Education: Citizenship
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, for giving us this opportunity to debate an important subject and for introducing the debate so powerfully. Like others, I would like to concentrate on the educational issues raised by the topic and to widen the meaning of citizenship education.
I think we all recognise that education is more than academic subjects. Parents in the wider society expect more than subject learning. Schools must play their part in helping pupils to develop moral and spiritual values, to foster an understanding of good and healthy relationships and to grow the character which will enable them to become contributors to,
“the publick wealth, peace and tranquillity of the Realm”,
as our daily prayer puts it. I can think of few phrases that better describe what citizenship education should achieve.
We face enormous challenges in our society. This Government have commendably identified the so-called problem families who are at the root of many social difficulties, and who all too often pass on their problems through several generations. Programmes and money to address these difficulties and break the cycle are being put in place, but education, too, must play its part in instilling solid values and integrity of character in every young person to help break that cycle.
There are aspects of the curriculum which aim to offer special skills and understanding relevant to these non-academic parts of the curriculum. PSHE deals with some of the aspects, notably health and relationships, and makes an important contribution when well taught. Citizenship education, which is a statutory requirement at secondary stage and available as a GCSE short course examination, deals with the framework of democracy: Parliament, the electoral system and the importance of the rule of law. It also deals with aspects of personal financial management and social responsibility through volunteering.
The citizenship syllabus can, if well taught, play its part. Learning about how our precious system of democracy works and why it should be protected and valued, is an essential element in any young person’s education. Understanding about why there is taxation and how that relates to the democratic process is also essential, as is the role of law and human rights. The skills needed to manage money, which are so sadly lacking in many young adults who become trapped by payday loans, could make a big contribution to their future well-being.
These are challenging areas for any teacher. They are not solely dealing with facts or with identifiable skills. The slow building-up of character happens over years, and the acquisition of solid values takes place over the whole period from a four year-old entering school to a 19 year-old leaving. No single subject or single teacher should be expected to shoulder the responsibility for that alone.
Evidence from Ofsted implies that the teaching of both PSHE and citizenship and the value placed on them, though improving, varies between schools depending on the leadership in the school. It therefore cannot be assumed that any young person that has been taught PSHE and citizenship will have acquired all those values and will develop the character that we need for a good citizen. Much more is needed for the development of internalised individual responsibility to family, friends, community and nation.
No doubt many noble Lords will have their own wish list of what could be added to the national curriculum. It may be because I was once an academic philosopher that I would like to ensure that all young people, not just the lucky ones with good teaching in PSHE and citizenship, have the opportunity to wrestle with some of the leading moral and ethical issues of our age. In so doing they should learn the skills of argument, weighing both sides of an issue, not taking one side instantly and relying on evidence where it is available. I would like to think that we could bring about a generation which understood what is meant by a just war, the right to die and human rights. I would like this generation particularly to understand the importance of free speech and why it should be protected, and to have at least the tools to debate the ethics of capitalism and socialism.
Citizenship education is in all aspects more than a single element in the curriculum. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has said, it is everything that a school does to develop the citizen of the future. It is the responsibility of every teacher and, above all, of the head and senior staff to ensure that the whole school is imbued with the values of good citizenship. That means that every pupil is valued. The relationship between teacher and pupil is one of mutual respect, but where the authority of the teacher is recognised and established. It means that bullying, cruelty, lying and cheating are never tolerated, and courage, honesty and loyalty are manifestly rewarded.
Such attitudes should permeate everything about how a school conducts its business; they are not the responsibility of one or two areas of the curriculum. Indeed, my fear about both PSHE and citizenship education is that they may encourage other teachers, and even the head, to feel that the provision of these subjects relieves all other members of staff from any concern with the wider issues of citizenship.
Good citizens contribute to society, recognising their responsibilities not just their rights. This means that every young person should be capable of earning a living, well-educated, literate, numerate and fluent in their own language at least. The core task of a school is to ensure that every pupil achieves those basic skills.
As one who has conducted perhaps over a thousand interviews, I would add that an essential ingredient in presenting for a job is also confidence and a realistic sense of one’s own worth. Again, that is not something that appears in the syllabus of any one subject, but which is developed through the total experience of growing up, in which school plays a significant part. Of course, loving parents are the best guarantors of self-worth, but sadly not all young people are blessed with loving parents, and a good school and sensitive teachers can help to fill that enormous gap.
Schools face a huge task in attempting to meet the expectations of society. However, this responsibility is recognised and accepted by the good teachers and heads I have been privileged to meet over the years. We cannot succeed with every child. Sadly there will always be some whose background of deprivation of love is too strong for a school to make a difference. But with professional skill and humanity, I know that many schools and teachers work daily to improve the skills, values, character and attitudes of their pupils in ways which will ensure that they will be the citizens of a future society of which we and they can be proud.
Education: Personal, Social and Health Education
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for whom I have enormous respect and regard, for securing this debate and for the excellent speech with which she has opened it. This is an important debate. It raises the question of just what the school curriculum should provide for young people and how that should be delivered.
In my hearty endorsement of the importance of personal, social and health education, I would like to broaden the debate to more than simply what PSHE in the curriculum can offer to young people. I hasten to say that I in no way question the place for PSHE in the curriculum, but I question whether this range of topics does not belong just as much to what parents, family and wider society should be providing, and to all that can and should be provided by good teachers of traditional subjects in a broad and balanced curriculum.
Much of the sense of self, and the confidence that we seek to develop in children, come not from what a teacher says but the way in which the school conducts its business, its overall ethos. In its briefing for this debate, the PSHE Association claims that PSHE education instils “knowledge, skills and confidence”. But these come from achievement across the whole curriculum. Confidence belongs to a well educated, happy young person, who has experienced a school life where aspiration and hard work are rewarded, teachers command respect and pupils have the confidence that comes from high achievement.
Experience shows that giving young people real responsibility, treating them with respect and applying rules that honour fairness and honesty are the most effective tools for developing both self-respect and respect for others. Offering trust to young people inspires trustworthiness, which can reduce bullying and violence as well as everyday disruptive behaviour. PSHE should not be seen as a substitute for the more powerful ways of conveying values and instilling respect for others.
