is brilliant in English and terrible at maths, while the other is terrible at English and brilliant in maths. They both came from the same gene pool. A child might be in a high-ability group for one subject but not for another, so we have to let schools take account of that.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Baroness Walmsley

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I support the amendment, although I did not get round to adding my name to it, for which I apologise to my noble friend. The amendment is one of the best that we see on Report because it evolved from an amendment—I think Amendment 4—that my noble friend tabled in Committee. The Minister pointed out that, if my noble friend’s initial amendment were carried, no academy could be formed if there was to be any effect on any school in the local area, whether good or bad. My noble friend’s amendment has evolved to enable the Secretary of State to take into account whether any good local schools will be adversely affected by the creation of a new academy.

My noble friend’s amendment is particularly important given that government Amendment 30, which is about consultation, refers only to existing schools converting into academies and not to brand-new schools. When a brand-new school is introduced, the local community will have to rely on the common sense of the Secretary of State to make sure that that school does not take all the pupils from other perfectly good schools in the locality.

My noble friend’s amendment comes out of his experience in Suffolk, which I think he mentioned in Committee. I, too, have been approached by one of my honourable friends in another place, Mr Don Foster, the Member of Parliament for Bath. He has had similar problems with an academy that was created under the Labour Government and is having an effect on very good schools locally. Of course, we must not underestimate the effect of the view that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. A new school, which seems to offer something novel, especially if it has a shiny new building, could well take pupils from other schools that really do not deserve to lose them. The amendment would give the Secretary of State the discretion that he requires, in the Bill, so that we can all be reassured that he will take these matters into consideration when looking at an application.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I support the amendment. The point has been well made by noble Lords on both sides of the House that there needs to be an element of planning. I suppose that it is for the Minister to make a decision about whether his Government spend money on surplus places or on building schools for the future. It is interesting that one day there is no money for the Building Schools for the Future programme and the very next day, from the same department, there is money to fund surplus places. Surplus places cost money and do not contribute to standards.

I want to raise a slightly different point, which I do not think has been mentioned so far. I should like an assurance that the Minister understands the impact of a new school on another school that might already be doing a good job of raising standards. I start from the premise that it is not only academies that will raise standards; many good schools that do not have academy status are already on the journey of turning round underperformance. They are in a fragile state but are improving—going from failing and underperforming to being successful does not happen overnight. During that important period, when they have good leadership and are changing their reputation within the community, and when parents are understandably nervous but are restoring their confidence in those improving schools, they need a bit of protection. I worry that if an academy opens with a blaze of glory, with new money from the Building Schools for the Future programme, as was indicated yesterday, that will undermine the progress that the school makes.

I am not in the business of defending failing schools—I have done my share of closing failing schools and replacing them with either maintained community schools or, indeed, academies. However, I am in the business of trying to support and nurture schools that have put in a lot of effort and are now improving. Quite honestly, if surplus places are built into a local system, it will not be the schools that are already strong and successful that are damaged but those that have already had a lot of state intervention and support and are on the journey to becoming good schools. I should like to hear the Minister’s comments on that aspect of the amendment. It is an excellent amendment and I look forward to supporting it.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Baroness Walmsley

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my Amendment 104 is in this group. I am not quite sure why Amendment 3A is in the group—I think that it should have been in a previous one—but the rest of the amendments are all about consultation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, that appropriate consultation, over a sufficient time, leads to good decision-making. The decision that schools have to make about conversion to academy status is terribly important, so I think that they should consult.

I have a few words to say about the amendments tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Royall and Lady Morgan. I am not sure why they felt the need to include CRB checks in Amendment 4A. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I thought that all those who had dealings with schools had to have CRB checks anyway. Indeed, I know a young teacher who does both paid and voluntary work in a number of schools and has had four CRB checks. I hope that the coalition Government will smooth out that totally unnecessary duplication. Also, surely the Government normally do due diligence on anyone with whom they intend to sign a contract, so I think that the second subsection in the amendment may be superfluous, too.

