Water Safety (Curriculum) Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Storey

2nd reading
Friday 19th May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for your Lordships’ hugely important contributions. I thank the Minister for her, as usual, very detailed reply. It was very strong on swimming but less strong on water safety itself. She said that schools “can” use PSHE, but it is a “can” and it is not happening. The Bill tries to say that every child, irrespective of the school they go to, should have lessons on water safety.

The noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, rightly pointed to the issues facing black and Asian swimmers—the poor levels of the ability to swim. I remember the pyjamas and paddling in the water, but I also remember the hot mug of Bovril after taking part.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, raised two important issues. The first was the low figures on ethnicity. She suspected, as do I, that it will be an even lower number for women; I think she is going to look to see whether that is the case. Secondly, it had never occurred to me that we should bring the issue of safeguarding, which is so important to all of us, to swimming and water safety as well.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

May I intrude for 20 seconds to clarify the record? I thank the noble Lord very much and it is good that he is looking at that. I was clumsy in implying that I would want schools to fail their Ofsted inspection if a child could not swim. I would not want anyone to read that and think that that is what I said. I apologise if that was the impression I gave.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

I do not think that we thought that even for one moment.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sater, rightly raised the issue of costs, which have soared and made it difficult for schools to find suitable swimming venues.

As usual, my noble friend Lord Addington brought a new dimension. I had not thought about hypothermia, but of course if you teach water safety, hypothermia and cold water shock, which the noble Baroness, Lady Twycross, raised, are hugely important. Again, we should consider local awareness.

One of the things that stands out from the figures is university students, who are away from home and excited, particularly in the summer. The number of young men in particular at university who get into difficulty in water is quite alarming. Sadly, some of them drown. So maybe universities need to give some advice.

The Minister mentioned that the all-party parliamentary group is meeting the Minister next week. That will be an opportunity to understand some of the issues.

I perhaps need to say that the Bill will run out of time; it will not go through the process, sadly. However, to reflect on the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and my noble friend Lord Addington made, we are all agreed on this, so why can we not just make it happen, for all the reasons we have said? All right, there might be some little differences between us, but this is hugely important. It is not my Bill in that sense; it is our Bill. We should do everything we can to achieve this. I beg to move.

Schools that Work for Everyone Consultation

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Storey

Monday 14th May 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

And if that does not happen?

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords—

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Storey

Wednesday 16th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 15C and 16A. I guess that every Member of the House who has children thought long and hard about the school they wanted to send their children to. Finding the right school to meet the needs of a child at both primary and secondary level is crucial. In some cases where there is no suitable school, or which they think is not suitable, parents have gone to the free school movement and established their own schools. In other cases parents with the resources to do so choose to buy a school place in the independent sector. The choice of a school has been a hugely important part of our education system.

As I said in Committee, when a school closes or changes in nature, it is traumatic for the children, traumatic for the parents, and certainly traumatic for the staff. So what are we going to do? Going back to the previous debate, let us consider a school that is failing. The regional schools commissioner, who by the way is not regional and certainly not local, can decide that the school will close and that a sponsor for a new school will be found. There will be no discussion or consultation with parents. It might well be that the school that the regional schools commissioner puts forward is not the school the parent wants—but tough. For a long time, parental choice has been ingrained in, and has been an important part of, our education system. Various Secretaries of State, both Labour and Conservative, have enshrined the idea of parental choice and parental involvement. Surely, it is right that a parent has the opportunity to express their views.

Following Committee stage, I am pleased that the Minister has made some progress in this regard. He chooses to use the word “communication” and not consultation. When the regional schools commissioner has identified an academy sponsor to take over a school eligible for intervention, the sponsor must communicate to parents information about plans to improve the school. When the regional commissioner decides that a school is failing, will they write to every parent telling them what is happening and what will happen so that they have an understanding of why and when? The letter says that there will be guidance as regards schools causing concern and that they may, if they wish to, have a meeting or they may choose just to write to parents. Would it not be a good idea to specify clearly what should be expected of sponsors when taking over a school so that parents have that information?

