Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Hughes of Stretford

Monday 21st October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

My Lords, as an amateur and a non-lawyer, I hope that the Government will be able to accept the noble and learned Lord’s amendment. How very fortunate we are to have people like the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, with us in Parliament; how important it is that people with experience as Law Lords should be able to return and give us the benefit of their expertise. I was entranced by his exposition of the amendment because, as an amateur, it is clear to me that people who abuse children do not stop: if you have abused one child, you will undoubtedly go on to harm another.

In the kind of case that the noble and learned Lord described, where a couple split up, we do not know which one of them was harming the child—perhaps it was both. They move into a new family with other children, that harm will continue and the new child will be at risk as well. It has been made clear to us that the Court of Appeal cannot at the moment understand with clarity what it is supposed to do. This would help enormously and I hope that the Minister will be able to accept it. However, he is looking very grim, so perhaps he will not.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I want to make just a couple of remarks. First, I thank the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd of Berwick, for the note that he has sent to us and for his very clear exposition today of a very complicated issue.

There is an issue here. In my own previous academic experience I did a considerable amount of government-funded research into child abuse, and child sexual abuse in particular. Apart from any other kinds of cases, we found a very significant although small number of men who quite deliberately target families and go round seeking one woman after another. In each case, there is harm to the child but it cannot necessarily be definitively proved which individual committed the harm. For a small number of children this is a problem.

It is quite difficult for those of us who are not lawyers and who have not followed the detail of the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court and are not steeped in all this language and the issues to evaluate precisely—I cannot do so—whether there is an issue here and, if so, how the Government should act. It seems that there may be an issue here. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether he thinks there is a problem and that it is the problem that the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, has identified. Is there a potential problem now where some children could be left in situations of risk when perhaps previously there might have been an intervention to protect them? If so, what is the best course of action for the Government to take?

I can perhaps understand the Government’s reluctance to intervene in or be seen to meddle with Supreme Court adjudications. None the less, if there is an issue here, clearly it is within the Government’s power to rectify or revert to the original intention of the Children Act, whether by Amendment 64 or by some other course of action. I certainly feel, as I suspect do other Members of the Committee, that it would be very helpful to have the Minister’s clarification on whether there is an issue here and, if so, what is the best remedy.

Education (Exemption from School Inspection) (England) Regulations 2012

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Hughes of Stretford

Tuesday 17th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, the background to this Motion of Regret is the regulations that determine the framework for inspection of schools in England by Ofsted. Section 5 of the Education Act 2005 sets out the duty of the chief inspector to inspect schools at such intervals as are prescribed in regulations. The 2005 regulations made under Section 5 provide that the maximum interval between school inspections should be five years. However, the Education Act 2011, the passage of which we debated last year, now enables the Government to exempt specific categories of school from the chief inspector’s duty to inspect.

This is the first set of regulations to be made under the new power and has the effect of exempting from any further routine inspection any school that receives the highest Ofsted grading, which, as we know, is currently “outstanding”. Thus, in future, every school that is rated outstanding will not be routinely inspected further by Ofsted unless the school itself requests an inspection, in which case it will have to pay for it. The Government resisted amendments in Committee that would allow parents or local authorities to trigger an inspection.

The Government’s arguments in support of the change appear to be twofold. First, they say that exempting outstanding schools from future inspections will reduce, in the Government’s parlance, the “burdens” on such schools. Secondly, they say that it will enable Ofsted to target resources on less successful schools and so will have a cost benefit. Both arguments have some credence. However, for many years now, under successive Governments, Ofsted has moved towards a risk-based, proportionate approach to determining the frequency and intensity of inspection of particular schools. Successful schools can already expect to be inspected only once every five years. Therefore, risk assessments already enable Ofsted to target its resources effectively. However, to exempt schools from routine inspection entirely, and for schools to know that they henceforth they will be exempt, is not simply an extension of these developments. It is a significant qualitative change of a completely different order. It is wrong in principle and will have all sorts of adverse consequences in practice. I shall touch on both concerns—the principle and the practical implications.

The issue of principle derives from questions about the role of government in the delivery of our major public services. I would argue that the Government of the day have a duty both to the public generally, whose taxes pay for those services, and to the citizens who use the services. Surely the Government should be the guardians of both value for money and the quality of the public services provided. It is largely through regulatory and inspection regimes that the Government discharge their duty to service users and the wider public. That is why we have inspection of hospitals, GPs, police services, children’s homes and care homes. All major public services, whether provided directly by public bodies or indirectly through private, voluntary or independent organisations, are subject to inspection regimes to protect users and taxpayers. I know of no other services in which categories of provider are exempt. I would be grateful if the Minister could identify any for us, because I could not find any.

