Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Elton]

My noble friend mentioned guidance to staff. I want to put into her mind that it is necessary to talk to parents as well so that they realise how the children are going to be treated and will not take fright when the child comes back and says that he has been handled in a certain way.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, my name has also been put to the amendment moved by my noble friend Lord Lucas. I am delighted with the first report of what the guidance says because it is very much what I had hoped we would hear—a very strong message to teachers that their normal, instinctive behaviour is not somehow criminalised or disapproved or a cause for complaint in any way.

Dealing with this particular issue leads me to say that, looking through the Hansard reports of the last two Committee sittings, I am genuinely concerned that the picture we seem to give of teachers is a wholly negative one, as if they needed to be controlled and regulated otherwise they would be aggressive or in some way behave improperly towards the pupils in their care. I have spent most of my life working with teachers. I have enormous respect for them—for the way in which they entered the profession because the wanted to make children’s lives better, the way in which they work sometimes very long hours in order to bring that about; for the care and the thought that they put into the preparation of their classes and their relationships with children. I worry about the way in which the Committee has been talking, as if there was a whole generation of vulnerable children who were under threat from teachers who were going to behave badly towards them. Anyone who doubts what I say should read back through some of the speeches in Hansard. I hope that we can correct that impression because I know that it is not one that, at heart, this Committee believes. We have all declared our respect for the teaching profession, but I think that we should begin to show it in the way that we deal with some of these amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My Lords, I also speak in favour of the comments made by my noble friend Lady Jones. Perhaps I might do a bit of history even more ancient than that used by my noble friend Lord Knight. This broader teaching workforce in schools originated right back with the 1998 Act and the previous Government's first Green Paper on teacher reform. As we took that forward, I remember the good will that there was among non-teaching staff about managing that change in the teaching workforce, which is probably one of the most important changes of the past 15 years. It has transformed the culture in schools and not only helped individuals but made the job of teachers more professional, because for the first time in a long time they have a proper support infrastructure around them in the way that other professions do.

I remember trying to negotiate that way back in the 1990s. At that time, the thing the unions wanted was a negotiating body. We got to a point when we were in danger of an impasse. We did not have a negotiating body, so how could we take forward these reforms? It was asking that group of workers to do a lot of extra things and to embark on change without any change in pay or promises about conditions or about paying the rate for the job. They fairly readily agreed to do the negotiating first and make the changes first. My noble friend is right that it was not easy to get it through the Treasury. They made the changes and got high-level teaching assistants and bursars in place without having a negotiating body going alongside that.

I thought it was a great tribute to the workforce and to their representatives to change before they had the protection that went alongside that, so when my noble friend managed to secure that negotiating body, for me, that was like closing a circle. I breathed a sigh of relief because it was right that a proper negotiating body went alongside that change. There had almost always been an understanding that the two were necessary but, for once, the workforce changed before they got their protection. It is a great tribute to them, but I would not underestimate how important it was in bringing about cultural change in school. That is why I am now sorry that half of the deal has been broken. I readily accept that the present Government were not part of that deal, but I do not remember objections to that clause in the Bill when it went through. I do not think you can separate asking part of a workforce to change and wanting them to continue to change but taking away their support body.

Secondly, I meet a lot of people who have the incredibly important role of school bursar. That role originates from the 1998 Green Paper. They have done brilliant jobs and are real agents for good and for change. They support heads and governors and are in leadership positions. I often speak at the conference where they train. It is always a conference of two stories. There are bursars who work with heads and governing bodies who understand what their qualification means and what they are meant to do. They talk about their leadership role in school. They are often on the leadership board and feel they are partners in the school. More important than that, they feel as though their qualifications and skills are being used.

The other tale from those conferences is of bursars who work in schools where the head still does not understand and realise what their training and qualifications have given them. They tell stories of personal frustration and of their skills not being used for the good of the school. I understand how heads get to that position: they have a lot on their plate and the truth is that up to the present time they have not been able properly to understand what the job of the bursar should be and what their role in school might be. That is where we will end up. Without those guidelines, job descriptions and framework, some schools, especially those that lack confidence, could take two or three decades to get in place a system for valuing and using their skills. I cannot stress enough that they are the best thing, and I am pleased that this Government appreciate that and will take this forward. Having a broad skill set within schools that can support the crucial role of teacher will enable teachers to teach more effectively and children to learn more effectively and at a higher level.

I ask the Minister to reflect on how taking away this negotiating body will help that broader, more diversified workforce do its job better. I do not think it will. If we get rid of this body, it will wind back 10 to 15 years of progress in having a more effective workforce in schools.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight, have both spoken cogently and persuasively about the importance of school support staff. I hope there is no one in this room who does not recognise the immensely important job they do and the status they have within every school. However, this clause and these amendments are not about the status, standing and job descriptions of support staff—they are simply about their national negotiating body. Although I have listened carefully to what has been said, I have not heard anything which has convinced me that the national negotiating body over pay and conditions is anything to do with the standing and status within individual schools of the splendid support staff who work there.

I strongly argue that each school has—and has a right—to develop the individual job descriptions, relationships and the jobs assigned to their support staff. Every school has its own requirements and needs, and it deploys its staff and support staff in ways that meet those needs. I believe it gives greater status to the support staff when they have a position within the school, which is recognised within the school and has been negotiated within the school, and a job which is assigned to them. So although I endorse entirely everything that has been said about the importance of support staff, I have heard nothing that convinces me concerning the national negotiating body over pay and conditions. Though of course such bodies are dear to trade unionists—you have more clout as a trade union if you have a national negotiating body—this only damages the trade union body which supported it. It does not damage the standing and status of individual support staff in individual schools.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, it is clear that everyone is agreed on the important contribution that school support staff make, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, my noble friend Lady Perry and others. Whether we are talking about teaching assistants, caretakers or catering staff, schools cannot function without them. That is not at issue, nor is it at issue how much we value them. The question is whether, like the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, we think there needs to be a single national pay and conditions framework backed up by statute or whether, as my noble friend Lady Perry argued, employers should be able to continue setting local pay more flexibly to account for local conditions. As the noble Baroness would expect, the Government favour greater local autonomy and flexibility because we know that is a feature of the most successful school systems in the world.

Let me give one concrete example. The first matters on which the SSSNB was working to reach agreement would have been a set of national role profiles and an associated job evaluation scheme. To implement the scheme would have required every one of more than 500,000 school support staff in England to have their roles re-evaluated. According to the impact assessment for the ASCL Bill this would require in excess of 200,000 hours of time from head teachers or senior leadership.

There is already a national framework in place in relation to pay and conditions for the majority of support staff working in community and voluntary-controlled schools in the form of the National Joint Council for Local Government Services agreement. It is a voluntary agreement known as the Green Book. It was negotiated by the local government employers, UNISON, GMB and Unite and is used by all except three local authorities. In making our decision to end the SSSNB, we asked the views of those most closely involved—its membership, which includes trade unions and employers—and its independent chair. The trade unions were in favour of retaining the SSSNB but the support staff employer organisations took a different view. The local government group, which incorporates the Local Government Association and draws its members from Conservative, Liberal Democrat, Labour and independent political parties, reaffirmed those views recently to the Minister of State for schools.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley argued for a delay to the abolition of the SSSNB, arguing that it should have an opportunity to complete its work and be judged on that basis. Certainly we would be happy for the SSSNB member organisations to decide to work together independently of government to complete the work on the job role profiles. I believe that that is being considered by trade unions and the employers. However, we want to allow schools and local authorities to choose whether to use the materials being developed rather than being required to do so by law.

I believe that the Government’s decision is not based on a premature judgment of the quality of the work of the SSSNB. It is based rather on our view that schools should have greater rather than less autonomy in matters of staffing. Given that, I fear that delaying the abolition would leave the SSSNB member organisations working in vain on a framework that the Government would not in the end support and that employers have made clear that they do not want.

Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

71: Clause 9, page 16, line 41, after “regulations” insert “must provide for an appropriate body to receive a report from a person who is independent of the school and local authority, has successful teaching experience and who has observed the teacher during the induction period on more than one occasion and”

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, this amendment continues with the theme of induction and deals with the rather important issue of who assesses whether the teacher has or has not successfully completed the induction year. The Bill is rather misty on who will do this assessment. New Section 135A(2)(h) simply requires the head teacher ,

“to make a recommendation to the appropriate body”.