Crucially, parents want more involvement in education. They want a say in their child’s schooling—everyone here has wanted a say in our child’s schooling. The selection of the sponsor is critical to the child’s future. Not all sponsors, as the Sutton Trust shows, are as effective as others, particularly, for example, in supporting disadvantaged pupils. I shall give an example of where consultation works. The line we have constantly heard—I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, repeated it—is that a single day in a failing school is a day too long for that child. A single day in the wrong school is too much for that child. A single day in a school which the parents are unhappy with, or has had foisted on them, is too long. Let me give an example of parents who were consulted and made a change. It happened at a primary school in Medway with a large number of pupils who had special needs. They were not opposed to academisation but they were opposed to the sponsor proposed by the DfE. After consultation, and no doubt a short campaign, the academy withdrew. Presumably, it realised that it had not got the wherewithal to deal with that situation.

The other argument against consultation has been the line that it can drag on for months and years, et cetera, which of course is wrong. But it does not mean that there cannot be a very quick consultation over a few months so that the parents are involved. I hope that even at this late stage the Minister might consider how important consultation is to parents and their children.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak only briefly on the amendment because the issue of consultation has been covered in an earlier group. I will make two or three points. For me, consultation is not the most important part of the Bill, but it is an important point of principle. Once we decide something today, it will probably set the pattern for future ways we deal with schools, so it is worth spending some time on.

My first point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, about the now famous phrase that noble Lords have used during the passage of the Bill: “A day in a school that is failing is a day too long”. I am not sure why the consequence of that is that parents should be denied consultation; it should be that the education system gets its act together. Let us say that three years go by in a coasting school—a school is inadequate. It is not a case of who is to blame, but if you ask what went wrong—it could have been poor leadership; something that Ofsted missed; we could have missed the data; we may not have acted quickly enough; support put in might have been at the wrong point at the wrong time—of all the people who could have got it wrong, it probably was not parents. Yet the bit of the system that we change at this point is, “Well, we won’t consult parents”—almost as though they will be the problem, rather than the potential solution. This is not a huge point, but we have to ask why, if a child should not be in a failing school for a day longer, the education system responsible for that should just carry on working and why parents should be squeezed out.

The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, made another point about this terrible phrase, “We are where we are”. It is one of my least favourite phrases, but we are where we are. Over the last 20 years, one of the features that we have put in our education system, which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, just mentioned, is the increasing involvement of parents. I think the noble Lord, Lord True, mentioned what happened in consultation in the grant-maintained days. It is true that it was not a pretty sight, but, believe it or not, that was nearly 30 years ago. Lots of things have happened since then. Whether it is setting up free schools, parents’ right to call in Ofsted inspectors, or the mooted idea that parents should have the right to demand the curriculum, to sack the head or whatever, there has been a trend over the last 20 years of giving parents a louder voice, not only in the education of their own child, which is paramount, but in the education structure their child is in. Whether we like it or not, we are where we are with parental consultation. We have to make a really strong case, given the climate in which we are working, that parents should be excluded on this.

Under new Section 2A(2), introduced by the Minister’s Amendment 24, in a case of a failing school where the academy sponsor has not delivered the goods and must hold some responsibility, and where the department is taking action, the proprietor must be given an opportunity to make representations before the academy sponsor is changed. That is a big issue. If we write into primary legislation that an academy proprietor that has not done a good job—that is why the organisation has been moved out—must have an opportunity to make representations, I am not sure why would want to strike out of legislation the opportunity for parents to make representations as well.

Consulting parents is rarely a bad thing, but it calls for sensitivity and determination, because I do not believe that parents always get it right. I do not agree with the amendment that there should be a plebiscite in all cases and that we should take the action that parents vote for. However, it should be part of this important process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey]

I will speak also to Amendment 25. I am concerned that the whole tenor of this discussion has almost been, if I may characterise it in this way, along the lines of maintained schools against academies. As we know, there are some fantastic academies; we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, about his schools, which I know to be highly successful. However, I am sure that he will agree with me that just as there are successful academies, there are also some failing academies, which over the years have caused a number of raised eyebrows and concerns. Equally, there are some very good maintained schools and some maintained schools which need sorting out. Whether that is done through an academy route or other means, it needs to happen.

I will first deal briefly with Amendment 25, which is about the inspection of academy chains. We know from media that Michael Wilshaw, our Chief Inspector of Schools, was very keen that the head offices of academy chains were inspected. Why? It is because academy chains deal not just with individual schools but with finance and governance, and all those important issues. Just as we would inspect local authorities that provide services and finance for schools, the same should surely be true of academy chains.

