Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

The Government say in other places that they are committed to localism. This amendment would go some way towards a localised element in the system where parents, pupils and communities play an influential role, and it would ensure a local system—not atomised schools—that can work for pupils. When the Minister replies, and in conclusion, I would be grateful if he could address three specific issues. First, as the Government move towards thousands or tens of thousands of academies, are they clear about what legislation—in this and previous Bills—actually applies to academies? We asked him for such a list some time ago. It is not yet forthcoming and yet we are being asked to comment on legislation and schools are being asked to consider becoming academies without any clarity—including within his department, apparently—as to what laws will apply to academies and what will not. Secondly, can the Minister explain exactly how a system of thousands of in effect independent schools will deliver the aspiration of giving every child access to the best possible teaching, as stated in the White Paper? Finally, if the Government are not minded to accept the proposal for something such as a local schools commissioner, which person or body will undertake the responsibilities listed in this amendment for missing children, for finding places for children excluded and so on? I beg to move.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I have two problems with this amendment, although I recognise the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. When I read through the amendment, I asked myself how I would feel if I were the director of children’s services in a local authority. The director of children’s services in many authorities was the former director of education—the person responsible for all schools that were not academies or free schools. The director of children’s services still has the same responsibilities for all community schools and all schools that remain in the local authority’s purview.

If I were the director of children’s services, I would find it difficult to have someone coming in as a schools commissioner and suddenly having a role with the schools that I would regard as my responsibility. The noble Baroness is concerned about the academies and free schools that are not within the local authority’s purview, but she has overlooked the fact that schools can do intelligent and sensible things about collaboration and co-operation without someone from outside telling them what to do.

I recently visited the London Borough of Hackney, which now has more academies than community schools. The principals of the academies have come together informally to deal with special educational needs and with admissions. People who run schools are intelligent and powerful people. They do not need someone from outside coming and telling them to do these clever things. Most arrangements for collaborations between schools that we have applauded and encouraged in our discussions in Committee are not necessarily confined to one authority. Many schools have developed collaborations with schools that are independent and with schools outside their own authority, particularly in the big cities where boundaries are permeable and children go to school across them.

For all these reasons, I would find this very difficult. Once again, we are assuming that we have to be cleverer than the senior people who run our schools and who are making intelligent decisions.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, on a point of order I wonder whether we could have the timing clocks switched on. I am tempted to add wickedly that I am constructing a league table of length of contributions and I have yet to decide whether it will be published anonymously or not.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I shall not trouble the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, with having to time me because I shall be very brief. I always listen to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, with great respect, but my noble friend Lady Hughes has a point in talking about the “gaping void” and in going back to the Every Child Matters agenda.

I am interested in the later amendment, Amendment 114, in the names of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the noble Lords, Lord Lucas and Lord Lexden. This amendment talks about what she calls a “visitor”. I do not want to go into that right now, but this has echoes of what used to be called “school improvement partners”, who were in schools when I was a governor. The school improvement partners were incredibly useful people to have around because they helped with the business plan, the school ethos and the curriculum. I think that if I were a director of children’s services—and I am glad that I am not—I would welcome a local commissioner who would have a responsibility for schools, because a director of children’s services has enough to be getting on with anyway, with the safeguarding role in particular. How would the “visitor” envisaged by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, have some kind of influence on what is going on at that local level without some co-ordination? Perhaps visitors are not like the school improvement partners, but I suspect they might be. As I understand it, they would have responsibility over a number of schools. I think she is saying that they would then report to Ofsted or the skills and children’s services board. Is that right? They have to report to someone.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

To Ofsted.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

That seems to be rather a large jump. Would it not be better to have someone at a local level—a local commissioner, or whatever they might be called—to try to co-ordinate the concerns of visitors and do something about them?

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, Amendment 113D would make sure that, where schools are not regularly inspected by Ofsted, regulations would provide for inspection of their safeguarding policies at prescribed intervals by some means or other. Due to the central importance of child protection in schools, somebody should be inspecting all schools to make sure they are fulfilling their legal duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children under the Education Act 2002.

The NSPCC has had some conversations with Ofsted about those schools which are going to continue to be inspected. It has agreed that the right place for the inspection of safeguarding should be within the leadership and management strand of the new inspection framework. It also recommends in the statutory guidance, Safeguarding Children and Safer Recruitment in Education, that the Ofsted report should state whether the school has an effective policy on child protection which is consistently applied; whether the school has a designated lead member of staff for child protection; whether the designated person takes part in local, multi-agency arrangements such as case conferences; and whether school staff attend child protection training which is refreshed at intervals set out in the statutory guidance. All these things would apply to schools that are not exempt from inspection. The question that I am raising in this amendment is what happens to safeguarding when schools are not regularly inspected?