My amendment would allow a person who is independent of the school and the local authority to make the judgment. They will be well qualified to make it because they have successful teaching experience and will not pop in just once to make the assessment but will observe the teacher during the induction period on more than one occasion. We all know that you can have one bad lesson and then one sparkling one that goes terribly well, so it is important to see the teacher on more than one occasion.

This is very important, not only because, as we all agreed in the previous debate, induction is a vital part of the training of the teacher, but because it is sometimes very difficult to make an assessment. As I know from long observation and experience, the college or university where the students do their initial training tends to judge them much more on their academic achievement than on their practical performance. Also, it will be very reluctant for all sorts of reasons that I do not need to enumerate to fail many of its students. Now we move on to the school. If it is left to the school and the head, there is also a very real difficulty. The young teacher will have been a colleague for a year, and the school will be very reluctant to make a harsh judgment, even when it has grave reservations about her or his ability to perform well. Therefore, we are left with the crucial option of bringing in a well qualified person who will observe on several occasions.

I did not speak in the previous debate but I hope that even those who have not done too well in their first year might nevertheless have their induction period extended, as is suggested by new Clause 135A(2)(g). Like my noble friend Lord Elton, I have seen many teachers flounder in one school and do very well in the next. Crucially, we have heard that only 15 or 16 fail every year. That is simply not enough. We are still letting through a tiny minority of people who are not born to be teachers and who are not very happy in the teaching profession. For their sake, as well as for the sake of the thousands of children whom they may influence in their career, it is important that they are given at the very beginning the chance to say, “Teaching is not for me, so I will go into another profession”—rather than, out of the kindness of our hearts, just swinging them through. It is pretty miserable to spend the rest of your career doing a job that you are not good at, that you do not particularly enjoy and in which you struggle every day. The red light should come on at a very early stage and I hope the amendment will go some way to making that possible. I beg to move.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I will speak briefly. In days gone by, the inspector called. They would sit and watch newly qualified or probationary teachers, as they were called in those days, and make a decision. We have moved on considerably.

My current experience—I have a newly qualified teacher—is that it is a very detailed process. It is not just about one classroom observation. The newly qualified teacher will have a mentor in school who will guide them through any issues or concerns that they have. Each term, they will be observed on average two or three times. At the end of each term, a detailed form will be completed, which will have to be signed by the mentor and head teacher, both of whom will also provide comments. The newly qualified teacher can give an input into how they feel the first term has gone. That would be in partnership with the local authority and the local authority would then receive that form, which would be completed each term, three times a year. The newly qualified teacher would have to be successful in each of those terms, so it is not just a question of the head teacher observing the newly qualified teacher; other people would be involved in that as well. It would not just be about literacy and numeracy, but it might be that the person responsible for science in the school would observe a class that the newly qualified teacher was taking.

Currently, it is a very rigorous and robust process. I have no objection to an outside inspector or independent person coming in, but I want to assure my noble friend that this current process is very worthwhile.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I do not believe that legislation is required for that, but we will come on to that issue in a later group, where we have some specific amendments on the role of the HEIs.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I thank the Minister very much for his characteristically generous response and for his understanding of the point that is being made. I am particularly grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, for making the point that I was trying to make, which is that those who have been colleagues, coaches and mentors—and all the other good things that we must have during induction—are not the best people to make a final, and perhaps rather harsh, judgment at the end of the induction. I feel that having an independent judgment is important.

However, in view of the Minister’s generous response to have further discussions, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 71 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

In case any Member of the Committee thinks that the number of convictions, including cautions, is insignificant in relation to the number of allegations, the NASUWT figures show that in 2009, 15 per cent of all allegations resulted in cautions or convictions. That is not an insignificant number.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

At Second Reading, I quoted figures for the past 10 years from the department which showed that more than 1,700 allegations against teachers were made. If 85 per cent of them were not upheld, the figures do not support the argument that the noble Lord is making.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

With great respect to the noble Baroness, I cannot agree. Perhaps that is because I am a hoary old lawyer and she, happily, is not. A 15 per cent conviction rate in respect of all the allegations made is a very high outcome. I will happily discuss this with the noble Baroness outside the Room. The ATL figures seem to me to be hopeless as a basis for bringing in this important reform.

The JCHR seems to be lacking in awareness of the balance of injustice and harm between pupils, particularly young ones, and their teachers when it comes to criminal allegations. We are in danger—and in the other place they are even more in danger—of expecting too much of the law. It is not the finely tuned truth machine that ideally we would like it to be. It never can be, given the machinations of mankind, despite the best efforts of our excellent judiciary. We do not talk about rough justice for nothing. That is why in criminal law we have a test of proof beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the lesser, civil test which is based on a balance of probabilities. The bias towards the accused is necessary to protect the innocent from conviction, which we as a society believe is much more important than convicting every guilty person.

We are not talking here about conviction or acquittal but about the freedom of the press to report, within the bounds of defamation, where criminal allegations are made, pre-charge, against teachers. We have to balance their vulnerability to unfair reporting against the undue sheltering of teachers, the interests of actual and potential victims and the interests of the public.

I turn finally and briefly to paragraph 112 of the June report of the JCHR, which states that,

“defamation proceedings offer no protection”,

to a teacher,

“where a report states that an allegation has been made”,

provided that it,

“does not assert that the allegation is true”.

The noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred to this in his earlier reply.

As one who has done a considerable amount of defamation work and overcome that defence put up by newspapers, I can only think that the committee is wrong when it says that libel proceedings offer no protection. The Reynolds case in 2001 and the Jameel case six years later prevent newspapers sheltering behind the defence of qualified privilege—or reportage, as it is called, in relation to a matter of public interest unless they comply with sensible tests. In the Jameel case, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, said that newspapers would not have a defence unless the report was responsible, fair, on a matter of public interest and in compliance with certain other tests, which would include the obligation to evaluate fairly and sensibly the basis of an allegation. They cannot simply recycle a verbal report of an allegation or something given to them by letter without checking. They have also to check with the person aggrieved, the teacher. They have to give the gist of both sides of the story and, importantly, they have to look at the whole tenor and pitch of the article. I hope that that is enough to show that teachers who are the subject of sensational, biased, unfair reports pre-charge have protection. One or more of the unions might make it their business to pick up a couple of test cases, which they could take and use to make their point. Believe me, that would reverberate around Fleet Street very quickly, as my noble friend Lord Black will confirm.

Teachers might also take up the invitation of the Press Complaints Commission—again the noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred to this—to report grievances in relation to pre-publication publicity. He rightly said that there had been none. But, as the JCHR report says, the notion that no complaints are made because it is a useless thing to do is simply not right. First, it costs nothing to make a report to the Press Complaints Commission. Secondly, it has very real powers over its newspaper members. It can and does make them publish retractions and apologies. So I do not agree with what it and my noble friend have asserted.

To summarise, I sincerely believe that the case for this most important of limitations on press freedom, albeit put forward with sincere concern for a most highly valued section of our community, is unsafe. Surely, the onus is on those who would restrict press freedom, especially to a single group and in a way never ventured before, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a change is unarguably essential. But, as I have endeavoured to show, the Government’s lack of direct relevant evidence as to the present extent of pre-charge publicity affecting teachers is all but total. It is that publicity, and that alone, which Clause 13 addresses. Not only is the need for the clause wholly unproven but it could and will unfairly disadvantage pupils and, in the worst cases, prevent teacher abuse ever seeing the light of day if a charge for whatever reason, and there are many, is never brought or if a school fails to bring disciplinary procedures against a teacher, and there are many reasons why that might be the case. Nor will truth be a defence, as I have indicated. For those main reasons, I propose that Clause 13 should not stand part of this Bill.

Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Morris of Yardley]

My thoughts had not gone that far, but my noble friend puts forward a very interesting proposition. I think that perhaps why he thinks that—and why he is right—is because some heads have always sought to manage their admissions through some element of exclusion. There are times when that is right. Some heads, in their first year of taking over a school that has been in very challenging circumstances, have excluded to lay down rules and regulations and to make sure that they can set standards. I understand that, but what the noble Lord suggests would be a terrible thing—and I hope, having put that on record, the Minister will bear it in mind.