We have seen examples of academy chains where, perhaps because we have not had our finger on the pulse of the financial situation and the governance of those academy chains, we have seen all sorts of concerns. I was going to go through them all, but I have decided to cut short what I am saying. I understand that we can inspect individual schools in batches in academy chains but I will be interested to hear from the Minister in his reply how we can be assured that the issues of finance and other governance matters are dealt with correctly.

Amendment 15D, again, follows the discussion on the previous amendments. Over the next 12 months or two years, thousands of schools will potentially need to find academy sponsors because they are failing, or are coasting and becoming failing, or because academies themselves fail and have to find other new academy sponsors. That will put a tremendous pressure on the system. In this amendment we are saying that if there is a suitable maintained school which has value added above the national average, why not use that school and provide its expertise? It is clear and simple. If we are about ensuring, as we heard in the previous debates, that the pupil gets the best possible schooling and teaching, and if an academy sponsor is not available, why not use a council-maintained school?

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I will speak on a specific issue to follow up something I raised in Committee and to make reference to a note I received from the Minister’s office this afternoon, which I wanted to put on the record.

On this amendment, considering the difficulty there sometimes is in finding sponsors, we raised in Committee that this is a problem with a number of sponsors and the length of time it has taken in some instances to match a school to a sponsor. The Minister kindly responded to my point in Committee when I asked what the target was for doing the match. He said that there was a 12-week turnover and that 48 schools had not met that 12-week target. That is very reasonable. To get a sponsor matched with a school within 12 weeks is not unreasonable, and I would not complain.

I wrote to the Minister’s office about a month ago asking for a breakdown of how long the schools had been waiting that were in the 48 that had exceeded the time limit. I got a message by email only at the start of this debate. To tell noble Lords the truth, I am quite prepared to sit down and be told that I have read it wrongly, because I find the statistics rather worrying. If that is the case, I apologise in advance and will make sure that the correction is on the record. Of the 48 schools that were just inadequate, which exceeded the 12-week brokerage time, 16 took six to 12 months, 19 took 12 to 18 months, 12 took 18 to 24 months, and one took over 24 months. Therefore the department took over two years to find a suitable sponsor for one school which had been judged inadequate. A quick add-up shows that 32 took over one year. We have heard all about “A child shall not stay in a school that’s failing them for one day longer than necessary”, but who is responsible for that? Who is responsible for those children in that one school where it took the department over two years to find a sponsor? Who is responsible for the 32 that took over 12 months to find a sponsor? I am making a political point, but I am worried about the path we are going along, which has this as the only route and only solution for inadequate schools. Now we will add to it a whole lot more coasting schools and thereby increase the demand for sponsors, and the department seems to be failing miserably in delivering the sponsors in sufficient time. That leads me to conclude as regards this amendment that perhaps we need to look at alternative ways of finding sponsors and support if we go ahead.

Can the Minister ask his officials to convert the email to me into a letter to all Members of the Committee and place a copy in the House so that it can be seen alongside other correspondence which has been part of the consideration of the Bill?

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Storey

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, that parents have fought for years to get resources and what some might call justice for children with special educational needs. That is why the Bill is so important: it is a progressive piece of legislation that we can all be proud of. It will mean that, for the first time, local authorities have to spell out clearly and precisely what is available in their area and how that can be accessed. As we know, people with special educational needs will, for the first time, have a plan that joins up health, education and social care.

The giveaway is in the title: “local offer”. It is not a national offer but a local one. I suppose the Government could have said, “Nationally, we have decided that this is what you will do”, but I am quite sure that there would have been screams from local authorities that this was national government again dictating exactly what should happen. The local offer is important.

I was grateful for the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Low, in Committee but I still have grave concerns about creating a minimum requirement. We have seen what happened in care for the elderly: if you have a minimum requirement, councils under financial pressures jettison what they do not need to provide. If you have a minimum offer in terms of special educational needs, you will find that those authorities that my noble friend Lady Eaton so eloquently described, the ones that are progressive and look at new ideas, will say, “Well, if there are some savings to be made, we do not need to do that”. So I am not in favour of a minimum offer.

