Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Watson, as I did to the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, in the earlier debate about consultation. A question which seems not to have been answered in what they ask for is: what would happen if the staff and parents decided that they did not want the change? Let us suppose they decided that they did not want anything to change and that this failing school, which was in dire straits, was the one that they wanted and liked. What would the people whom the noble Lord so rightly characterises as those who care deeply about the welfare of children in the school then do? Would they give in to the parents and staff and say, “All right”?
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, said that it could be all over in six weeks. I am sorry, but it would not be if the parents were making a terrible fuss and saying, “We like our school the way it is”. I have been involved in a change in a school which, without any doubt, was a total failure. It had vacancies of more than 15% and a 14% success rate of five good GCSEs among its pupils. But the parents sat there and said to me, “We like our school the way it is. Don’t you touch our school”. I tried to say to them, “Don’t you mind that your children’s chances are very limited? They are only going to have a very slim chance of getting five GCSEs and of having a future”, and so on. But what do you do if it goes wrong? The only way this idea of consultation would work is if you go back to what the Government are saying about information and you tell people what happens. You cannot consult if the result of the consultation will be an answer that you cannot accept.
Baroness Pinnock (LD)
My Lords, considering that the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has referred to a tiny speech I made earlier this evening, I will just expand on the views that we take on this side.
First, none of us wants a failing school to continue to fail. That is in absolutely nobody’s interest. Secondly, all of us who have been involved in local communities over the years—as those of us on this side have—understand that parents get very attached to what they know and are often therefore reluctant to see it change, However, if a school is failing, change it must. It was the 2006 Act, I think—although I could be wrong—that enabled local authorities to intervene. In my experience, they do that: my local authority does. It can intervene by completely changing the board of governors and putting in its own governing body, with nominations made by the local authority, which can then change the head teacher. Then you work with parents to explain to them and get them to understand that they should not be putting up with this poor-quality education for their children. Change can then happen.
One example of that is a school about three miles away from where I live which was in special measures. The local authority removed the governing body—without its consent—and put in its own people, who were experienced governors from elsewhere, plus nominations from the local authority. The head teacher was changed, and that school was judged to be good in its recent Ofsted report. That seems to me to have achieved what we all want to see achieved, which is that no child should have to suffer education in a failing school. So it can be done, but if you are going to have long-term success, you have to take the confidence of the parents with you, because they play an absolutely critical role in ensuring that their children succeed. I repeat again that that is what we on this side want to achieve. It can be done.
Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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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?
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Will the noble Baroness accept that the appointment of the regional schools commissioners has very much changed the landscape? The regional schools commissioners, who will be responsible for finding suitable sponsors, will know their patch, so to speak; they will know the sponsors that are available in the area and will be much quicker. There will not be the long delay there was in a very hard-pressed and overstretched central department in the Department for Education.
Very briefly, on Amendment 25, I am not sure exactly how Ofsted could inspect a sponsor. A sponsor is a business, with its finance, administration and human resources. That is not Ofsted’s business. Ofsted inspects education, not what a sponsor does, so I find that puzzling in the extreme.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
Those figures are from November of this year, and the regional schools commissioners had already been in place. If demand is increased, the regional schools commissioners will be exceptionally overworked, and I am not as optimistic as the noble Baroness that they will solve the problem.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what impact the introduction of the English Baccalaureate has had on the number of young people studying science and mathematics.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, all state-funded schools are required to teach science and maths to pupils up to the age of 16 as part of a broad and balanced curriculum. Since the introduction of the EBacc in 2010, the proportion of pupils taking GCSEs in maths has remained stable at 97%. For science counted in the EBacc, the proportion has increased from 63% to 74%. We have also had a substantial increase of 15% or more in the number of pupils taking maths and science at A-level.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
That is very good news indeed. Would my noble friend not agree that given the importance of these STEM subjects to the future careers of young people and, indeed, to the economy, it would be very profitable to continue the expansion of maths and science as compulsory subjects into the 17 and 18 year-old age group?
Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Lord Storey
I agree with that. Of course, the other reason is, despite what the Minister constantly tells us, that there is a shortage of teachers and we are desperate to find people. Figures published last week suggested that one in six teachers comes from overseas. I do not have any problem with overseas teachers, provided that they are qualified. I come back to the issue that I want to see every pupil in every type of school having a qualified teacher. Linked to that would be the quality of the teacher training and of the professional development while that teacher is in post.
On inspection—and this goes back to the previous debate—it is interesting that some academy chains are now bigger than local authorities. My local authority had 50-odd schools. The Harris academy chain has more than 50 schools. We inspect local education authorities but we do not inspect academies. Amendment 30 suggests that if a school is coasting or failing or going to become an academy, do we not want to know the reasons why that is happening rather than just saying, “It has failed, let’s move on”? Do we not want to understand what has happened in that school so that we can put it right? Do we not also want, when we move that school into an academy, to be absolutely sure that the academy that is chosen is up to inspections and up to the mark, and that we do not move the pupils from one difficult situation to another? I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, I respect the noble Lord’s motivation in tabling these amendments. My objection to them does not get into the specifics relating to qualified teachers or whatever, but it is simply that I think that it is wrong for primary legislation to lay down what Ofsted should and should not inspect. The noble Lord suggests a very short list of what should be inspected, and I am sure that Ofsted would have a much wider field of interest in any inspection that it conducted, but I think that he has a focused and almost myopic picture of what Ofsted can and cannot do.
Over the years in which it has worked, Ofsted has built up a comprehensive picture of what is going on in schools and in education. It will undoubtedly have inspected at least one of the schools of most of the chains which might be candidates to sponsor a coasting school. Similarly, I cannot believe that any school would have been classified as coasting over a three-year period without Ofsted having been alerted to that and having gone and had a look at it. So we should have more confidence in what good HMI can do and their knowledge both of the system and of individual schools which are in trouble, rather than trying to lay down specifics such as, “They must inspect to see how many qualified teachers they are going to have, or they must inspect for this, that and t’other”. I therefore ask the noble Lord to think again about the amendments and to have a little more confidence in what HMI within Ofsted would be able to do.
Lord Storey
Does the noble Baroness not agree that the difficulty is that local authorities no longer have the resources to give that support which previously existed? Does she not think that we should ensure that academy chains have the resources to do the very things that she suggests rather than always leave it to Ofsted?
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I have declared my interest as chair of Wandsworth Academies and Free Schools Commission. We interview every prospective sponsor. We look at their track record; we listen to what their aims and objectives are; and we listen to their views of education. We can then offer advice from the local authority to the department. I know that the department’s evaluation of every potential sponsor is very detailed. Of course, local authorities will no longer be asked to comment—so my little commission will disappear—but I know that the regional schools commissions will do an extremely thorough job before they hand over any school to a new sponsor. They will have looked carefully at every aspect of the sponsor: its aims, its objectives, its track record, its vision of education and its proposals for what it will do with a school and so on. We sometimes try a little too hard in this House to nail everything down in legislation instead of having more confidence in what professional people will do.
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
My Lords, like the noble Baroness, I see the noble Lord’s three amendments as being essentially about the quality and standards of the academy chains being considered to take over individual schools. As a matter of principle, it does not seem unreasonable to require that information be available to those who make decisions and to parents and teachers about the record of that academy chain. I take the point that one does not want to write everything into primary legislation and to instruct Ofsted in everything that it should do. On the other hand, one of the themes through our debates is whether maintained schools are being treated on a level playing field with academies. The suspicion arises because the Government seem to convey the view “Academies are good; maintained schools are bad”. That is why some of us want to see something in the legislation to ensure that academies are dealt with equally, and looking at the past performance of the chain seems to me to be particularly important.
Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
The noble Earl’s concern for vulnerable children is well known and entirely to his credit, but I wonder if he would acknowledge that the alternative to failing and failing and failing again is to succeed academically. The one thing which has bedevilled educational attainment over many decades has been low expectations: saying, “What can you expect? It is because of their miserable backgrounds and troubled families”, and all the rest of it. The answer is that we must have expectations. These young people deserve to achieve. I agree entirely with the noble Earl that pushing them too hard, too soon can be counterproductive, but the alternative of just sitting back and saying, “Well, they have such awful backgrounds, they are so vulnerable and they find life so difficult that we must not push them at all”, is something I could not go along with. I really believe that raising expectations is the whole thrust to success that this Government are so determined to achieve—and that is raising expectations for all children.
I know that noble Lords opposite have pointed out that some academies are failing. No one disputes that—of course there will be failures in any system, and they will made to stop failing and start succeeding. But if we are to give every child genuinely the best education, we have to look at what some academies have done brilliantly with the most vulnerable children in the most difficult circumstances and then pull the others up so that instead of 7%, 8% or 11% getting decent GCSEs, 90% do so. Listen to my noble friend Lord Harris of Peckham and look at what he has done. Some of us have visited several of his schools and have seen what can be achieved.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford (LD)
I point out to the noble Baroness that there are also local authority-controlled schools where one has seen a very similar turnaround. High expectations are not the preserve of academies alone. Good teachers always have high expectations.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
Absolutely. I would be the first person to say that there are some wonderful maintained schools and some very good local authorities. Nevertheless, it is true, and the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, made this point, that local authorities have had decades to get this right and have allowed far too many schools to fall below the standard and taken no action to improve that. It was right that central government should move in to try to do something about it. I am sure that noble Lords opposite would have alternative ways to do that; the Labour Government did a great deal when in power as a central authority to help to raise standards, and they are to be highly praised for the legacy that they left in London and so on. There is a good history of central government moving in when local government is failing, and there is no question that plenty of schools that have been taken out of local authority control have succeeded. That does not mean that there are not lots of excellent local authority-maintained schools.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I wonder if I may add something to what the noble Baroness has said. I am glad that she has raised this issue. I like to think that the raising of achievement in schools when I was a parent in London was due to a great deal of consultation with parents, councillors, industry and so on. That is not the point that I wanted to make.
I want to refer back to what the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, said about the meeting that I chaired last night. I happen to have in front of me a PricewaterhouseCoopers report on achieving schools and the Achievement for All programme, but I will not go into that now.
I had a very interesting email this morning about coasting schools from one of the people at that meeting who is an academic studying pupil referral units, and I think that the noble Baroness may be interested in this. To summarise, she says that schools must be able to progress learning, not just count the number of GCSEs that they have. She said:
“If coasting schools are to be defined by academic progress why would this not include 100% of pupils progressing 100% of the time? Measurement should therefore be based on progressing learning for all children and young people regardless of background, challenge or need; outcomes should be measured by engagement in learning and impact on all children and young people’s social and academic progress”.
That is what the PricewaterhouseCoopers report emphasises.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford
This is a probing amendment and it comes from the Royal College of Speech and Language specialists, who are quite worried about the present position of special educational needs in schools.
As noble Lords will know, following the enactment of the Children and Families Bill, which we dealt with in the previous Session, there have been considerable changes in the treatment of children with special educational needs. What used to be called statements are now education, health and care plans. Approximately 2.5% of children in schools have the equivalent of a statement. Many local authorities are way behind with the issuing of education, health and care plans. Therefore, at the moment there is a mix of the two. Somewhere in the region of 15% or 17% of children have special educational needs. These are now dealt with in the school framework, and we have done away with the categories that used to be called school action and school action plus. Now, it is the responsibility of the school to identify children with special educational needs and to make provision for them.
The speech and language specialists are particularly concerned with those who have special educational needs in speech, language and communication. Something like 7% of children have such needs, and around 50% of those will come from disadvantaged homes—those who are eligible for free school meals. This is the most prevalent group of children with special educational needs in primary schools.