I will finish there, because I wanted only to make that brief point. Either assumption is wrong, whether it is about the infallibility of heads or whether it is that when they make a mistake we pretend they have not made a mistake. Worse than that, this is not only unjust and unfair but will do nothing to improve discipline, because the kids and the school community will know that a child was excluded, that the appeal found for them and that the child has not been reinstated. That will do nothing to encourage the school community to support the head. Kids are really good about fairness, and so are parents. The legislation as it has been put to us will not help in that regard.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Baroness said. I am very pleased that she brought our attention to two factors—that the children who tend to be the subject of exclusion have made the lives of their fellow pupils in their class pretty difficult and seriously hampered their education, and that they have made several teachers’ lives very miserable. There is nothing worse than having a seriously disruptive child in a class when you are trying to teach the rest of the children.

Where I part company from the noble Baroness, on a purely factual basis, is when she says that the clauses in the Bill assume that the head is always right. Of course, they do not. New subsection (4)(c) says quite firmly that the review panel may consider,

“that the decision of the responsible body was flawed when considered in the light of the principles applicable on an application for judicial review”,

and that it may,

“quash the decision of the responsible body”.

In other words, the Bill clearly assumes that sometimes the head will be wrong.

The other point that the noble Baroness made was about the importance of the head being in authority and being able to control and show leadership in his or her own school. As many of us have said in previous debates and as much research has shown, the authority of the head is paramount in the success of the school. It is not only that the head must be right—and you would hope he or she would be right more times than he or she is wrong—but that the head must be seen to be in control and in authority. If the head is constantly overruled by an outside body, it is very difficult for that to be seen. I agree with that the noble Baroness said—that kids are very quick to recognise what is fair and what is not fair. But we have already established—thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, giving us the figures—that there are very few occasions when the decision of the head has proved to be wrong. Most of the time, the head gets it right, and the excluded child leaves the school a bit more peace and the other pupils more ability to learn than there was before.

My final point is that this does not involve the head alone. It involves the head with the governing body, which will have made the decision as well. There will already have been considerable investigation of the head’s decision. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, will speak for the authority of the governors. I find it very hard to believe that many cases will go wrong, when the head has made a decision on behalf of a teacher who wishes to exclude a pupil and if that has been reviewed by a governing body. Of course, some will, and the review panel has the power to say so, to stand the decision on one side and to ask the head to go again. I disagree with the noble Baroness when she said that, when the review panel sends it back to the school, it will always repeat what it said before. I do not think that that is so. I think that after the very solemn and rather frightening business of being found to be wrong by an external review panel, the school will certainly think again.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

That may be the case but will the noble Baroness agree that in those circumstances at the moment, if the appeals panel decides that the decision was wrong, it has the power to allow the child back into the school? What is proposed now is that, when the review panel puts the decision aside, it cannot make its own, informed judgment—it can simply ask the governing body to reconsider—and it has no power to give the child redress if it is really of the view that a mistake has been made. Does she really think that that is a just process?

[Lord Peston]

My reading of the Bill is somewhat different from that of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry: it is that it gives the head enormously more power than he or she had before. Is she saying that that is not true?

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I am not saying that it is true or untrue. The difference—it is very small—is that in the past the appeals panel could insist that the child went back to the school, while the review panel can now simply say, “You got the decision wrong. We ask you to consider again”. The only difference between what a review panel can do and what the previous appeals panel could do is the power to reinstate. In any case, to allow a child to go back into a school when all this process has taken place is a terrible thing for the teacher who asked for the exclusion in the first case, for the governing body which made the decision and supported the head, and for the authority of the head themselves.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I know what effort heads and teachers make when children are reinstated into schools in difficult circumstances, so I am very pro what is going on; they work very hard. Does the noble Baroness not accept that the child who finds that their case has been upheld but is still told that they are not able to go back to their school would see this as a total injustice? As many of these children are struggling anyway, this simply reinforces their feeling that society is simply not just, so why should they conform and join in with it?

Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I make one or two comments following up what other noble Lords have said. First, on the Graham Allen report, what struck me was that it talked not just about emotional support, which of course is necessary, but about brain development. We must tackle that issue. Children's brain development happens very early, from the day they are born. If we do not get in there early with interventions, the child's brain will suffer as well as its emotional development. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the assessment, and with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, about resources. I believe that the second part of the Graham Allen report will be launched shortly—so the Minister keeps telling me. I wonder whether the Minister has any news on the launch of the second part, which is to do with the resourcing of early years. I hope that he will be able this afternoon to give us some news about that resourcing.

I also want to make a point about stepping back. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has often talked about the need for parenthood education—not just developing children when they are born but stepping back to the generation before and teaching them how to be good parents. That is something that we may pick up on when we talk later about personal, social and health education, or whatever we are calling it. Parenthood education has to be borne in mind when we talk about early intervention for children.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I think we are united on all sides about the importance of the early years. I congratulate the noble Lord on suggesting the designation of the foundation years; that is particularly welcome.

However, I must express considerable concern about subsection (2) of Amendment 1, which puts massive responsibility on local authorities. That is a responsibility for every child born in that the local authority area, including children of parents who are more than competent and motivated to provide all that is necessary for their child, with,

“healthy physical, social, emotional and cognitive readiness to enter school”.

The resources required for a local authority to be able to do that for every child are enormous. Surely those resources should be targeted on children where there is inability—for good or ill reasons—in the family to provide that readiness.

Perhaps it is a matter of wording, but I do not think that we should give responsibility to the local authority for every child born in its area. For every family, every time a baby is born, to have the local authority and its various agencies move to intervene in the raising of that child is neither feasible nor desirable. Let us concentrate our attention where it is needed and not impose those blanket requirements on a local authority.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. It is absolutely fitting and appropriate that the first topic that we are discussing today is support for parents. That is particularly the case given that, in the rest of the Bill, parents are notable only by their absence. Some measures take power and responsibility away from parents. The noble Lord asks which public body has the duty and authority to support parents to ensure that children, especially those from a disadvantaged background, are school-ready, as he said.

The reason that this is so important has just been referred to. Note, for instance, the work of Leon Feinstein: he has shown clearly that a child born with competent potential in terms of both cognitive abilities and development but who grows up in an impoverished environment without enrichment or the stimulation and support from their parents can, before the age of two years, actually fall behind children who are perhaps born with less ability. We get that crossover. That shows how important the years before compulsory schooling are for the development of the synapses, the brain and all the rest of it. They are absolutely critical.

How we support parents is critical in this. While good nursery and early-years provision—we will go on to talk about that—can help to address that imbalance, you cannot sustain those benefits unless you also work with parents to ensure that they understand how children develop and continue in the home what good early education pre-school provision would be doing. In my experience of going round a lot of Sure Start children’s centres, most parents really want both to do this and the support to enable them to do it well. Very few parents do not care about it. Even though parents may not have much understanding or ability, they can be helped to help their children.

At the moment that responsibility to work with parents lies in the mutual co-operation among the children’s services in the children’s trust in each local authority. That is a statutory duty to co-operate. The Sure Start children’s centres in deprived areas have an explicit responsibility to develop services for parents. Many have done groundbreaking work, not only with mothers, which is the normal first port of call, but particularly with fathers as well—that is very important. Local authorities were also given resources and responsibility for developing parental support services and for co-ordinating health and everybody else.

My concern is that all that current apparatus for supporting authorities in developing services is under jeopardy because of both a number of things that have happened and a number of measures in the Bill. In the children’s trust in the Bill, the duty to co-operate by schools from those arrangements is proposed to go. We are all concerned about the future for Sure Start children’s centres, particularly in deprived areas. With the reduction in funding, many local authorities are cutting those services. I do not know what the situation is with local authorities in terms of the parenting support co-ordinators that they were providing resources for. Can the Minister help us today to understand where the duty to support parents will lie following the Government’s measures—those that they have already taken and those that they propose in the Bill? What will be the impact on parenting support of, for example, taking away the duty to co-operate or the reduction in Sure Start children’s centre funding? What commitment do the Government specifically have to support parents and how do they propose to do that? Those are the questions that all noble Lords around the Committee Room today are interested in.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I support what has been proposed. I put my name to this amendment because I have spoken on a number of occasions with the manager of a Montessori nursery and been impressed with what I have heard from her about her work. Indeed, she is a very impressive individual, having worked in the private business sector before coming into nursery teaching. Recently she was telling me about her experience of continuing professional development, where she had a senior practitioner observe her in the course of a whole day’s teaching, taking careful notes of what she and the children were doing and of the interactions between the teacher and the children. She learnt from this. The senior practitioner said, “Very good, but you do tend to lift your finger a bit too much”. She said, “Yes, this is what my mother did to me. Aha; I am bringing it into the nursery classroom”. That is the sort of model that I think the Government are proposing more widely in schools generally in their White Paper: classroom-based learning. I would regret if anything were done to the detriment of such a good approach, so I hope that the Minister can be reassuring in his response.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I support the amendments. We are not talking here about some new provider on the block with bright ideas. Montessori is an established, tried and true, long-lasting provider of education. It is of a high quality. In days long ago when it was inspected regularly by HMI, inspectors always came back with very high-standard reports of what was going on. Montessori also has its own system for training its own teachers and staff, which again is of a very high quality and thorough, and produces people who are well versed in the Montessori way. There are many people of all ages, some probably now in their 80s and 90s, who have been through the Montessori experience and can testify to its importance in their own lives. I hope, as others have said, that the Minister will at least give a warm response to the amendments.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I was not able to support the last group of amendments of the noble Lord, Lord True, because I tended to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about the danger of a two-tier system. However, I am very pleased to be able to support this group of amendments enthusiastically.