I am in favour of what the Government have reflected on and come back to at Report with Amendment 33C. Let us never underestimate the power of local people. If the local offer is not meeting the local requirement, you can bet that local people will say that they want something extra. Cases will make that happen. That is why the government amendment is so important. Let us celebrate where we are at so far, because it is important for children with special educational needs.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley (Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and, in particular, will comment on Amendments 30, 31, and 33D.

The amendments tabled by my noble friend Lady Jones, which deal with the “expects to be” versus “which is” dilemma, just make sense, as I do not think that anyone here would not want parents to know what is being offered rather than what might be offered. The Government’s concern appears to be that something innovative might happen during the year that could be added to the offer, but the Minister might reflect that, if the offer was a living document so that it could be updated as an innovation came through, was proven to work, accepted as best practice and added to the local provision, in a digital age it would not be difficult to update the offer. The notion of “which is” gives far more certainty to users of the service than the words “expect to be”. In that respect, I very much support those amendments.

I just want to comment on the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low. I see both sides of this argument. We want local authorities to be free to innovate, to reach for the stars and to be the best they can, and we do not want the local offer in every local authority area to look exactly the same regardless of where you are in the country. Neither do we want to give permission to local authorities to go for a basic minimum standard. I accept the concerns laid out by the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, but we are still left with a problem.

The code of practice talks a lot about the quantity that should be in the local offer. There is a whole list of things that the code of practice guarantees will be there. What is missing from the whole debate is something that guarantees quality. Amendment 33D attempts to do that, and I want the Minister to respond to it. None of us wants poor quality, and I do not think that we would be in politics and would certainly not be legislators if we did not know that we have to ensure quality. It does not happen by itself or through a free-for-all, and it will not happen if we just leave it to local authorities to do their best. We want more than that. Minimum standards are not in the amendment. I do not want to fetter those local authorities who will provide very well; I want to protect those people who live in areas where the local authority does not do very well. I am concerned about how we protect people against poor provision falling below those minimum standards.

Normally, government takes one of three actions. It leaves it to the market—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, mentioned just now that if people do not like it, they will complain and changes will be made. I do not think that that will happen with the local offer. The only way that the market usually works is if people are free to go elsewhere. Then the poor provision that they did not want withers on the vine, vanishes, closes down and gets off the playing field. That is not what we want here. We do not want a local offer to be squeezed out of the market so that people have to go over the local authority borders. I cannot see how the market works as a regulator of standards for the local offer.

Secondly, we inspect. That is another way to guarantee quality. I would be grateful if the Minister would give us an update on where the department is with Ofsted inspecting the local offer. In Committee, he undertook to write to me, and I must admit that I am not sure whether that letter has been sent; I have not seen it. I would accept it if the Government have decided to inspect the local offer to make sure that people are protected against poor provision.

If they do not want to do that, the next action is regulation. Amendment 33D, as tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, would put in regulation to protect people against poor standards. It really does not matter whether it is inspection or regulation—but I do not want it to be the market, which I think is where the Government are headed with this, because that will not work. We have to get the balance right between protecting people in areas where a local authority does not deliver the goods and leaving local authorities that are good, free to excel.

This is not just about safeguarding against low-quality provision: the Government should, equally, be incentivising innovation and high standards. If you only dampen down by inspecting, you will not get the high standards and innovation to which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, referred. We have had so many decades of experience in the delivery of public services, and there are good ways of incentivising innovation, rewarding high standards and making sure that those high standards are spread to include everyone else. That is my ideal— to do both. I think that we will see the good quality provision in the local offer to which the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, referred, and that we will find ways of making sure that other local authorities know about it. Equally, for balance, we need something to set a basic standard below which local authorities’ local offer should not fall so that as regulators and legislators we can say that everybody, no matter where they live, is protected from a poor standard of provision. In that respect, I very much support the amendments that we are considering in this group.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Morris of Yardley and Lord Storey

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I have said before in this House that the most important thing for a student is the quality of the teacher—not the qualifications, necessarily, but the quality. There can be the best buildings, the best resources, but unless there is quality teaching, then that child will not be able to make the progress that they deserve. If you have poor teaching and a poor teacher, that child loses the year, and the year can never be repeated. It is lost for good.