The main point of this debate is consultation. Of course schools should consult all the relevant people and provide them with the information that they need to be able to respond appropriately. To become an academy is an enormous change in the governance and funding of a school. Indeed, I think that it is very risky, as Clause 1(2)(b) and Clause 1(3)(b) give enormous power to the Secretary of State without any scrutiny by Parliament. Perhaps we will get that changed during the Bill’s passage through your Lordships’ House. We will discuss the merits of these arrangements later, but the fact remains that a school that becomes an academy under the Bill does so entirely at the whim of the Secretary of State, so it needs to be sure about the potential benefits of the change to the education that it provides to all the children in its locality.

Incidentally, I do not believe that these schools should be called “independent”, as they have been described. They will be totally dependent on the Secretary of State for their funding and the terms of their operation. My noble friend Lord Greaves referred to them as “autonomous”, which I believe is a better expression.

The difference between our amendment on consultation and those tabled by the Opposition is that we do not include the trade unions. I thought that I should explain why that is. Unions are national organisations, whereas we have proposed consulting local people or organisations that have a keen interest in the school. No national organisation can have a relevant view of the merits of the application of every individual school. The local people matter here and it is they who should be consulted.

That is especially true of the children. I have been in your Lordships’ House for 10 years. At the start, when the Labour Government brought legislation before us, we had to put down a lot of amendments about what I call the voice of the child. Gradually, the Government got the message and, I am glad to say, such provisions started to appear in Bills, so we did not need to put down those amendments. I hope that the Minister will take into account the fact that, when you consult children about things that affect them, you get better decision-making. I also hope that, if he cannot accept these amendments, he will at least put this in guidance, so that schools have to consult the appropriate people.

On the matter of the documents that should be sent out to the people who are being consulted, Amendments 101 and 102 are far too prescriptive. We would leave it to the schools to judge what material it is appropriate to send out. On these Benches we intended to add something much briefer and less prescriptive but it got lost and did not go down in the end. The period suggested for the consultation is six weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and four weeks by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. However, the school will have to make the TUPE arrangements with staff, which requires 10 weeks and should not be during the school holidays. Schools will have to take a lot longer than four weeks, and so they should. I have already urged my right honourable friend Michael Gove to hasten slowly, and I shall do the same to my noble friend Lord Hill. That should be the watchword. The decision does not need to be fast but it needs to be right.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

I support the amendment proposed by my noble friend Lady Royall. This is a very strange part of the Bill, and I am not sure what the rationale behind it is. The Bill purports to want to know the views of people in communities or schools where children’s lives are affected by what legislation says. However, it excludes from consultation at key points anybody outside the school. I wonder if this comes from the Government’s fears over what happened when they had ballots over grant-maintained schools. If so, I well understand that. That was a procedure that ended up causing terrible arguments and distrust between groups of people and communities who should have been working together. There is absolutely no way that I would want to return to that. Indeed, in my time at the department, we did not have ballots in that manner. I am sympathetic, but the Minister mentioned in the last debate that people are somehow suspicious of academies and free schools. There is no better way of making them more suspicious than to exclude them from being consulted. If the Minister accepts that that suspicion is already there, I am not sure why he wants to risk building it up by, as I say, excluding people from consultation.

I have two more points. When this issue was previously been raised in the course of the Bill, the Minister said that the previous Government did not have means of consulting anyway. Correct me if I am wrong, but the essential difference was that, under the legislation used by the previous Government, one school was closed and a new one was opened. The consultation took place as part of the school closure and opening. In the Bill, the conversion of a school—as far as I can see, there is no official closure and opening—excludes any consultation at all.

Finally, the amendments do not seek to take away from the Secretary of State the right to decide whether or not a school should be granted academy status. You might argue that they ought to, but they do not. I cannot see that they would delay any consideration. If I was the Secretary of State in this situation, I would want to put myself in a position where I took the community with me, just to give any new school the best possible start to its life. To load a school with potential suspicion when that need not be the case is really not acceptable. To accept amendments along these lines, if not in such detail, would be very good for any schools that become academies under this legislation.