My knowledge of Montessori is that my grandchildren went to a Montessori nursery. Indeed, my daughter-in-law, their mother, herself already highly qualified with a PhD in biochemistry, was so impressed by the system that she started to train as a Montessori teacher. This delighted me. We need highly intelligent and highly qualified people in the nursery sector and I thought that was excellent.

If we want to offer parents a wide choice of early-years provision we ought to do everything that we can to encourage proven, high-quality systems such as Montessori and Steiner and, if necessary, make them special cases.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I have real concerns about this part of the Bill. If ever I saw a can of worms—I do not see them very often—this is it. It is contentious and sensitive. Obviously, ideally, we do not want young people to be searched at all, but I want to get over negative and punitive provisions and move on to more positive ones. I will give a couple of examples to illustrate that in a moment.

This part of the Bill is likely to result in a lack of dignity for both pupil and teacher or a security person—the person who is doing the searching. Some amendments about boundaries for examination, issuing rules about items for which a search may be made, training of staff and the search being carried out by a senior member of staff, may mitigate all that, but consider the chaos that may ensue.

Many years ago, I went to school as a pupil in Darwen, Lancashire, a sleepy little town in the foothills of the Pennines. It was in the news about two months ago because teachers had gone on strike due to a breakdown in discipline because of confiscated articles. As I said, the town is very sedate, and I could not believe what was going on. They had gone on strike because of discipline issues about confiscating mobile phones, I think. It was about who confiscated what—it was highly subjective—and why they were confiscated. One minute, something was confiscated; the next minute, it was restored. It was absolute chaos.

The other example that I recall from when I was teaching was of a male teacher grabbing a 15 year-old girl’s handbag. A nasty fight broke out, which I could hear from down the corridor. I heard her yelling, “Get your hands off a lady's handbag”. I had to intervene, being her head of year. I said, “What is in the handbag?” She said, “My hairbrush and some personal items”. I merely use that example to show the inappropriateness of a male teacher being seen to interfere with what a girl pupil sees as her private items.

What is in the Bill is more contentious and dangerous than the examples that I have given. It states that staff can go through phones, laptops and delete information,

“if the person thinks that there is a good reason to do so”.

Imagine what that means. It could set up conflicts between pupils and teachers, staff and senior management, staff and parents, pupils and parents, pupils and pupils. All kinds of things could go on. There is the same-sex issue. There are cultural issues, abuse issues and special educational needs issues.

I accept that pupils should not be bringing into school items that can harm others, which are illegal or which can cause chaos in the classroom—for example, mobile phones—but, and it is a big “but”, surely a school must have rules and contracts which do not permit certain items to be brought in or, if they are, insist that they should be placed in the pupil’s private locker. That provision exists in many schools.

I know many schools where searching is not an issue. A head teacher at a school in east London said to me recently, “We have no tolerance of mobile phones, not an issue about searching at all. Pupils understand this; parents understand this”. Much of the provision is heavy-handed and can give rise to real negative, personal, contentious issues arising. Surely an amendment can be thought of which gives schools the power to ban certain items and make that clear to pupils and parents.

Educating to encourage respect for people and property is a must. No doubt we shall come on to that when we discuss personal, social and health education. Discipline in schools is not just about punishment; that does not work. This part of the Bill is about punishment and creating difficulty for parents, teachers, pupils—the lot. I plead with the Minister to look carefully at it again. Otherwise, in searching pupils, schools will provide the catalyst for conflict for young people in any context.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, always talks a great deal of sense, and I absolutely agree with her about the can of worms. The whole issue is a can of worms, not just what the amendments address.

It would be wonderful if we could assure ourselves that every school in the country had such excellent discipline that rules about what can and cannot be brought into the school would be instantly obeyed, that children who have been told that they had to put things in lockers would do so, and so on. Unfortunately, in many schools, that is not the reality. There are crisis incidents where a teacher will suddenly become aware that not a child but a large, hulking teenage boy is carrying a knife and bringing it into the classroom at the end of a fight or row outside and there is every chance that he may intend to use it. At that point, a teacher has to take action. Whatever legislation and whatever framework the House or Parliament can produce has to allow for such a crisis for teachers.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Does not that particular scenario—which is obviously a real and concerning one for teachers in some schools—of a large physical presence with a knife underline the need for proper training? Without proper training, the danger into which the teacher might be putting himself or herself by using force, however reasonable, to try to confiscate the knife could be profound, however great the crisis may be there and then.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I was about to move on to training. With great respect to the noble Baroness, Lady Jolly, I do not think it could be only one person who is trained because the scenario I was describing could happen to any teacher. It could happen to a very small female teacher like me—I have taught in some tough schools in my time, with some very tough, studded-black-leather-jacket chaps in my classes—and so every teacher needs to be trained. They need to understand how to deal with someone who is carrying a knife in his back pocket, his sock or wherever it is. I would certainly argue for minimal training for all teachers in how to deal with such issues.

However, that is not to make them think that they should therefore be doing searches all the time. Rather than training in how to do a search—although that must be an element—there should be much better training for teachers in when a search is or is not appropriate. I would keep it very much to the crisis situation and to previously known offenders who have tried before to smuggle things into the school and classroom. That is where a teacher’s judgment is the most important thing of all. We are imagining helpless, innocent pupils with aggressive teachers; however, as I have said, it can be exactly the opposite way round. The training needs to give teachers the ability to make the judgment as to when a search is or is not appropriate.

I heartily support the need for training but ask that we reverse some of our mistrust of teachers and our assumption of innocence among pupils and allow for the other way round.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I particularly support Amendments 26 and 31 which deal with the keeping of records. It is immensely important that in such situations proper records are kept with the kinds of information specified in the amendments—we could perhaps look at them again—and that these records are available to Ofsted and the governing body. This is quite fundamental and will enable the school to know what is going on and what the balance of activities amounts to.

I certainly support the importance of training but I think that it should be school-wide. Any teacher could run into such a difficulty and be faced with a problem that could be both threatening and frightening if they had not had to formally think about it before.

On Amendment 20 and the reference to security staff, I was left uncertain about how this would apply in small primary schools. If we press ahead with the amendment, small primary schools probably would not have the capacity to have someone specially trained. It would be useful to hear what the intention of the amendment is because there seems to be some variation.

I accept what my noble friend Lady Perry says is critical: there are crisis situations and legislation must allow for dealing with these. A last, doubtless very naive, thought: could some of the problems of intimacy and same sex be dealt with if schools had electronic scanning devices available? These would probably be as cheap as specialist training courses and would pick up electronic implements—phones and so on, which can be a source of great trouble—and weapons. They would not pick up drugs—I accept that—but electronic implements and weapons cause crises which have to be dealt with very quickly. Regulation is very important but the threat that you will be scanned then makes an issue of it. It could be a practical, simple way of taking some of the sting out of this.