Since I have come to this House, the one thing that has struck me in education debates is that in every speech and contribution I have heard, the child is at the centre. I have felt quite emotional, to be honest, about the care that has come to me from the comments that people have made. We had a debate on special educational needs, and I was absolutely stunned by the remarkable contributions from everybody in this House.

However, one thing said constantly in that debate was that it needs to be about training, and about understanding the child. You cannot just put anybody in and expect them to be able to teach, understand, and relate to the child. It has to be a whole package. That is not to say that everybody must be a qualified teacher. There are examples of people who have a natural gift for teaching but are not qualified. How do we make that system work? Well, we have a system presently that allows that to happen.

I speak from practical experience. At the tail end of the summer term, I had a situation in my school where a teacher left. Working in that classroom was a teaching assistant; an advanced, higher-level teaching assistant, who was—to use an expression—“stunning”. The pupils thought the world of him. Being a conscientious, thoughtful person, I checked with my local authority, which said, “Yes, as long as he has a higher-level qualification and you’re happy with him, he can take the class”, which he did for three weeks. He was fantastic. The children progressed. I have to say, I would rather have had him than—no, perhaps I should not say that. He progressed and did incredibly well. He was also supported by the school and other teachers, who were able to compensate for any areas in which he needed to develop. As a result of that, he has decided that he will not just be a higher-level teaching assistant; he will go on to be a teacher.

There are occasions when you can put people who do not have the formal qualifications in the classroom, and they can do a remarkable job. My noble friend Lady Benjamin constantly reminds me that pupils from the Caribbean often need a very different type of teacher, and that maybe the qualities that we currently have in our teaching profession are not always able to deal with those situations. That is dealt with, again, by encouraging teaching assistants who are working with teachers in the school environment.

When the Minister replies I hope he will deal with the questions that have been asked by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I also hope he will reflect on how we might combine both desires.

I do not have a problem with free schools. I remember the first free school, which was Scotland Road Free School in Liverpool in the 1960s. What I have a problem with is saying that you can have non-qualified teachers in an educational establishment. If free schools are to be successful, they cannot be seen to be on the margins. Parents will soon think, “Oh, these are inferior places. They haven’t got any qualified support in those schools”. They will not send their children to them once the initial idea has started.

I will make one further point. There are whole areas of teaching that, in a complex society and a modern world, people who work with children need to know about—safeguarding, for example. Are we saying that these adults who will teach in free schools will not have any training in safeguarding, or in the problems of special educational needs? The list goes on. We need to be absolutely sure that we get this right.

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I also support this amendment, on which there is a fair degree of unanimity across the Chamber. My position is approximately the same as that of the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. We do not want schools where everybody has the same qualification. Over the past 10 to 15 years, we have very much moved to having different qualifications in schools. Clearly, what we want is for someone to be qualified to do the job that we are asking them to do, and for people to know what they are qualified to do and what their training is. We have never had that in the past. We have been a one-qualification profession. We ought to be more like medicine and move away from that, to having a number of different qualifications.

We have a record of getting this right. The movement of bursars into the maintained sector has been hugely successful, as have the teaching assistants and higher-level teaching assistants to which the noble Lord, Lord Storey, just referred. Therefore, we are on a journey of trying to get this right. The issue that faces us now is: where do we go next? I should have thought that where we go next is to look at the evidence of what has worked so far, the skills that are needed in the school and what training is needed. I absolutely accept that there will be some individuals who have experiences and a skill set that teachers and head teachers will want to use in schools. Some of them, as the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, will be absolutely excellent in their field. They may have a skill set that teaching would go alongside.

There is a fair degree of unanimity across the Chamber over our vision of what we want schools to be like. Therefore, the question is whether the legislation that the Government are putting forward will arrive at that end. I do not think that it will. I cannot see why this big debate about how we get a qualified workforce—whatever the qualification may be—is being squashed into free schools. I would have thought the debate was bigger than yet another freedom that we can give to free schools. The debate is about the qualifications we need for all our schools, whether they be maintained schools, community academies or free schools. The Minister must address in his reply what this has to do with free schools. It has to do with all schools. I am not sure why he has cornered and corralled this debate into free schools. It is bigger than that.