One can see that if children come to school not able to talk properly—in some cases, not talking at all—they cannot be taught to read. The first thing you have to do is to get children chatting away. This is what many reception classes are all about: getting the children to interact with each other and talk to each other and, from that, learning how sounds are formed and so forth.
As I said, the speech and language specialists are very concerned that children with SEN, particularly those with speech, language and communication needs, who do not have statements or EHC plans may not receive the specialist support that they need to enable them to fully engage with their education. Without that support, they are at risk of not having the best start in life and may be unable to achieve their potential, both at school and in life. The speech and language specialists are trying to get the Government’s thoughts on this.
The amendment does two things. First, it is designed to address whether schools will be encouraged and supported to collaborate where an individual school does not have the necessary level of specialist support for children with special educational needs and disabilities, including speech, language and communication needs. Secondly, it deals with how academies will provide support for those children with EHC plans and, crucially, given the vast number of children with special educational needs and disabilities who do not have EHC plans, those without them. It also addresses whether the Government will keep under review specialist provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities in schools of all types, both for children with EHC plans and for those without.
As I said, this is a fairly straightforward amendment. It requires reassurance from the Government that where in the past children have had specialist support, they will continue to get the support that is necessary. This is particularly true in primary schools, where the help of the specialists is particularly valuable to teachers, some of whom do not have the competence to cope. I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I am very pleased indeed that the noble Baroness has tabled this probing amendment. I have for some time been very closely involved with a charity called I CAN, which works with children with severe communication difficulties. Working with the charity, I have been made aware of how extremely specialised this treatment is. Many of these children are speechless, not because they have any physical disability but because of severe emotional difficulties, and getting them to the point where they can engage in any kind of intelligible conversation is a hugely long and difficult path.
One of the most moving experiences was when the people who work with these children in specialist units demonstrated that these children can sometimes sing when they cannot speak. About eight or nine of these children came in front of us and sang, and you could hear how rusty and unused their voices were because that is the only time they use them. I am therefore very conscious of how important it is that specialist help is available. Of course, good teachers will work hard and some of them will succeed in getting these children to speak, but the idea of making sure that through collaboration they are able to have really specialist help is very important, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Addington
My Lords, it is always something of a relief when somebody from our Bench beats me to the punch on special educational needs. The idea that you need to enter into collaborative arrangements to get specialist help, especially if it is a low-frequency, high-need problem that has not got into the realms of having the label of a plan around it, is a long-term problem. It is not about just this one group. It is very good practice to bring in help and support from other schools. How this could be addressed and helped in any way is something that we should have a look at. It is a very sensible use of resources and is a good way forward. If you have a way forward, even for those at the less severe end of the scale, you should spread it around outside your own school. It is obvious that you should be doing this. I take on board what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, has said and say to the Government: how are you going to do this? This really is very sensible. It is not doctrinaire; it is just sense.
Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Briefly, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, has just said. It is practical common sense. We all know what we mean by a coasting school. At the heart of it, it is one that is simply not getting better; it is just staying where it is. My experience of good schools is that they always want to do better. They will be proud of and pleased with what they are doing, but they will tell you that next year they will do it better and make this or that improvement. The coasting school is one that has just stopped doing that and is sitting there, content with what it is, not brilliant and not below the bar, but not providing that stretching that a good school does for all its pupils.
We should not try to extend the definition, which is a very crucial part of the Bill, to a whole shopping list of all the things that we would like to see in a school. We could write a book on the subject—and many people have—of all the things that we would like to see in a school. My strong feeling is that all schools, by law, have to provide a broad and balanced curriculum and, if they are not doing so, they are failing. If they are not providing all the things that enrich and enhance the experience of their pupils, again, they are not just coasting—they are failing.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
Would the noble Baroness not accept that some schools do neglect sport, the arts and social skills? We know this—and that those skills often underpin academic success, so they need to be there. If they are not there, you will not get academic success, either.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
Absolutely. That is why we have Ofsted, which picks these things up. It is my firm belief that schools need looking at very regularly. I do not mean that they need a full Ofsted inspection but, as I said at Second Reading, they need somebody to go in to make sure that these things are happening and to make sure that the school then takes action on the deficit that has been identified.