Education: Academies Funding

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, as a former Academies Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Knight, will be one of the few people on the face of the earth who may have some glimmer of knowledge of how the LACSEG operates. I had not realised that he had initiated a review. I would be happy to discuss where he got to with it, because we are obviously grappling with the same issues. He will know that, because of the complexity and because the approach taken varies from year to year and from local authority to local authority, it is hard to be definitive about how the system operates. I give the noble Lord an absolute undertaking that our aim throughout is to make sure that the funding that an academy gets is the same as it would have got as a maintained school, and that a maintained school will not be disadvantaged by the development of the academies programme.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

Will my noble friend confirm that one of the difficulties that academies experience as they go through the transition is the enormous disparity between the amounts that local authorities have retained for their central expenses and therefore the amounts that are handed on to schools as they become independent? Is it correct that the disparity ranges from below 5 per cent of academies’ budget to more than 25 per cent?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am not aware of the specific percentages, but there are big variations between local authorities and the decisions they take as to how they want to spend their money, which seems to me to be proper. There are variations between years, and then, more generally, the school funding system operates in a way whereby some children in some schools in some parts of the country are funded at a significantly lower level than children in similar schools with similar characteristics in other parts of the country. As well as looking at academies’ funding and trying to make sure that it follows the principles that I set out, we are consulting on the whole school funding formula to try to make sure that children in one part of the country are not out of pocket compared with children in schools with similar characteristics in another part of the country.

Education Bill

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I warmly welcome the Bill. It has also been welcomed by many in the education service. It is significant that the Association of School and College Leaders, which leads our educational institutions, has also given it a warm welcome. I shall concentrate on two major areas that underpin the philosophy of the coalition and its approach to public services. First, the Bill tackles underperformance. Secondly, it offers teachers more autonomy and freedom from bureaucracy and regulation, which have done so much to undermine their professionalism and morale.

Underperformance has been one of the major concerns of recent years. It is simply not acceptable that there are schools at which less than 20 per cent of pupils achieve the basic standard of five good GCSE passes, while in other schools more than 90 per cent of pupils achieve this standard. Nor is it acceptable that the gap between the lowest and the highest achievers in an age group has grown steadily wider over the past decade. It is therefore with pleasure that I see the coalition proposing in the Bill to offer free early years education to the most deprived small children. Early intervention can, we know, make a huge difference to underperformance later in life.

We also know that the absence of effective discipline is one of the barriers to pupil achievement; indeed, it comes first in any school or classroom. The first requirement of a good teacher is to command the attention and respect of her or his class. If pupils are fooling around, playing up and occupied with anything but their work, they are simply not learning. In the best of worlds, teachers can achieve good discipline without needing extra powers, but sadly the world in many schools is now tough and even violent. Where a teacher has every reason to believe, for example, that an aggressive teenager is carrying a knife, the right to search is a basic protection for other, more vulnerable children in the school. The Bill’s provisions for giving back to teachers the power to exercise good discipline in various ways, even in extreme cases, are therefore much to be welcomed.

A further measure to tackle underperformance is the new power for the Secretary of State to close schools at which pupils are manifestly underperforming, regardless of whether there is an Ofsted judgment. Ofsted’s own performance has not always been reliable. It is good to see that its judgments are not to be the sole arbiter of a school’s success or failure. I ask my noble friend to consider new mechanisms for rewarding schools whose performance is outstanding, whether or not Ofsted has so judged them.

Another major contribution to tackling underperformance is the requirement to maintain international comparisons. As has been said, in the past decade the UK has fallen behind many other advanced countries in performance in key subjects. We need our young people to emerge from the education system with skills as good as, and better than, those of our competitors. It is therefore essential that we keep a sharp eye on how we match up.

Trusting teachers is the theme most dear to me. Teachers, as we have frequently urged from all sides of the House, are the heart of the education enterprise. Their contribution is the one essential determining factor in success at school and individual pupil level. Teachers have particularly welcomed the Bill’s provision of anonymity for those accused of improper behaviour. As has been said, it is an appalling thing for a teacher to be falsely accused. It can destroy their career, even their marriage and family relationships, yet it is such an easy thing for a pupil to do. Those who need persuading that this measure of protection is needed might consider that in the past 10 years, 1,785 teachers have been so accused, of whom only 158—less than 1 in 10—were taken to court, and of these fewer than half, 64, were finally convicted. Yet the lives of those other 1,721 had in many cases been turned upside down.

I am pleased indeed to see that teachers are to have more freedom not only in discipline but in the content of what they teach—that is, in the curriculum. These provisions go some way to reducing the burden of regulation, but we will have to hope for a real change both of heart and of the prevailing culture among the staff to be transferred from the QCDA, as well as Ofsted and Ofqual, if real professional freedom is to be achieved.

That brings me to the subject of inspection. I warmly welcome the new slimmed-down list of what the chief inspector's report should cover, including the spiritual, moral, social and cultural development of children, which should give comfort to the right reverend Prelate, who is not in his place. However, early reports of what is happening in this regard give me cause for concern. I hope above all else to see a professional and dignified process of school and college inspection that works to improve schools, not condemn them, and that looks for good work and green shoots of improvement, not faults. Such inspection could bear down on standards and give Ministers the accurate and comprehensive understanding of what is happening in the system that sound policy-making requires.

I am pleased to see four more quangos disappearing. Few will mourn the end of the YPLA, which in its short life has become unbelievably bloated in both numbers of staff and cost. I regret that the GTC never succeeded in meeting the aspirations that many of us had for it. I pay warm tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, for the excellent work he did in its early days. When the functions of the GTC and the TDA are transferred, it will be important to ensure that the training offered to teachers as their careers develop is appropriate to their needs, to the needs of the school in which they are teaching, and to the needs of the education service as a whole. I ask my noble friend what devices are in place to ensure that those three levels of need are appropriately assessed and good quality provision for their fulfilment is assured.

I also ask my noble friend what arrangements are in place to ensure that during the induction year there will be some outside judgment to provide an independent addition to the school's assessment? Can we not consider the induction year as a necessary step before being granted a licence to practise?

Education: Pupils and Young People

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Thursday 28th October 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved By

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

To call attention to the case for providing excellence in education for all pupils and young people; and to move for papers.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to debate this important topic today. I look forward very much to hearing the contributions of so many noble Lords who I know share my passion for raising standards in our schools and colleges. I say a particular thank you to the Minister, who has bravely come to take part in our debate today, despite having had the awful experience of being mugged—quite severely, as I understand it—on his way home last night. I know that the whole House will wish to join me in giving him our thanks for being here, our sympathy and our very best wishes.

The history of our nation’s search for the holy grail of “every school a good school” has been both long and so far, sadly, unsuccessful. Nearly 70 years ago, the great Education Act of 1944 set the goal of every child to be entitled to education suited to their “age, ability and aptitude”. That goal, also, has so far not been attained.

Let me reflect on the task that we have yet to complete for at least three groups of our young people. First, far too many bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive an education that is far below their ability. Secondly, far too many young people are forced into a mould of education unsuited to their interest or aptitude. Thirdly, far too many exceptionally gifted children—perhaps most particularly those gifted in the sciences—are insufficiently challenged by the education that they receive. Tragically, for them and for our country, some young people in all three of those categories fall by the wayside.

Consider first the bright children from poor backgrounds. Fewer than half as many pupils who are eligible for free school meals achieve the magic five good GCSEs as do their better-off contemporaries. The gap between the poorest-achieving schools and the best is shocking. Last year, at the bottom, 138 schools failed to achieve five good GCSE passes for even 20 per cent of their pupils. Meanwhile, the top 184 schools achieve that success for more than 90 per cent of their pupils. The sad fact is that those worst-achieving schools were almost always found in areas of social deprivation. In Britain today, where you live, more than any other factor, determines your access to good education. League tables of school achievement simply tell you where rich people live. If we could abolish catchment areas, that might help, although it would create other injustices and is in practical terms unworkable.

What every parent wants and every child deserves is a good neighbourhood school. That is why the academies programme is so important and why it offers the greatest prospect of lifting the standards of schools in the areas of greatest need. I here pay tribute to the previous Government and especially to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, for introducing the academies programme, which built on and extended Lord Joseph’s city technology college vision. The Academies Act introduced by the coalition Government, which occupied many hours of time in this House before the Summer Recess, took that vision further and expanded the freedoms of academies, allowing them better to serve their pupils’ and parents’ needs. Add to that the introduction by the coalition Government of a pupil premium for children on free school meals and the prospect of at last offering the poorest children excellence in education is in sight.

Perhaps more controversially, we need to address the many young people currently forced into a mode of education unsuited to their talents and interests. There are still some who believe that all young people should be forced into an academic education right through their schooldays. Under the previous Government, schools and teachers had been judged by their pupils’ achievement on written tests and examinations. Targets of 50 per cent of young people entering higher education reflected their fixed belief in the academic mould, although, on examination, this belief seems perverse. It fails to take into account the country’s need for well educated and skilled craftsmen and technicians, while also failing to take into account the simple fact that many young people are uninterested in academic achievement but have motivation and talent in the technical and vocational areas.