I know that many noble Lords will emphasise the importance of both drugs education and sex education—the noble Baroness has already said that is not the whole story. I endorse the need for this, although I would expect biology and PE teachers to have a role here as well. The more young people understand the whole story of dangers in taking drugs, including excess alcohol consumption, the more likely they will be able to make informed choices. However, again I caution against the assumption that information will in itself determine behaviour. The same applies to sex education. Young people are subject to all too many external factors as or more powerful than anything a teacher says in whatever lesson. The school can balance those external factors only by the way in which its whole ethos conveys a sense of integrity and self-confidence in young people, enabling them to stand against some of the pressures that lead to difficult and destructive behaviour.
The 2011 Demos report notes the importance of,
“the ability to communicate effectively, apply oneself to a task, commit to long-term goals, and work effectively in a team”.
These skills and attitudes are the job of every subject teacher—science, maths, history, English, PE, music and all the rest—and to claim them as the province of PSHE can be damaging. Indeed, the way in which the whole school’s ethos is imbued with the values that create confident, achieving—and, yes, happy—young people must be the focus of all those concerned, from the governors, head and teachers to the caretakers and kitchen staff. PSHE has an important role to play in this, but it is only a part and it should take care not to claim territory that belongs to the curriculum as a whole and to the totality of the school’s message. This is too important for us to get it wrong.
Education: Academies and Free Schools
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the contribution of academies and free schools to educational provision in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to address the contribution of academies and free schools to our national education provision. I look forward to the summing up of this short debate by my noble friend the Minister, as this is the first opportunity for him to make a substantial speech in this House. I begin by declaring an interest as the unpaid chair of a commission on academies and free schools for the London Borough of Wandsworth. The commission has met with many potential academy sponsors and free school providers, and I for one have been often inspired by the enthusiasm, expertise and deep commitment of those who seek to change the life chances of young people.
We are witnessing a revolution—the most important revolution in education for many decades. Beginning with the vision in the previous Administration of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, who I am pleased to see in his place, already more than half the secondary schools in the country have become academies. Most are converter academies by the choice of their governing bodies, and some are sponsored academies where schools failing to raise the performance of their pupils have, with the guidance and help of a sponsor, been made into academies where pupil success has followed. Such schools are often located in the most deprived and difficult areas, with generations of failure behind them. There are now 2,673 academies in England and 80 free schools are already open with more than 100 in the pipeline for this year.
Now primary schools are becoming academies and primary free schools are being established. There is an urgent need for action at this level. The DfE reports that 1,400 primary schools are below the minimum floor standard—800 of these for at least three years. This means that several thousand pupils are leaving the primary phase having failed to achieve even a minimum standard in basic English and maths. The weakest 200 of these schools have already become academies in this academic year and many more will follow. We rejoice to find that, since becoming academies, more than 40 of these primary schools have completely eliminated the gap in attainment between the children of the poorest and richest families.
Free schools, including the excellent university technical colleges, have allowed communities of parents, teachers, local people and a range of approved sponsors to bring their commitment and determination to set up new schools, to raise standards of teaching and to lift aspirations in places where all too often only acceptance of defeat and a lack of ambition had been before. Many bring innovative and exciting new ideas into educational provision, offering different and challenging forms of education which meet the special interests and needs of local children in ways no local authority would be able or likely to offer.
The providers of free schools are diverse. So far, 59 have been groups of teachers, existing schools or other educational organisations. This is indeed a policy endorsement by the professionals in education. Some 45 have come from parent groups; community, religious and local groups; and charities. Again, this is endorsement of the policy by the people who are most concerned and most likely to be the best judges of its success.
Not all academies have been or will be a total success, of course, although the overwhelming majority have achieved more than even their supporters would have dreamed. The British cup-half-empty media have seized on the occasional academy where standards have not been spectacular, although even these have often achieved more than their predecessor, but no one who truly cares about children and young people can fail to celebrate the life-changing opportunities which academies and free schools have already given to tens of thousands of young people who are lucky enough to attend them.
Some basic statistics demonstrate what great gifts have been given to young people by this programme. Overall, pupils in sponsored academies have increased their achievements by five times the national average for maintained schools. Years of failure in some local authority areas have been turned into success. My noble friend Lord Harris, in the wonderful work he has done in creating successful academies, can be proud of his Bermondsey academy, for example, where, with more than two-thirds of pupils receiving free school meals, 62%,—almost twice the national average—have achieved five A* to C grades in their GCSEs. However, statistics can only invite us to reflect on what this means in terms of young people whose lives have been turned around and whose aspirations have been raised beyond anything their predecessors had experienced.
Why do academies and free schools achieve where local authorities had failed? The answer is freedom. Academies are free from local authority control, which has not always been benign. They are free to deliver the curriculum which fits the needs of their pupils, not some centrally determined formula. However, their offering must be “broad and balanced”, and must include English, maths, science and religious education. They are free to set pay and conditions for their staff, enabling them to reward hard work and success, and to attract the best and brightest teachers. They are also free to determine the length of time pupils spend in school daily and termly: their curriculum is not subject to the time restraints which too often prevent local authority schools expanding their offerings to follow the needs and interests of their pupils.
Most importantly, these schools offer professional freedom to the head and teachers. Professional judgment always trumps bureaucratic prescription. Teachers really do know best. For the past 20 years or so we have cramped professionals—not only in education—with regulation, prescription, inspection, targets and league tables. None of this has worked to raise real standards. Indeed, we have been in danger of de-professionalising the best-ever generation of teachers. The system has forced them to teach to the requirements imposed from outside instead of to their own professional judgment. Removing these external constraints has resulted largely in the great success of academies and free schools: the proof is in the results.