We have a well-defined definition that is workable; it is not complete, and I do not think that the Minister will claim that it is, but it will flag up the need for further action. Let us get it clear at this stage of the Bill—because some of the amendments later seem to cast doubt on it—that nobody is going to force a coasting school immediately into academy status; it is going to be given an opportunity to improve by other means. After the kind of things that we have seen in the press this week, as if all coasting schools were suddenly going to be made academies against their will and without any consultation, let us just kill that myth among ourselves.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I was not planning to intervene at this stage but I would like to ask the Minister to address a question in his summing up. Like the noble Baronesses, Lady Morgan and Lady Perry, I think that the definition—whatever it is—has to be very clear and simple. My concern about it being simply about academic content and not having just one phrase that adds to the roundness of the whole is that we all know that when schools are under pressure—we all know what a coasting school looks like and when it is defined as such it will find itself under pressure—they will work very hard at the things that will take their scores up, which will be the academic areas. That could be to the detriment of the other areas.
I went to a very good programme that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, arranged. I will say more about that later, but one of the impressive things that the regional commissioners were talking about was how to develop leadership, which in all organisations—and some of us have had to work to change things round—is what is important. Leadership is developed by developing roundness in children. I would just like the Minister to think about how there could be some sort of phrase—a relatively straightforward and simple one—which ensures that schools do not focus just on the academic areas, because they are under pressure, at the expense of developing the other skills that will bring those young people forward and make them the next leaders in schools and in society.
Education and Adoption Bill
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
My Lords, I shall speak briefly only to the education clauses in this Bill, although I warmly welcome the provisions relating to adoption. I have long welcomed the programme of academies and free schools, and I declare an interest as the unpaid chair of the Wandsworth Academies and Free Schools Commission.
There is ample evidence that thousands of young people have had their life chances enhanced by being in a school which was transformed from failure into one which has maximised the achievements of pupils. We have heard some very moving stories this evening. I have visited many academies and been genuinely inspired by what I have seen. For me, however, it is perhaps even more important that the success of academies in the most deprived areas, with young people from the poorest and most troubled families, has for ever killed the belief that nothing can be expected or achieved with such children. To any head or teacher who declares “What can you expect?”, we can now reply, “You can expect the best and highest achievement from these young people”. In the days when I inspected many schools, I used to say that I would be a rich woman if I had a pound for every time that I heard a teacher—or, sadly, even a head—say, “Well, what can you expect, look at where they come from?”.
The provisions in the Bill which require every truly inadequate school to become an academy, with an experienced and successful sponsor, are therefore wholly appropriate. Young people—as many other noble Lords have said—have only one chance, and every one of them deserves that chance to be in a good school. So I applaud the Government's wish to tackle those schools which, while not failing badly, are nevertheless not expecting and achieving the highest standards for their pupils. They are coasting. The mantra of the most successful and exciting schools I have ever known has always been: “Next year, we’ll do it even better”.
It is any Government's responsibility to be on the side of the pupil, to help create the conditions in which every child has the best start in life, achieving everything of which they are capable and able to take their place in society, contributing to both work and community life to the best of their potential. Asking of all schools that they perform at the peak of their strength is truly fulfilling this Government's promise to give every child the best start in life.
The Secretary of State said, when introducing the Bill in the other place, that coasting schools were those which could do better but were not improving their performance over time. I was pleased that she emphasised that this judgment would not rely on Ofsted alone but would take into account a range of factors. Nor, I am sure, as the Minister has said, should it be on examination results alone. Examination success in a school is a necessary but not sufficient condition for excellence. I was also pleased that it has been emphasised that becoming an academy was not the only and immediate option for a school found to be coasting: it might be given time to demonstrate that it has the capacity to improve alone, or perhaps by linking with a neighbouring successful school, or by strengthening the leadership. Rushing in to disrupt an institution is not always the best way to achieve improvement. I hope that it is also recognised that good local authorities have a part to play in helping coasting schools to improve.