The previous Government’s introduction of diplomas was the first effort to recognise that—I again pay tribute to them for it—but the criteria for those diplomas was too often academic and schools that offered them did not always provide the vocational expertise and the links to employers that were needed for them to succeed. I am delighted that the coalition Government are increasing the number of apprenticeships and I hope that employers will respond, even in these hard times, by providing the hands-on work experience that motivates the apprentice and provides her or him with valuable practical skills. If we are to provide for all the talents and skills of our young people, this area still needs to be addressed with some urgency.

Thirdly, we need to do far, far more to meet the needs of the exceptionally gifted children, on whose talents will rest much of the future success of business, innovation, public service and academic discovery. In recent years, under the mistaken policies of the previous Government, it has appeared almost sinful to allow the natural spread of talent in the population to be reflected in the outcomes of education. A levelling down of expectations and achievement so that no pupil outshone the rest became mistakenly accepted as evidence of social inclusion.

As a consequence, the leading universities found that they could no longer trust the results of A-level examinations which promised outstanding results to a majority of young people. They found gifted scientists who suffered from a lack of any rigour in their understanding of the disciplines of physics or chemistry, with the result that these top universities have now turned to separate examinations that test the skills of the most gifted and have provided special coaching to bring 19 year-olds up to the required standard in maths and even in written English. What an indictment of what these highly gifted young people’s education has provided for them.

Gifted children have special needs, just as do those with learning difficulties, and they need nurturing and developing in ways that too many of our state schools have failed to offer. Providing for the needs of every child means accepting that equality of opportunity—for which I will fight as long as I have breath—does not imply equality of outcome. Some children run faster; some are prettier; some are taller; and some are better footballers, better musicians or better scientists than others. Education that allows all these talents to develop to their fullest extent should be our ultimate goal.

Changing the structure of school or curricula offerings, while necessary, is not a sufficient condition for excellence. The quality of experience for every child is determined most of all by the teachers whom she or he encounters. The quality of teachers is now probably the best that it has ever been in terms of their education and qualifications. I celebrate the emphasis that our coalition Government have given to taking away the top-heavy load of surveillance, regulation, bureaucracy and suspicion, which has stifled the professionalism of teachers in recent times.

Trusting heads and teachers to make the best professional judgments about how to serve the needs of their pupils is an essential way of ensuring that every child has the right education for their abilities and aptitudes. As professionals, heads and teachers can be trusted to judge the right kind of disciplinary regime for their cadre of pupils. They are also best placed to judge the right mix of academic and vocational offerings to meet their pupils’ needs and interests.

Teachers and heads would, however, be the first to agree that their increased autonomy must be balanced by the right kind of accountability. National league tables are not the answer, although every parent has the right to know how a secondary school in their area is performing in national examinations or how a primary school close to them is performing in test results at the end of the primary stage. National results are of comparatively little value to the parent trying to choose the best school for their child. Schools must, however, make publicly available the maximum information to their local community in order to inform choice.

Robust inspection that bears on excellence is a vital ingredient in accountability. I am sad to have to say that in recent years Ofsted has failed to perform this necessary function. It is not Ofsted’s fault. It has been required by the previous Government to perform a multitude of functions, many of which have only marginal relationships to good education. It ticks boxes on predetermined standards of health and safety. True stories are told, for example, of a school failing and being put into special measures because its safety fence was not quite high enough. It ticks boxes on measures of inclusiveness and social diversity. What has that to do with educational outcomes? When it comes to education matters, Ofsted ticks its boxes on inputs, availability of resources, buildings, furniture and teachers’ lesson plans. The output that it reports is mainly the test and examination results, which are already publicly available. On the basis of these ticks in boxes, parents and employers are told whether a school is failing, succeeding or just jogging along at the margin.

This is not, in my view and that of many others who care about raising standards, what inspections should be about. Inspections should be a careful, professional assessment of what teachers and schools are doing to ensure their pupils’ success. Are they motivating and inspiring? Are they fostering curiosity? Are they providing a rich diet of learning that is appropriate to the background and ability of each pupil? However they are achieving this, their success should be noted and reported regardless of whether they are obeying the diktats of some central regulation. If they are failing to inspire—and, indeed, not all teachers, schools or heads are doing a good job—the priority is to work with them, to give them the skills and support to perform better, not to name and shame. Naming and shaming does not by itself raise standards. It has a disastrous effect on the children and young people in the school, as well as on the careers of all the teachers in the school, some of whom may well have been working hard to give the best that they can to their pupils.

More important than naming and shaming is working for school improvement. That is an expert task and only the most senior people with a proven record of success are qualified to undertake it. It is the most essential way in which the accountability of schools, heads and teachers can be turned into success for the children in their care. That is what inspection must achieve.

I wish more than anything to see our schools and colleges offering excellence in education to all children and young people. To achieve this goal, the creation of academies, the pupil premium and the enhancement of autonomy to heads and teachers have already been put in place by the coalition Government. I celebrate and welcome that. We are still to consider a system of inspection that marks success and works to turn failure into growth. That, too, is an essential ingredient. I believe that all these are within our grasp. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, we have run out of time, so it only remains for me to thank all noble Lords who have spoken with such eloquence and expertise on the subject. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion withdrawn.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

My Lords, I think we have just seen the need for the Government to listen. Amendment 3 is about consultation on this whole process. It does not seek to reopen the whole issue of the strategy behind this Bill—noble Lords will know there are different opinions in this House. However, it does bring home the need for consultation. This group of amendments relates to the conversion of maintained schools into academies and the next group relates to consultation on additional schools, as the Government are now calling free schools.

We all recognise that the transformation of a maintained school into an academy is a momentous decision for the school—for the pupils, for the parents, for neighbouring schools and for the whole community. Yet originally we had a Bill that had no provision whatsoever for consultation with any of them. I acknowledge that the Minister has listened to some degree and that he came forward on Report with an amendment, which is now Clause 5, which deals with consultation.

I have to return to this as Clause 5 is deeply flawed. It is seriously flawed in three places and has a minor flaw in a fourth. First, the clause places all responsibility on the school governing body and none on the Secretary of State. Secondly, it makes no attempt to define those who must be subject to the consultation and refers simply to those whom “they think appropriate”, as subsection (1) states. Incidentally, the minor flaw is that there must be some slipping up in educational standards in either the Department for Education or the parliamentary counsel as in my young day “governing body” was actually singular and would not be referred to as “they”. No doubt that can be sorted out in another place.

The most important flaw, however, is that Clause 5(3) would allow consultation to be delayed until after the academy order has been granted. Subsection (3) says:

“The consultation may take place before or after an Academy order, or an application for an application for an Academy order, has been made in respect of the school”.

In other words, the governing body could have met and decided to have put in an application without consulting parents, staff or anybody else. The Secretary of State or his officials could have decided to make an order on the basis of that application without having consulted anybody. The terms of that order could have been negotiated, the financial arrangements could have been set up, third parties could have been lined up, all without consultation, and the order could have been issued without consultation. Only at the point just prior to implementation would consultation be required. That seems to me a common-sense reading of the option “or after” in subsection (3).

The Minister was quite helpful on Report. He explained that in practice the governing body would consult and the Government would encourage it to consult. They would issue guidance on consultation, and that guidance would be on the department’s website. I was very glad to hear that and I am sure my colleagues elsewhere were, but why we do not put it in the Bill? That would greatly reassure all the bodies concerned and set a process for every local conversion. Regrettably, I think we know why it is not in the Bill; my noble friends Lord Knight and Lord Hunt referred to the reason earlier. It may have been altered slightly by the last vote, but it is not in the Bill because the business managers are anxious to get this Bill through before the end of July, and any process that was built into statutory requirements would slow down the Government’s aim to get this through so that they could meet their deadline of bringing some academies into being in September.

I have to say to the Minister and his colleagues that it may sometimes be a bit boring and may be a problem for Ministers, but they have to slow down. Frequently, in 13 years of government, those on our side of the House found that they had to slow down and that often it was this House that required us to do that—usually at the behest of Liberal Democrats insisting that they would accept the principle as long as we engaged in widespread consultation. No doubt similar representations are being made these days rather more privately. However, if Ministers really want conversion to academies to happen, and to happen smoothly without too much local controversy, they would be wise to accept my amendments.