Although the evidence is that the longer schools have enjoyed their academy and free school status, the greater their improvement, some have rightly expressed concern about how we can ensure that these standards are maintained in the longer term, especially when many of these schools will be exempt from regular inspection. It is my profound belief that the best form of accountability begins with the accountability of the individual to their own professional standards. I am however greatly reassured by the initiatives which have arisen voluntarily and spontaneously within the academies and free schools themselves. Many have formed “chains”, which are looser perhaps than a strict federation, although enjoying many of the financial and quality benefits of shared central services and shared governance, which others have adopted.
Whether they are a federation or a chain, these associations are proving to be a far better guardian of quality than many of the external official bodies which control community schools. The strong and successful schools in the chain offer support and help to their newer developing partners. This model is now widely adopted and provides excellent advantages for quality control. Again, it is a product of leaving the professionals to determine their own quality assurance. It will be important to ensure, however, that the chains do not become substitute local authorities with power again drifting away from the individual school—that “living cell of the body educational”, as it has been called.
In the Harris group, we see an outstanding model of this way of working. The Harris Federation has set up a complete system of raising teaching quality: first, in initial training, as a group of designated training schools, and then in offering a careful programme of teacher development, which takes the average teacher, through several steps, to excellence. The successful heads in the group are also involved in a leadership development programme for those with leadership potential, to ensure a supply of outstanding heads for the future. I cannot but feel that this is a more trustworthy and sustainable pattern for ensuring quality than an occasional visit from an Ofsted inspector with limited scope for development initiatives.
In 2010, my right honourable friend Michael Gove said:
“Teachers, not politicians, know best how to run schools”.
It has taken courage to put that belief into practice but the thousands of teachers, parents and young people who have benefited from that courage all say “thank you”.
Schools: Classics
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord and I thank him for securing this debate and for the delightful speech that he has made to introduce the topic. I, too, am a great lover of Latin, in particular, and I owe a lifetime debt to my big sister, who was a Cambridge classicist. She introduced me to Latin for Today: Book One a year before anyone else in my class had begun to study it, so that I was able to shine throughout my first year. That ensured that Latin has always been one of my favourite subjects.
I agree entirely with the noble Lord in his analysis of what is needed in terms of teaching and the teachers who are capable of inspiring and enthralling the young. However, I want to celebrate our success stories and how good it is that Latin is now increasing in popularity not only in independent schools, as seen by the number of young people who are taking it. As the noble Lord has said, in the past 10 years, more than 500 state secondary schools have started Latin for the first time. The previous Government are greatly to be commended for their e-course initiative with its videoconferencing and mentoring for teachers, which made a great leap forward in the popularity of the subject.
The UK has a world beater in the Cambridge Latin course. It sells more than any other classics course in the world. The Cambridge School Classics Project has given about £1 million of its profits to promote the teaching of Latin in state schools. The coalition initiative put Latin on a par with modern languages and that has helped to fuel the expansion. Secondary schools have, as I said, found that Latin and Greek are increasingly popular and that they help with the understanding of grammar and of English words and spelling. One reason why I believe that classics is so enormously helpful to young people is that it teaches them about sentence structure and so helps them to think much more clearly. It also helps them with their appalling spelling.
Another great success story is the expansion of the teaching of Latin in primary schools, which I wholly support and think is wonderful. In London alone the Iris Project, with the mayor, Boris Johnson, has started the Love Latin project in schools. Already, 200 primary schools in London alone are enjoying that programme. Teachers say that it is engaging children who, in other ways, are quite hard to reach.
For me, Minimus is the real hero of primary school Latin. Minimus is a mouse who lives with a family in Vindolanda in the Roman Britain of 100AD. He lives in the family with the fort commander’s wife and their three children. They also have a cat but, most importantly, they have Minimus who becomes a hero of the primary syllabus. He apparently has won so many friends among young children that the popularity of the Minimus course is spreading to the point where it has sold 140,000 copies throughout the United Kingdom. I am happy to say that the equivalent for ancient Greek—whether it will be a mouse or another animal, I do not know—is now being developed.
I will close with some quotes from teachers and pupils about the Minimus course. One teacher said: “There are such brilliant stories in the classics and it is so good to be able to introduce children to them”. A pupil said: “Latin helps me with writing in literary classes”. Above all, there was the pupil who said, “You learn to deal with words. You can’t talk to an ancient Roman with gestures and smiles. The language is all there is”.
Education: Development of Excellence
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
That this House takes note of the measures that develop excellence in education.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, it is a great privilege to open this debate on excellence in education, and I look forward with great pleasure to hearing the speeches from so many noble Lords today.
I know that all in this House share my passion for raising the standards in our schools so that every child can develop his or her own talents, and every Government have tried to achieve this goal. I pay tribute to the previous Government for having made education a priority during their time in office, and I acknowledge their heritage, not least in the creation of the best generation of young teachers that we have ever had and in the development of the early academies—just as, I hope, they are equally generous in acknowledging the heritage of their predecessors.
Today, I should like to address the measures which this coalition Government have put in place to achieve the elusive goals of every school a good school and an education system that allows Britain to win in the global race of the future. The themes of the Government’s actions in education, as in all aspects of policy, are a radical shift away from overweening state interference, a belief in the power of every individual to contribute to the public good, and a passion for excellence. For education, this means trust in the professionals in our schools and colleges, raising aspirations for all and thereby enabling achievement by the provision of structures within which students can aspire to succeed—and can compete for success in the fields where their talents lie.
I want to make clear that, for me, excellence is defined not just by academic attainment. There is far more to good education than exam results and far more to exam results than achievement in academic subjects alone. Vocational exams are every bit as valuable for those who choose that route; I will return to that issue later. Adult life, whether in employment, family life or friendships, asks of a social, emotional and spiritual richness. Good schools work to foster those skills, based on a strong framework of moral and ethical values that inform every aspect of the school’s life, both inside and outside the classroom.
Last week, I attended the opening of a new learning centre in a sixth-form college. I congratulated the young people and their principal on their new facility. Of course good buildings and equipment are aids to learning and it was good to see young people enjoying the fine facilities on offer, but excellence does not reside in those facilities alone. In every education debate that we have had in this Chamber over many years, there has been unanimous agreement that teachers are the one factor on which the quality of education rests. The question that this Government have addressed is what we can do to bear on the quality of teachers.