If academic standards slip over a period of time—the head teacher might move to another school and a new one comes in who is not perhaps as able—someone is likely to notice and trigger an inspection, which legislation allows. However, safeguarding can go pear-shaped very quickly and this is often very well hidden. Can the Minister say how the Government intend to ensure that schools are carrying out their safeguarding role diligently, especially in the light of the intention to repeal the duty to co-operate with local authorities? Will excellent safeguarding policy and practice be a limiting factor in whether a school can achieve an outstanding Ofsted report? Guarding the safety of children in school is one of the most vital roles of every school, whether the academic achievement is good or poor. We are proposing not to inspect those that have high academic achievement. It does not necessarily go hand in hand with very high standards in safeguarding policy. What do the Government intend to do to ensure that this matter is addressed? I beg to move.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I speak to Amendment 114. I entirely support Clause 39. It is absolutely right that academies and other schools that are exempt should be given freedom from full Ofsted inspection. I have severe reservations about whether Ofsted’s regime in the past has been proven to do anything to improve standards in schools. In fact, the contrary appears to have been the case. We have to hope, of course, that Ofsted in its revised form will be a more positive experience. Nevertheless, it is right that these schools should be exempt from routine Ofsted inspection. However, as my noble friend has already said, academic standards can slip, but long before academic standards begin to show a decline in a way that can be identified, it is possible for a school to begin—usually because there is a change of head—to decline in terms of standards of discipline and staff morale. Therefore, the overall ethos of the school begins to change and, within two or three years, that will certainly begin to be reflected in the academic results and standards.

The proposal in Amendment 114 may be a little leftfield. It proposes that, instead of having a full inspection regularly, a school should have somebody assigned to it who just keeps an eye on it. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, suggested that this amendment brought about something like a school improvement partner, but that is not what is envisaged at all. This person would not have a role in helping the school to improve or develop; they would simply be a friendly eye, popping in two or three times over the year—at least once a term—just to ensure that the high standards that had been present before were maintained. If there is any question or doubt, this would be the early warning system; if the “visitor”, as the amendment calls this person, had reason to believe that things were beginning to go wrong, he or she would be able to trigger a full inspection by Ofsted.

I am sure that all of us in this Room with our tremendous experience of schools have seen schools change very quickly when there is a change of head. I have certainly seen schools that were very good begin to deteriorate in a couple of terms, when a weak head moved in—and, vice versa, a school that has been weak in the past can suddenly begin to pick up very fast when a good head moves in. Assuming that it is the case in some schools that they go down in standards, I believe that it would be very important to have someone keep an eye on that, rather than wait the two or three years before it begins to appear in the standards of achievement. I do not need to remind the Committee that these are children’s lives; they do not have a second chance. If the school’s standards begin to decline, down the line their success and achievements will also go down. So I very much hope that my noble friend will at least look sympathetically on this idea.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I take a more radical view than my noble friend, although if her amendment was accepted a lot of my worries would be dealt with. The Government are making a great mistake in going down this route. It is not that I like Ofsted—I do not like the old-style Ofsted; a lot needs to be improved about it. But going in this direction is going to cause considerable problems down the road.

Schools that are rated outstanding often do not stay outstanding. Quite a high proportion of them drift downwards. This is entirely natural, with changes in the staff and in tempo and other changes that mean that a school loses its grip on the excellence that it once had. Perhaps it was lucky to get a grade 1 in the first place and has just slipped back to its natural place in grade 2. Unless you have some contact with the school, you absolutely do not know that that is happening.

One of the main grouses that I have with Ofsted at the moment is that it is very late to pick up changes. Ofsted will pile into a school and put it in special measures when, if it had caught it a couple of years earlier, it would have meant a minor change of course. I can think of an excellent secondary school in Manchester that was dumped into special measures when it got a head who was being experimental and trying all sorts of things and forgetting to look after the basic management of the school. It was a very easy thing for an experienced head to pick up; if someone had just come in, as my noble friend Lady Perry suggests, and had a look at the school, they would have sensed that immediately.

I do not share the confidence of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches that these things get picked up by parents, since parents are by and large terribly loyal to their schools. They do not talk to outside people or to Ofsted. There may be a flow of information round the local circuit, but it does not get out of that; no one complains. Often, there will be a flow of propaganda from the school that what it is doing is right and that the course it is taking is the best one. Even if it is experimental and there are some worries about it at the moment, it will all work out. Parents are inclined to accept that and an outside expert eye can make all the difference. At the moment, Ofsted is deficient in that it does not look at schools often enough and this causes much greater problems than there ought to be. If we get to a position where Ofsted does not see schools at all, we will start to have serious problems going unchecked, to the point where the rot is so bad that the fruit falls off the tree and the educational lives of a great many pupils are seriously damaged.

Beyond that, we are considering opening up the curriculum so that a great deal of what a secondary school, in particular, does will be down to that school. So we will start not to know what a school is doing and whether it is doing well unless someone tells us what is going on. How will we know that PSHE in a school is being done properly, or what is being done, or what is being taught? We will rely entirely on what the school chooses to tell us. If it is a good school doing the right thing, fine—that will be all right—but how will we know if that is the case?

The proposals in this clause, as they are now, will fail schools, fail children and fail parents and the information they should have. We should seriously look to do something about this.

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[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 117 and 121, and I wish to associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, with regard to Amendment 117. Both these amendments were intended to remind us of and to draw our attention to the importance of the teaching and learning of modern languages for communication skills, for understanding other people’s cultures, as an added value for employment purposes and to enable pupils to have a better understanding of their own language. I wish to make that rapid interjection to support these amendments.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Boswell of Aynho has asked me to flag up for Amendment 122ZA the requirement on schools to provide a continuity of careers guidance to young people with special needs, which can take them out of the purview of the school, and who can therefore be missed by Ofsted.