In welcoming the Bill, I have some questions for the Minister. Central to the success of the academies programme has been the quality of leadership. We have been fortunate in finding talented, dedicated heads who have both leadership skills and vision for their schools. As the number of schools turning into academies increases, are we assured that what is being done by the academy sponsors to develop the next generation of leaders is sufficient and of the right quality? I know that in the Harris academies, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Harris, there is already a development programme of this kind, but many have not yet achieved that kind of mature programme. There is already some suggestion of a shortage of people coming forward for the leadership role. Is this confirmed, and if so, what can be done to change it?
My second question is perhaps a more difficult one, since it has, I know, no easy answer. I have a real concern, shared with other noble Lords around the House, that as more and more schools become academies, and more free schools are started, the checks that are available on whether they are sustaining their high performance may not be adequate. A school can very quickly go backwards and become less mindful of standards. With no regular inspection, how will this decline be picked up? The regional commissioners, as others have said, have many hundreds of schools in their territory and few resources to inspect or visit every school regularly. Who will ensure that they, and through them the Secretary of State, will know what is happening in every school and when action is needed?
I am not asking for Ofsted to be required to impose regular inspections. That would be counterproductive. I ask the Minister, however, whether it would not be appropriate to have some system of experienced local visitors—perhaps successful recently retired heads or other senior teachers—who would visit, perhaps only once a year and for only a day, just to check that the high standards are being maintained, and if they are not, to trigger action on a larger scale by Ofsted to find out what has gone wrong and ensure that action is taken. Any experienced educator can tell within hours whether standards are being maintained or are slipping: by the behaviour of the pupils, by the work going on in classrooms, by the courtesy and good humour of relationships between pupils and teachers, and by the discipline of both pupils and staff in the rhythm of the day. The absence of these good signs can be detected much more quickly than a fall-off in examination results. By the time examination results begin to decline it is too late for many young people.
I want to see the schools of our country giving the best education in the world. I ask these questions because I would like us to have confidence that systems are in place to ensure that this is so for all children in all our schools.
I repeat my welcome for the Bill and look forward to our discussions as it passes through further stages in our House.
Education: Initial Teacher Training
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Nash
It is important to point out that this is not quite the dramatic change that some people think. After all, at least 60% of the one-year postgraduate ITT course—which the vast majority of trainees go on through HEI—is already in-school. This year, nearly half the trainees will be going through a school-led system, and this Government trust schools and heads to be in charge of teacher improvement.
Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Will my noble friend agree that probably the most important gift that teachers bring to their pupils is their knowledge of the subject they teach? Can he assure us that the new way of training teachers—through the school route—will still ensure that they have a strong mastery of and enthusiasm for the subject they teach?
Lord Nash
I agree entirely. Subject knowledge is one of the most important things that teachers must have. The Carter review, while saying that the overall effectiveness of ITT was pretty good, pointed out that this was one of the weak areas. Our reforms to the curriculum, by attracting more highly qualified teachers into the system, will result in our next generation of teachers having greater subject knowledge. We are already seeing this in A-levels, where over the last five years the number of students has increased by 13% in maths, 16% in physics and 17% in chemistry.
National Curriculum: Animal Welfare
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that when topics such as the use of animals in scientific experiments are dealt with in schools they should be dealt with in a balanced way, and that children should be able, as he has just said, to balance the various arguments on different sides?
Schools: Substance Abuse Education
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)
Does my noble friend agree with me that schools cannot be expected to do everything on their own, and that it is vital that parents also play a part not only in monitoring what their children are doing when they are out in the evenings but in discussing these issues with them in an open and frank manner?