It is a source of sadness to me that the approach to improving achievement in recent times has been to regulate, dictate, control from the centre, inspect with the aim of finding fault, create league tables of examination results and punish where failure is discovered. This approach, although I am sure it is made with the best of intentions, simply has not worked. The message of this approach to schools and teachers is to work only to the regulator’s requirement, to seek the easiest way to achieve good grades in the league tables and to work with the children who will add to their league table scores while allowing the weaker students to be ignored and the brightest to go unstretched. While, happily, many schools refused to follow that route, the result has been to cause the biggest gap between the high-achieving pupils and schools and the lowest achievers that we have ever seen in our history.
The coalition Government have tackled this question by looking at what teachers—those key factors in quality—need from government to allow them to succeed. Overwhelmingly, the answer is that schools and teachers need freedom to exercise their professional competence and judgment. In short, they need trust. Some years ago, I attended an international conference about educational quality. Delegates from many countries whose international performance was in many cases far from outstanding enthusiastically told stories of curriculum change, investment in new buildings, legislation, regulation and so on. Finally, it came to the turn of the delegate from Finland, whose students score at the top of every international league table. “Well”, he said, “we do not have many of those things. You see, we just trust the teachers”. It was a lesson I never forgot.
We spend a great deal of money on educating the dedicated young men and women who choose to serve as teachers in our schools and colleges. Many of them are among the brightest and best of their generation. This Government have done absolutely the right thing in pursuing policies that trust them to perform at the highest level. Setting schools free through the academies programme has been an act of faith, trusting schools and teachers to make the right choices for the young people in their care. That faith has been fully justified. Not only do we have over 500 sponsored academies, with sponsorship from every kind of charitable and business organisation as well as from churches and religious bodies, but we now have almost 2,000 academies from schools that have converted. This is a massive endorsement of the programme from the wider community and from the profession itself.
Most important, though, is the level of achievement that these academies have given to the young people who attend them. Through strong leadership, gifted teaching and high standards of discipline, achievement has been raised far beyond expectation. Other speakers today will give examples of the amazing success of the schools that were failing their pupils in every way but were turned into high-scoring, high-achieving academies in the space of a very few years. These are stories of life-changing opportunities for young people, raising their aspirations, giving them both academic success and all the self-confidence that gives, and pride in their school uniform, respect for the rules of discipline and loyalty to their school and its values. These are priceless gifts indeed.
Another significant and exciting development has been the creation of free schools: schools set up by local communities and groups involving parents, business, universities and professionals that meet the needs and aspirations of a community for high-quality education. About 80 of those schools have opened in less than two years, with many others approved to open in the next year.
The key result of those reforms, the biggest and most radical for generations, is that the Government have put the professionals in the driving seat, allowing them freedom from government micromanagement, taking the punitive, fault-finding inspections off their backs and allowing them to respond to the needs and interests of the children in their care. Of course, their freedom is balanced by proper accountability. They are accountable to their governing bodies, their students and their community but accountable, above all, to their own high professional standards.
It remains the proper role of government to provide the structures within which schools and teachers can work to ensure that their pupils will achieve. The framework of both the curriculum and examinations is under careful review, and the reforms that have so far been announced will begin to restore the world-class reputation which this country once enjoyed and which it has so sadly lost in recent years. The English baccalaureate certificate will set new demanding standards in maths, English, two sciences, a foreign language and a humanities subject. The pull of the curriculum which these new qualifications will provide will mean a huge increase in the number of pupils studying subjects such as geography, history and triple sciences. In 2010, only 23% of pupils were studying what in anyone’s terms are those basic subjects. That will rise to 47% next year. It is an achievement of which the Government can be proud.
In Ofqual’s review of the curriculum, it is my hope that the importance of religious education will also be recognised, and perhaps restored to the core of those qualifications. At a time when the understanding of other religions is so necessary and when knowledge of the established religion of our country is being alarmingly lost, the argument for good RE for all young people seems to me strong.
Single final exams, requiring students to master each subject with confidence, will replace the modular structure. A modular structure has encouraged spoon feeding and teaching to the test. One-off final exams offer freedom for teachers in methods and approach in ways that modular structures made impossible. Equally, they allow students to explore a subject in greater depth. The exams will discriminate appropriately between the highest achievers and those of more modest achievement, just as every other aspect of life does, from sport to show business to promotions at work and even in politics. We need to identify our stars if we are to compete in the world of the future.
The majority of 16 year-olds are capable of performing in those core subjects to the new demanding standard, and I have every confidence that with the freedom to work to their own professional methods, teachers will rise to the challenge of the new examinations. However, not all young people are motivated by academic study, and it is important to ensure that the substantial minority who do not wish to or are incapable of pursuing academic qualifications have satisfying alternatives. As a country, we have in the past not done enough in our education provision to provide for the nearly 60% who do not go on to university, and our economy has paid the price for that failure. Tough employer-approved vocational exams will replace the jungle of qualifications of varying value that are currently available.
I am also a huge supporter of the university technical colleges pioneered by my noble friend Lord Baker—I am pleased that he is speaking later in this debate. Maintaining the study of core subjects to age 16, they will provide high-quality industry-sponsored technical courses to inspire young people who are uninspired by a wholly academic programme. Five UTCs are already open, with 28 more approved. Within the next two years, I hope that at least 40 of those pioneering colleges will be open. Similarly, 16 studio schools are already open and another 16 approved. These cater to young people in the 14 to 19 year-old age range who learn in more practical ways. They offer work experience, sometimes paid, and a tough curriculum combining academic and vocational subjects. It is no surprise that those schools have proved to be both popular and successful in the early years of their life.
Many vocationally motivated young people are every bit as intelligent as their academically minded contemporaries, and their skills are vital to the economy of the future as well as to the fulfilment of their own aspirations. The growth of university technical colleges and studio schools under this Government has at last addressed the issue of a rigorous, satisfying vocational route for the many young people whose talents lie in that direction.