The amendments provide that governing bodies should engage in consultation before they apply for academy status; that the Secretary of State would issue guidance to them on whom to consult, how and with what information; and that before agreeing to an academy order, he would have to be satisfied that such consultation had indeed taken place. That is a reduction from what I was looking for on Report and puts a lot of power into the hands of the Secretary of State and the guidance that he would issue. However, separately, the amendments still require the Secretary of State to consult the local authority. That seems to be crucial, as we recognised in the previous debate. The local authority is crucial in these decisions, because the relationship between it and the school will change dramatically if the school converts to an academy. The local authority is responsible for ensuring educational provision in the whole community, not least on special needs, as we have just heard, and because the local authority has responsibility for sustaining educational provision beyond this generation of pupils and parents.

According to the speech the other day by the noble Lord’s colleague, the Secretary of State, to the Local Government Association, he wants local authorities to continue to play a strong and strategic role in the schools system. If that is the case, surely at the very least there should be a provision in the Bill that before a school converts to an academy, the Secretary of State should have consulted the local authority in question.

These amendments would require these issues to be put in the Bill, let the Secretary of State issue the appropriate guidance on the consultation, and let the Bill recognise the crucial role of the local authority. These would not derail the process unless it was being rushed. I advise the Minister to accept the amendments or indicate that in another place he will ensure something similar is put in place. I beg to move.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I am surprised and sad that the amendment has come back at Third Reading in this form. Like many other noble Lords, I have engaged in a lot of discussions with a lot of schools that have for some weeks been engaged in the process of moving to academy status. The normal procedure that they have described almost universally—with slight variations, although they have all consulted—is that the head of the school first talks the proposal through with the staff to get the feeling from inside the school. What head is going to go ahead with a change to the school’s status such as this without taking her or his staff with them? That scenario is unthinkable. Then there is a lot of discussion between the governing body and the head. After that, the governing body goes out to talk to parents.

Almost all these schools have had meetings with parents to explain what academy status would mean and why they want to move ahead. The church schools have consulted the diocesan board and the church; there have been long discussions and many of the diocesan boards have had extensive consultations with their schools and, in many cases, with each other. There is a huge amount of consultation and it is unthinkable—absolutely unthinkable—that any school, any head teacher, any group of staff or any governing body would want to press ahead in some sort of secretive way without making sure that they were taking the staff, the parents and the local community with them. That is the way schools operate.

Once again, there is an arrogance in this House that we are the only people with good intentions. Just 20 minutes ago we were talking about those excellent governors and our faith in them. Why can we not trust the people who run our schools and education services to behave in a sensible and honourable way? That is how they have always behaved. The schools that I have talked to—I am sure many noble Lords have had the same kinds of conversation—have behaved in that way. To be prescriptive, to write down as a rule that we are consulting only because it is the law, would be alien to the way in which good schools operate—and only good schools will come this way.

I am equally certain that, when we move past the stage of the first Ofsted excellent schools wanting to become academies and move to some schools that may be more questionable, the Secretary of State and the civil servants in the department will closely question them as to the nature of the consultation they have had as part of due diligence. The amendment is unnecessary, arrogant and plain rude to the people in the education service that we all support. I very much hope that the noble Lord will withdraw it.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, we on these Benches are second to no one in our enthusiasm for proposing the most widespread appropriate consultation on a matter such as this which is so important to every school. That is why we were so pleased that the Minister brought forward the amendment on Report to put into the Bill the consultation that had been lacking in the original Bill. However, the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, and her predecessors, has convinced us on numerous occasions of the dangers of lists and of being prescriptive as to who you should talk to about this, that and the other.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I heartily agree with the vast majority of what has just been said by the noble Baronesses. The House knows my view that good quality teaching in PSHE should be the right of all children under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. The knowledge and skills covered by the phrase, "Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education", cover all the important things that prepare children for life beyond and within the school, whether they are future rocket scientists or future waste disposal operatives. They are all human beings and deserve our help and support to lead a happy and fulfilled life. That is what PSHE does. It goes far wider than just sex and relationship education, important though that is.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has mentioned, evidence has shown that schools which do PSHE well also benefit from improved behaviour and learning in other subjects. They are happier schools containing happier, safer and more confident children, which is what I want to see. My ambition within this coalition is to use my passion about this matter and the new influence that I hope I have among both my noble friends and my honourable friends to bring about a step change in the quality and quantity of this sort of learning for all children in all schools.

I am already working with the PSHE Association and others to produce a brief which I will submit to Ministers for the forthcoming curriculum review. It will go far beyond this amendment in two ways. First, it will cover all schools and not just academies. Secondly, it will contain many of the best elements, which, by the way, found support from all around the House, of the original version of Clauses 11 to 13 in the Children, Schools and Families Bill, which were so altered immediately prior to the general election.

That measure, which was deleted from the Bill, listed the areas of learning to be covered but, very importantly, also listed a set of principles that should underpin the teaching. These were, first, that the information taught should be accurate and balanced; secondly, that it should be taught in a way that is appropriate to the age of the pupils concerned and their religious and cultural background and reflect a reasonable range of religious, cultural and other perspectives; and thirdly, PSHE should be taught in a way that promotes equality, encourages acceptance of diversity and emphasises the importance of rights and responsibilities.

In complying with these principles, the school would by definition have to work closely with parents and communities, which is right and proper. These principles are fundamental to delivering the rights that I believe all children have and I know that the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Gould, agree with me about that. I congratulate the former Labour Government on putting together something that is so right. I give credit also to those who have worked so hard outside this House, some since the 1960s, to obtain these rights for all children. I am a mere newcomer to this campaign.

However, if we have come so far, we need to get this matter right and I very much regret that I find the simple amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, wanting in all respects about the principles that I have just listed. I realise why she has made it so simple, but this is not a simple matter. I believe that the earlier approach of the former Labour Government, following extensive consultation, was better. That is what I will seek from within the coalition to achieve for all children and that is why I cannot support this amendment, although I support the aim of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey.

I would ask her not to press this amendment, but to work with me to influence the coalition Government in their curriculum review. We would not be starting from scratch. We already have a very good model, but, in a matter as sensitive as this, we must take all parts of the community with us. This would give us an opportunity to do that.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I follow my noble friend Lady Walmsley with great warmth. What she has said is very dear to my heart and I agree with everything. There are very strong feelings about the content of any part of the curriculum. After all, the curriculum is the heritage of knowledge and skills that we pass on to each generation. Everyone has their own strong feelings about what that should be. PSHE arouses particularly strong feelings because it deals with so many of the very sensitive areas of our personal and social lives.

As has been abundantly clear in what my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, have said, PSHE is already widely established in our education system. It is taught in virtually every school and there is already a large cadre of several thousand teachers who have registered themselves as qualified to teach the subject. I commend the enormously good work being done by so many of those teachers in dealing with what are difficult issues, often with difficult pupils at often difficult stages of their lives. They make a huge success of this teaching.

I have two real objections to trying to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in making this a single curriculum requirement for academies. First, in recent years I have met many teachers dealing with PSHE in, as I have said, difficult classes. They fit what they teach across the areas and how they teach it—whether it be drugs, health, obesity, sex or personal relationships, ethical or civic issues and so on—to the particular class in their particular school with its own particular mix of young people. Schools vary enormously. Some have sophisticated children and others have children who are unsophisticated. Some have children who, by the age of 11, 12 or 13, have alas already engaged in the kind of personal relationships we would rather they were not engaged in, including sexual relationships. The teacher’s skill lies in fitting what they say and how they deal with these issues to their particular class. In my view, that is where PSHE should remain—with the school and the individual teacher deciding what and how it should be taught.

The second reason why I am astonished the noble Baroness has put her amendment in this way is because this would be the only required part of the curriculum and it would only apply to the academies. If this amendment were agreed, PSHE would be a curriculum requirement for academies but not for other schools, and it would be the only part of the academies curriculum that would be a requirement. To me, that is bizarre. People in this House and certainly, I am sure, in the wider world outside would argue just as strongly for other bits of the curriculum to be made mandatory. Surely an important aspect of academies is that they will be free of a national curriculum and able to tailor what they teach and how they teach it within a broad and balanced framework for their particular pupils.