The primary years are perhaps the most important in any child’s education. They provide the basic skills that open the world of learning and the attitude to learning that he or she will take through the next long years. It is simply a national shame that in recent years one in three children have left primary school without an adequate ability to read, write and add up. More than 40,000 leave primary school at the age of 11 with a reading age of only seven. It is therefore much to be welcomed that the Government have put forward consultation proposals for a core primary curriculum that proposes rigorous high standards in the key areas of maths, English and science, with a much welcome requirement for a foreign language at key stage 2. Outside this core, teachers will have much greater freedom to follow their own professional skill. Very rapidly, we can look to a primary education that gives 11 year-olds the skills and attitudes they need if they are to succeed in their secondary years.
I cannot fail to speak also of the world of higher education, where this country punches so far above its weight. With centuries of academic freedom to their credit, our great universities take their place in the top few in the world. After the United States, no other country features in the top ranks of the international league as we do. It cannot be too strongly urged that nothing—no, nothing—is done to diminish the academic freedom that has fuelled this success. Our leading universities must be free to choose the brightest and best of each generation of young people. The competition for their genius is keen and our competitors recognise that success in this highly competitive global economy depends on them. Trusting the professional academics to spot talent wherever it can be found must be a priority for any Government.
There is much to be done. We have fallen so very far behind our competitors in the world and failed many of the generations of young people who are now out in the world without the basic skills needed to allow them to find a satisfactory place in adult life and work. The great task has begun, however, and the pace of change in this Government’s policies is amazingly rapid. I commend our Government for all that they are doing. I beg to move.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, but perhaps at this point I may remind your Lordships that this is a timed debate and it would be much appreciated if Back-Benchers could keep their remarks to the four minutes allocated.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, it is customary on these occasions to thank all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate but I have far more reasons than custom in saying a very heartfelt thank you to all noble Lords who have taken part today. This has been a really fascinating debate and inspiring and moving in many cases. It vividly demonstrates the huge range of expert knowledge that we have in this House. We have ranged from early years to universities via almost every aspect of education through many different kinds of schools. There have been pleas for science, the arts and history, all of which were made with real knowledge and experience as well as deep passion. It has been a huge privilege to listen to all the speeches today. I hope that my noble friend Lord Lloyd-Webber will carry on with his excellent and exciting proposal to give real recognition to those who are not very academically successful but are hugely successful in their crafts and technician roles.
Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012
Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the background to this Motion of Regret is the regulations that determine the framework for inspection of schools in England by Ofsted. Section 5 of the Education Act 2005 sets out the duty of the chief inspector to inspect schools at such intervals as are prescribed in regulations. The 2005 regulations made under Section 5 provide that the maximum interval between school inspections should be five years. However, the Education Act 2011, the passage of which we debated last year, now enables the Government to exempt specific categories of school from the chief inspector’s duty to inspect.
This is the first set of regulations to be made under the new power and has the effect of exempting from any further routine inspection any school that receives the highest Ofsted grading, which, as we know, is currently “outstanding”. Thus, in future, every school that is rated outstanding will not be routinely inspected further by Ofsted unless the school itself requests an inspection, in which case it will have to pay for it. The Government resisted amendments in Committee that would allow parents or local authorities to trigger an inspection.
The Government’s arguments in support of the change appear to be twofold. First, they say that exempting outstanding schools from future inspections will reduce, in the Government’s parlance, the “burdens” on such schools. Secondly, they say that it will enable Ofsted to target resources on less successful schools and so will have a cost benefit. Both arguments have some credence. However, for many years now, under successive Governments, Ofsted has moved towards a risk-based, proportionate approach to determining the frequency and intensity of inspection of particular schools. Successful schools can already expect to be inspected only once every five years. Therefore, risk assessments already enable Ofsted to target its resources effectively. However, to exempt schools from routine inspection entirely, and for schools to know that they henceforth they will be exempt, is not simply an extension of these developments. It is a significant qualitative change of a completely different order. It is wrong in principle and will have all sorts of adverse consequences in practice. I shall touch on both concerns—the principle and the practical implications.
The issue of principle derives from questions about the role of government in the delivery of our major public services. I would argue that the Government of the day have a duty both to the public generally, whose taxes pay for those services, and to the citizens who use the services. Surely the Government should be the guardians of both value for money and the quality of the public services provided. It is largely through regulatory and inspection regimes that the Government discharge their duty to service users and the wider public. That is why we have inspection of hospitals, GPs, police services, children’s homes and care homes. All major public services, whether provided directly by public bodies or indirectly through private, voluntary or independent organisations, are subject to inspection regimes to protect users and taxpayers. I know of no other services in which categories of provider are exempt. I would be grateful if the Minister could identify any for us, because I could not find any.
Because, for these very good reasons, this principle is so deeply embedded in the way we deliver public services; because many of these services are critical to people’s well-being; and because the people using them are often vulnerable in one way or another, it would be unthinkable for, say, excellent hospitals or care homes to be allowed to be completely exempt from future inspections. We can all predict the reaction if this were to be the case, so there are crucial questions that the Minister—with respect—has to answer, because they were not answered in this or the other place during the passage of the Education Act 2011. Why do the Government think exemption is acceptable for schools but not for hospitals, care homes and constabularies? Is this not an abdication of the Government’s duty to the public?
In striking the balance between the demands of inspection and the so-called freedom for schools, which the Government are promoting, have they not fallen too far on the side of the professionals and not sufficiently on the need to protect all pupils? The Minister may well say that the Government believe that they can trust schools to do the best for their pupils. We can for the most part, although not entirely, as experience tells us. However, that does not answer the point that it is wrong in principle for the provider of a service to be the sole arbiter of standards without any independent evaluation.
In addition to this fundamental issue of principle, there are a number of practical consequences to the exemption that I believe may have adverse effects on children and schools. I will mention three—other noble Lords will have other points—that are of particular concern to me. First, an outstanding rating at one inspection is not a guarantee of continuing excellence in standards of achievement. Outstanding schools decline. The 2010-11 Ofsted annual report reveals that 40% of the previously judged outstanding schools had declined at their subsequent inspection and three had plummeted to a rating of inadequate. For this reason, both the current chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, and the former chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, have publicly expressed concerns about the proposal to exempt, as did the Education Select Committee.
Secondly, it is quite obvious that inspectors need regularly to see the full range of performance during their inspections in order satisfactorily to benchmark individual schools. If excellent schools are progressively excluded from the inspection regime there is a real danger that inspectors’ expectations will drift downwards over time as they lose touch with the very best practice.
Finally, inspections cover much more than the quality of teaching and learning. They have an important, and I would argue vital, role in telling us how well schools are addressing the wider well-being of pupils and preparing them for life challenges. Exam results alone cannot tell us how well, or even if, a school is teaching personal, social and health education, for example; how extensive the extra-curricular activities are; or, most importantly, how effectively a school is implementing good safeguarding policy and practice.
I know that if this exemption goes through—as I am sure it will—Ofsted has said that it will desktop assess outstanding schools regularly. However, that desktop analysis cannot possibly find out what is going on underneath exam results, and clarify and highlight whether there are any areas of concern, particularly in safeguarding and similar aspects of school life. For these reasons, and others that I suspect will be raised this evening, I believe that exempting any schools entirely from the inspection regime is a failure to children and parents. I beg to move the Motion.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on setting out her concerns. We know that she speaks from a very deep concern for the welfare of children and has a wish to see excellence in education, an aspiration which we all share. I know too that she has real concerns about the possibility of a school degenerating from outstanding to something less.
I want to take both aspects she mentioned, the practical and the principle, and to say a few words on why I believe that this set of regulations exempting some schools in this way is the right move. First, on the practical, I think the noble Baroness rather overemphasised the picture of schools that were never inspected. This is not what is going to happen. They will still be included in national surveys, with subjects and aspects of education, so her concerns that the people in Ofsted will no longer have the opportunity to see excellence is more than answered by the fact that they will still be able to see excellence across specific subject areas and specific aspects of education.
Secondly, the chief inspector’s risk assessment will be annual. It will be regular and look at more than simply exam results. It will look at any concerns raised about the outstanding schools which are exempt and will then, if necessary, trigger an inspection. The noble Baroness shares my concern that there is always a danger of a change in a school’s performance when a new head comes in—either for the better or for the worse. The regulations cover that eventuality. The chief inspector’s risk assessment will be speeded up after there is a change of leadership in the school. There again, any anxieties one might have have been addressed in the regulations.
There is a pathetic faith in the value of inspection. I say that as one who spent 18 years as an inspector. In the 20 years or so that Ofsted has been pursuing its inspections, this country’s young people have moved in their performance from being in the top five, six or seven by comparison with other countries to being down in 25th, 27th and 28th place in different subject areas. Although Ofsted, I am sure, has been pursuing its aims with the best of intentions, and no doubt the Government’s very tight regulations, particularly the previous Government’s regulations, for how Ofsted should go about its business, were all done with the best of intentions, it simply did not work in the way that it was hoped it would. The standards of performance in our schools have degenerated quite disastrously in comparison with the standards of performance of other countries over the period of Ofsted’s work. We need to start inquiring very deeply, rather than have a mantra of “inspection is good”, as to exactly what really does achieve quality in schools and education.
There is plenty of evidence that people perform at their best, whether professionally or in other areas, when they are trusted and feel valued. My very strong experience of talking to teachers and heads over the past decade or so is that they have lost that feeling of trust. They feel they are bound by an overweening inspection regime which has breathed down their necks. They are watching their backs and feel that the Government are permanently on their backs telling them things. That has been part of the Ofsted culture. I am happy to see that that is now being changed under the coalition Government. Ofsted is being changed very radically and made much more professional and much more limited in its inquisitorial role. That is a good thing. Nevertheless, for most teachers and schools, there is still a sense of being watched rather than being trusted. I believe passionately, as well as having seen the research evidence, that trust and value enable professional people and others to perform at their peak.
There must be accountability to balance autonomy. The more freedom that we give to exempt schools, the more it is essential that we decide what their autonomy should be. I would very briefly say that I think that there are three levels of autonomy that we should trust. The first is the professional code, to which teachers themselves rightly aspire. The conscience of the teacher in wanting to give his or her absolute best is the first level of accountability. That is what we must foster, help and encourage by giving them more freedom to do that, because it is the real guarantee of quality. It is only when teachers really feel that they are responsible for their own performance and that they are required to give the best to their pupils that the quality can really be guaranteed. The second level is that the head of the school and other senior people in the school are responsible for the quality of education in that school. We must foster that. Instead of their thinking that somebody is going to come from outside and judge them, they should take responsibility for themselves and be prepared to make those judgments and deal with any underperformance.
Finally, we have forgotten the role of governors here. The last port of call, rightly, is and ought to be the responsibility of the governors over the quality of what goes on in the school. If things start to go wrong, it is the governors who should blow the whistle and start taking action by changing the head or the other staff of the school. It is a matter of absolute principle that we should stop thinking that the Government are always the best judge of things and people. I love the phrase in the department’s Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations where it says:
“The intention is to give the best schools the power to manage their own performance and to be more accountable locally to their communities, rather than to central government”.
That is what I believe should happen.
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Baroness Perry of Southwark
I yield to no one in recognising the importance of the right kind of training for teachers and I have spent a great deal of my life in working on trying to get the training right. It is extremely important for the vast majority of teachers that they have been trained and that they understand the things that the noble Baroness mentioned, such as child development, and have an understanding of how children learn, and so on. But I also think it extremely important that we have some flexibility for the outstanding person who brings a particular gift, talent and knowledge. I remember a case some years ago, I think in the 1990s, of a professor of mathematics, an outstanding mathematician, who had taken fairly early retirement and decided that he would like to teach younger children, in a secondary school, to pass on his passion for mathematics to young people. He discovered that because the regulations said that he had not been trained as a teacher he could not do that. It is a mistake—a mistaken idea of what is needed in a school.