I would ask the noble Baroness not to press her amendment, and if she does, I would ask the House not to support her.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I want to comment on this only briefly because much of what I wanted to say about the importance of personal, social, health and economic education has already been made clear by my noble friends Lady Massey and Lady Gould, as well as by the other contributors. But I would say gently to the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that if we pass this amendment, all the proposals of the previous Government, with whom I was associated, can be implemented, certainly in academies. I would say to the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, that the consistency that she thinks there is in the quality of PSHE education is something I would question. The reason why I began the review of sexual and relationship education in our schools was as a result of the Youth Parliament carrying out a survey to which it received an unprecedented 20,000 responses. The vast majority said that the quality of sex and relationship education they received in school was inadequate.

I am not referring to the Clause 28 part of the funding agreement which says that there should be,

“sex and relationship education to ensure that children [of the academy] are protected from inappropriate teaching materials and they learn the nature of marriage and its importance for family life and for bringing up children”.

That may be a part of it, but it is an incredibly partial interpretation of the importance of sex and relationship education. If we are going to tackle early teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, good and consistent PSHE in all our schools is crucial so that we can support parents and those children who are not getting that sort of education at home.

At the instigation of my right honourable friend Ed Balls, I co-chaired a review with the Youth Parliament and the principal of Newcastle College, which included representatives of all the faith groups in this country and health organisations, including sexual health organisations. Remarkably, we achieved a consensus about how we should go forward—which is a great tribute to the various representatives—in the most sensitive area of PSHE: sexual relationship education. I received a standing ovation in the middle of a speech—the only time it has happened to me—and people were crying when I announced that we would make it compulsory to have sexual relationship education in all schools. The people who teach the subject of association understand its vital importance and it was sad that it was lost in the wash-up prior to the election. I hope that we can make progress by passing the amendment today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

I, too, would like to pay very warm tribute to the importance of governing bodies. Exactly as the noble Baroness said, they have had more and more responsibilities thrust on them by legislation in the past 20 years or so. I am, however, nervous of any restriction as to the exact composition of a governing body—as to who should be on it, how many, what proportion, and so on. My experience is based not on the governing body of a school, but I was reflecting as I was listening to the argument that I had for many years the privilege of chairing the council of Roehampton University, previously the Roehampton Institute. We made a positive decision, and I think a democratic decision, that we would advertise the vacancies for governors. We were astonished by the wealth of interest from highly expert people from the community. Of course people will not offer to be on a governing body if they live 50 miles away, so it was very much a local thing. It was really inspiring to find people who popped up from the community of whom we would never have heard saying that they wanted to be interviewed for membership of the governing body.

Much as I agree with the noble Baroness on the importance of parents and governing bodies—I cannot speak too highly of every governing body with which I have been involved—I beg her not to press an amendment that would restrict the composition of governing bodies by dictating it in this way.

[Baroness Morgan of Huyton]

I agree strongly with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, because my experience is exactly the same. Governing bodies are incredibly important and we all recognise the need for good training and for a wide range of people to be involved. However, as soon as we get into imposing restrictions and saying that we need this or that category of person, as we have done before, we often end up with people who do not want to do it at all. We need to get a range of people who are genuinely and totally committed to the school. In my experience the best governors have often been not the current parents but parents whose children have been through the school and who have decided to maintain their commitment to the school. They have a real feel of what the school has delivered for their children.

Speaking as a current governor I can say that the person who best embodies the community in the school in which I am involved is the local vicar. He does not have a label as anything but he is the most valuable community governor. As it happens it is not a Church of England school, but he absolutely represents the local community, particularly when there have been problems. The local community looks to him, although he would not necessarily fit into one of the categories. Restrictions are not a good route to go down and we should have learnt that from the past.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Perry of Southwark Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Lord Bishop of Lincoln]

The noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has kindly referred to the percentage of Church of England primary schools—over one-third. I declare an interest as chair of the Church of England’s board of education, which has oversight of our care for those schools.

I support this amendment. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, I do not do so because I oppose in principle the possibility of primary schools becoming academies. We can see circumstances in which that may well be appropriate. Rather, it is about ensuring that we do not rush to do something quickly at the expense of doing something well.

There is potential here for real improvement to the Bill if further thought is given to some of the detail that has emerged. I pay tribute to the Minister and the Secretary of State for their willingness to engage with us in a detailed way about some of the implications that in certain cases were foreseen but in other cases have emerged as the conversations have developed. All that seems to point to saying, “If it is possible for there to be a little longer to go on having those conversations to arrive at something even better than what the Government have in mind, then surely that must be as much in the Government’s interest as it is in the interests of those for whom the Bill is being promoted”.

In the dioceses, it is our diocesan directors of education who have an immediate care for the church schools—in the diocese of Lincoln we have 150 primary schools—and they met yesterday. They were very encouraged by this amendment having been tabled. Again, this is not because they are opposed in principle—the point is that they are not entirely sure what they might be asked to promote or oppose when it comes to advising the schools for which they have a care—but because they want to know more, they want to be clear and they want to know that the details have been sorted. Then they will be in a position to provide such support, encouragement and advocacy as may be appropriate to take forward this legislation.

What is there that is lost here? Very little time in the overall scheme of things. What is gained? Perhaps a great deal that could prove to be, in the long run, in the best interests of our children and even our children’s children. If that is the case, we as a revising Chamber will have done our job, which is to have enabled a little more time to be taken, so that something which might well have been done quickly will be done more slowly, but will be done well.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I almost feel that I should declare an interest. As the daughter of a primary school head, I feel my mother’s ire rising in my bones, particularly when the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, mentioned the lack of managerial capacity in primary schools. That may well be true in some small primary schools. However, not only are there are many which have extremely intelligent, competent and well educated heads and deputy heads in charge, but even a small primary school has a governing body. Exactly as the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, said, many of these primary schools, particularly in rural communities, are at the heart of the community and can attract very senior and experienced businesspeople and professionals from the community to their governing bodies and the chairmanship of those bodies. Therefore, they do not lack that kind of hard-edged business experience in running their affairs. The right reverend Prelate mentioned the primary schools in his own diocese. I have had two meetings in the past two weeks with church primary schools, both of which are very keen to become academies quickly. I also met their chairmen of governors, who were very competent and in both cases well able to cope with the business affairs that would be involved in running an academy. We should not underestimate the importance of governors in this whole pattern.

The right reverend Prelate’s final point about the one-third of primary schools that are church schools seems important. They have a diocesan board of education; they are a natural federation to start with. At one of the meetings that I referred to, the diocesan director of education was present. She outlined the various ways in which she could support schools in the diocese that become academies. There will be a natural leadership in the diocese, coming from the diocesan board, which in many cases replicates the sort of support—perhaps not financially, but in other ways—which a local authority has previously given to schools.

Finally, in urging that we write delay into the Bill, it seems that we totally forget that any application to become an academy goes to the Secretary of State and his civil servants. He has the power to delay an application, to turn it down entirely or to tell somebody to come back. If a primary school with 23 pupils says that it would like to be an academy, I imagine that the department would perhaps say, “No, unless you come back in a federation with five or six other schools and proper arrangements in place”. The Secretary of State is a wise and intelligent person, with wise and intelligent civil servants, who will make sure that approval is given only to those primary schools—as to all schools—which can convince him and his civil servants that they are able, in all sorts of ways, to take on the responsibilities of becoming an academy. It is already in the Bill that the Secretary of State will be in charge of that approval. We do not need to write in delay. The Secretary of State has the power to enforce delay on those that are not fit.

I do not think that these amendments are necessary. There are already many ways in which the safeguards that we all seek for the primary school academies are built into the structure.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, two important points weigh with me in considering these amendments. The first is the principle of whether primary schools should have a place as academies in the future. I assent to that: I think that they should have the option of becoming academies. The second is the practical point of whether all primary schools are capable of operating under such a system. The answer is clearly no. I made that point at Second Reading. Then the question is—this was put by my noble friend Lady Perry—whether we deny that opportunity now through legislation or look seriously at the fact that there is a double lock on this door. The first lock is whether the head teacher and governing body are prepared to apply for such status. If they apply mistakenly, because they have 23 pupils, perhaps the judgment will be made against them. The second lock is that of the Secretary of State giving assent. We should stress to Secretaries of State—some of them are exceptionally good, although I shall not name names—that they are taking responsibility for this and will be judged on the decisions that they make on primary schools. As has been pointed out around the House, some primary schools may well be in difficulty. The Secretary of State will be judged on the decisions that are made but we should not rule out having this option in legislation.