As my noble friend Lady Walmsley has said, I would want the overwhelming majority of teachers to have been trained, but it is important to have flexibility to bring in the right kind of person to fill a niche in a school, someone who can bring perhaps a very special talent and range of experience, which would be exactly what the school needed and would hugely contribute to children as they go through their schooling.
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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 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?
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.
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.
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Lord Lucas
My Lords, that phrase comes from the admissions criteria for Ampleforth, which is a well known Catholic school, where it works extremely well. Parents who want to send their children to a Catholic school should accept that it is a Catholic school and that it will educate its children in the Catholic religion. I send my children to an Anglican school. I am not religious myself, but I entirely accept that my child is being brought up within the context of school as an Anglican. I value that tradition of education. Again, it is perhaps an illustration of the conditions in the west of Scotland that such a thing is inconceivable to the noble Lord. For me, it is just ordinary. I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, my name is also to Amendment 138. For me, these two paragraphs together describe the ideal nature of a faith school when it has the freedom of being an academy. Subsection (1) makes the point that a faith school should not in any way have admission criteria that insist that all children shall have some kind of allegiance to the faith of that school. We have all heard stories about parents suddenly turning up at a church in the last few months before their application to a school that happens to be the best school in the area and a faith school. That is unfortunate; it distorts what should be an open choice by parents of a good school that has a particular ethos. Subsection (1) is inclusive and says that faith schools would be inclusive. Around half the children they took would share a commitment to their faith, but the other half could be of any faith or no faith.
I strongly believe in subsection (2). Exactly as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, if parents have chosen a Catholic school, an Anglican school, a Jewish school or a Muslim school for their children, they must respect the traditions of that faith. It is not a secular school; it is a school of that faith. They should be included in the general ethos of the school and pay tribute to the customs within it that reflect its faith. My experience and that of noble Lords who spoke earlier reinforce this; parents of other faiths welcome the ethos of a Christian school, and perhaps parents of other faiths will welcome the ethos of a Muslim or a Jewish school as well.
Parents are looking for a school with strong values, and if those values are based on faith, the parents will accept that. The success of faith schools has been widely demonstrated by their popularity and their academic success.
Baroness Turner of Camden
My Lords, I support my noble friend Lady Massey on Amendments 103, 140 and 141. I do not accept Amendment 138. In fact, I seem to recall that the bishop in the Anglican Church in charge of education recently announced that he would welcome the idea that people not of the faith were accepted into religious schools. That should be welcomed.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
Does the noble Baroness not recognise that the amendment specifically states that 50 per cent of the children would not be of the faith?
Baroness Turner of Camden
I am sorry, but I will continue, if I may. In view of what I said, the noble Baroness will accept that in no way can I accept the subsection (2) in Amendment 138, particularly where pupils would be accepted into religious schools who were not themselves religious. I do not see how subsection (2) could in any way be accepted; it does not seem sensible. If people are being accepted who are not of that religious faith, why should they be expected to participate in the school’s religious life when it is not of their particular faith and it was known that they would not be of that faith when they were accepted into the school?
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I support the amendment and have read the helpful letter from the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I restate how much I agree that getting schools to apply for licences in the past has been a very unwieldy way to get them to put on fairly simple forms of entertainment. I very much support the Live Music Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to which the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred. I am very pleased to hear that the Government will be supporting it in its progress through Parliament. That obviously goes much wider than dealing with live music in schools; nevertheless, it will be helpful.
When I said to my colleagues that I was also very pleased that the Government had committed to looking at the Licensing Act 2003, they said, “You’re going to regret saying that, because it took us for ever to get a half-decent balance on licensing music and alcohol provision. Good luck to you”. My instinct is that we should look again at the Licensing Act. I am pleased that the Government will be doing that, and I look forward to that debate.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, my name is added to the amendment. I just say to my noble friend that, although I urge him to continue to look kindly on removing the need for licensing from schools and colleges, perhaps this is an opportunity to look more widely at some of the other places where young people need licences, such as small sports clubs, and so on, where if they have even a radio playing in the background, they must get a licence. We need to encourage young people, not make life more difficult for them. I hope that, in their consideration of the issue, the Government will look more widely than simply schools and colleges.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I know that many in this House share my noble friend's view that public performance of music should not be licensable in schools. We agree that schools currently face unnecessary bureaucracy when they organise events such as school plays, concerts or swimming galas, and we are taking steps to address that. We heed the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but we have announced our intention to consult on Schedule 1 to the Licensing Act 2003, which currently regulates the public performance of live music and performance of other creative and community activities, such as dance, plays, film and indoor sport. Our intention, subject to the consultation, is to deregulate those activities as far as possible in schools. That is possible through secondary legislation.
The Government have also expressed clear support for the Live Music Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which completed its Committee stage on Friday. I know that, because I was there. It seeks to deregulate in certain circumstances the provision of live, unamplified music in most locations and live, amplified music in workplaces such as schools, as well as licensed premises such as public houses, subject to restrictions on audience size. These planned changes will free schools from the unnecessary bureaucracy they currently face and allow them to use music in a sensible way to deliver the best possible education for their pupils. On the basis of that reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
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.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I know that we are short of time, but I would like to interject that when we talk about giftedness, we are not just talking about academic ability. Schools should be urged to recognise that some children are immensely gifted with their hands, with technology, at sport, in music and so on.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I recall articles published in Scientific American and New Scientist not so long ago which looked at chess grandmasters. The articles identified that they had spent so much of their lives playing chess that they had become geniuses in the chess arena and suggested that genius derived from people spending an awful lot of time doing whatever they were most passionately interested in. I should be grateful for an assurance from the Minister that, for example, a young man who is passionate about science can have the opportunity to study science at playtime and after school, and that the staff within the labs will make the equipment available for him to use. I should like an assurance that, where young people are passionate about using their hands or whatever, there will be the necessary flexibility and resource in schools for them to follow their passion and spend a lot of time doing it.
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“Duty to assign point scores
(1) Ofqual shall, on request, assign a point score to each grade of a qualification that is taken at any independent school as part of their Key Stage 4 curriculum.
(2) The point scores so assigned shall bear an appropriate relationship to the scores assigned to GCSE qualifications.
(3) Ofqual may make an appropriate charge for this service.
(4) All qualifications to which such point scores have been assigned shall be recorded, in an appropriate fashion, in school performance tables.”
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I move this amendment on behalf of my noble friend Lord Lucas, who I think is rowing for the Lords at the moment. As is quite clear from the wording, the amendment asks the Government to consider whether it is necessary for only qualifications that are accredited by Ofqual to be counted into the points score for individual schools. It is now not only independent schools but many others that offer the international baccalaureate, for example, and other professional and vocational qualifications may not be accredited by Ofqual but are accredited by other perfectly respectable and widely acknowledged bodies. As I understand it, Ofqual has within its remit only about 15 per cent of all qualifications; the other 85 per cent are variously accredited by other organisations, many of which, as I say, are themselves well accredited.
The purpose of my noble friend’s amendment is to ask the Government to consider whether they should collect data on all qualifications gained, assuming that they have proper provenance and whether or not they are within the empire of Ofqual. On his behalf, I beg to move.
Lord Lingfield
My Lords, I rather support the amendment because, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, a large number of schools, not just in the state sector but in the independent sector, are considering innovation as regards examinations. A number of very grand independent schools can consider these and not worry about any point scoring that comes out in league tables throughout the country. However, many other schools cannot afford to take these initiatives in a way that they might wish to. This is a good idea. I am not certain what the minutiae of it could be, but I very much hope that the Minister will take away the point made by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lady Perry and look at it carefully.
While we are on the subject of Ofqual, noble Lords will remember that huge difficulties were mentioned in the newspapers during the previous round of examinations which did not show some of the awarding bodies in a very good light. I understand that there were nine incidents overall. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that Ofqual can impose two types of sanction on the awarding bodies—first, a rap over the knuckles, which may not be very effective; and, secondly, the nuclear option of striking them off the list, which may not be in any way suitable and could cause great difficulties. Therefore, will the Minister and his colleagues consider a third option that could involve a series of fines for various circumstances that would add seriously to the sanctions available to Ofqual? Perhaps some of the difficulties that arose last year and caused distress to pupils and schools will not arise in the future?
Baroness Perry of Southwark
I am grateful to the Minister for that reply and the detail that he offered. I am particularly pleased that he is prepared to consider the possibility of Ofqual not being the only arbiter of whether a qualification is acceptable. Perhaps I should have said in introducing my noble friend’s amendment that there are many good examples, in both state and independent schools who work closely with their local industry, of vocational or professional qualifications given by, for example, some of the large worldwide computer companies and so on. I would suggest that those have a rather greater standing internationally than that of simply Ofqual. It is an inhibitor on those kinds of relationships between local industries and schools if the qualifications that could form part of the collaboration are not recognised in the school’s league tables. I am sure that my noble friend will wish to take this further and I would be happy to join in those discussions. In the meanwhile, I will withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
This whole business of PSHE is almost written on one’s brain because the argument for it has come up again and again in all the education Bills. Relationships are so crucial in everything that we do. I am very much of the view that it certainly does not need to be prescribed and in the Bill. I go along with the approach of my noble friend Lord Sutherland on this. Nevertheless, the whole area is crucially important.
I wish the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was here because when the previous Government introduced citizenship lessons, there was at last great hope that children would be introduced to the business of parenting—not just getting on and understanding their difficult relationships with their parents but actually what a child needs: love, support and caring. That never happened; it got shunted around to different lessons, if it ever took place at all. I would not at all mind having an inspection with that written into it: how is it doing and is it increasing the happiness and the general well-being of our children?
Returning briefly to the business of teaching religion, and what was said just now, it is crucial for all of us to know about the different religions in the world—and none. It is essential that we accept and know and are tolerant about this. One of the horrors in the rest of the world is that that form of tolerance does not exist. So we must do whatever we can in that direction. However, I hope that in the process we are not going to end up with ways that actually restrict the excellent work that many of our religious schools are doing. I am not thinking of these amendments but perhaps some that will come subsequently.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, in response to the query raised by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, about inspections, as I understand it, Ofsted will continue to conduct inspections in academies and other schools as part of national surveys of particular aspects of education. I rise simply to say to our two Ministers that surely the issue of PSHE would be top of the list of priorities for Ofsted in terms of a national survey of what is actually happening. Its report would tell us what is really going on in our schools across the country.
The Lord Bishop of Chester
My Lords, I should like to make three brief points. First, I join in the general applause for the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, on the application of the law of diminishing returns in this area: the more you specify, the more you tend to lose. My second point may also relate to later debates. As far as possible in education, we should try to maintain one framework that covers all schools. There may be some adaptation in schools of different character, but it is in the spirit of our educational system to aim for a framework that brings a Church of England school, a Roman Catholic school, a Jewish school and a local authority maintained school under the same umbrella. We are one society, and it is important to make that point in our education system.
Finally, and perhaps more significantly, I suppose that a Bishop would have to comment on sex and relationships, but sometimes I think that people get obsessed with this area. Generally, the debate has been skewed too much towards it. I also think that linking sex and relationships, while I understand entirely why we do it—we do not want to disentangle sexual relationships from relationships—we do not want to get into the way of thinking that all relationships are therefore fundamentally sexualised as an outcome. I read Frank Field’s report to the Government on children in our society, which is a serious issue. Surveys show that one of the things that children most want to learn is how to be good parents. There is something of a lacuna in these proposals in the area of what I would call parenthood, quite apart from the issues of sexualised or sexually related relationships. I rather agree with the right honourable gentleman down the corridor that what is key to our society is how we hand on civilisation to the next generation. There is some wisdom in the observation in his report that children want more than anything else to learn to be good parents. However, I do not see that coming through, and I certainly do not want to see this education reduced to sex and relationships.