Because, for these very good reasons, this principle is so deeply embedded in the way we deliver public services; because many of these services are critical to people’s well-being; and because the people using them are often vulnerable in one way or another, it would be unthinkable for, say, excellent hospitals or care homes to be allowed to be completely exempt from future inspections. We can all predict the reaction if this were to be the case, so there are crucial questions that the Minister—with respect—has to answer, because they were not answered in this or the other place during the passage of the Education Act 2011. Why do the Government think exemption is acceptable for schools but not for hospitals, care homes and constabularies? Is this not an abdication of the Government’s duty to the public?

In striking the balance between the demands of inspection and the so-called freedom for schools, which the Government are promoting, have they not fallen too far on the side of the professionals and not sufficiently on the need to protect all pupils? The Minister may well say that the Government believe that they can trust schools to do the best for their pupils. We can for the most part, although not entirely, as experience tells us. However, that does not answer the point that it is wrong in principle for the provider of a service to be the sole arbiter of standards without any independent evaluation.

In addition to this fundamental issue of principle, there are a number of practical consequences to the exemption that I believe may have adverse effects on children and schools. I will mention three—other noble Lords will have other points—that are of particular concern to me. First, an outstanding rating at one inspection is not a guarantee of continuing excellence in standards of achievement. Outstanding schools decline. The 2010-11 Ofsted annual report reveals that 40% of the previously judged outstanding schools had declined at their subsequent inspection and three had plummeted to a rating of inadequate. For this reason, both the current chief inspector, Michael Wilshaw, and the former chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, have publicly expressed concerns about the proposal to exempt, as did the Education Select Committee.

Secondly, it is quite obvious that inspectors need regularly to see the full range of performance during their inspections in order satisfactorily to benchmark individual schools. If excellent schools are progressively excluded from the inspection regime there is a real danger that inspectors’ expectations will drift downwards over time as they lose touch with the very best practice.

Finally, inspections cover much more than the quality of teaching and learning. They have an important, and I would argue vital, role in telling us how well schools are addressing the wider well-being of pupils and preparing them for life challenges. Exam results alone cannot tell us how well, or even if, a school is teaching personal, social and health education, for example; how extensive the extra-curricular activities are; or, most importantly, how effectively a school is implementing good safeguarding policy and practice.

I know that if this exemption goes through—as I am sure it will—Ofsted has said that it will desktop assess outstanding schools regularly. However, that desktop analysis cannot possibly find out what is going on underneath exam results, and clarify and highlight whether there are any areas of concern, particularly in safeguarding and similar aspects of school life. For these reasons, and others that I suspect will be raised this evening, I believe that exempting any schools entirely from the inspection regime is a failure to children and parents. I beg to move the Motion.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on setting out her concerns. We know that she speaks from a very deep concern for the welfare of children and has a wish to see excellence in education, an aspiration which we all share. I know too that she has real concerns about the possibility of a school degenerating from outstanding to something less.

I want to take both aspects she mentioned, the practical and the principle, and to say a few words on why I believe that this set of regulations exempting some schools in this way is the right move. First, on the practical, I think the noble Baroness rather overemphasised the picture of schools that were never inspected. This is not what is going to happen. They will still be included in national surveys, with subjects and aspects of education, so her concerns that the people in Ofsted will no longer have the opportunity to see excellence is more than answered by the fact that they will still be able to see excellence across specific subject areas and specific aspects of education.

Secondly, the chief inspector’s risk assessment will be annual. It will be regular and look at more than simply exam results. It will look at any concerns raised about the outstanding schools which are exempt and will then, if necessary, trigger an inspection. The noble Baroness shares my concern that there is always a danger of a change in a school’s performance when a new head comes in—either for the better or for the worse. The regulations cover that eventuality. The chief inspector’s risk assessment will be speeded up after there is a change of leadership in the school. There again, any anxieties one might have have been addressed in the regulations.

There is a pathetic faith in the value of inspection. I say that as one who spent 18 years as an inspector. In the 20 years or so that Ofsted has been pursuing its inspections, this country’s young people have moved in their performance from being in the top five, six or seven by comparison with other countries to being down in 25th, 27th and 28th place in different subject areas. Although Ofsted, I am sure, has been pursuing its aims with the best of intentions, and no doubt the Government’s very tight regulations, particularly the previous Government’s regulations, for how Ofsted should go about its business, were all done with the best of intentions, it simply did not work in the way that it was hoped it would. The standards of performance in our schools have degenerated quite disastrously in comparison with the standards of performance of other countries over the period of Ofsted’s work. We need to start inquiring very deeply, rather than have a mantra of “inspection is good”, as to exactly what really does achieve quality in schools and education.

There is plenty of evidence that people perform at their best, whether professionally or in other areas, when they are trusted and feel valued. My very strong experience of talking to teachers and heads over the past decade or so is that they have lost that feeling of trust. They feel they are bound by an overweening inspection regime which has breathed down their necks. They are watching their backs and feel that the Government are permanently on their backs telling them things. That has been part of the Ofsted culture. I am happy to see that that is now being changed under the coalition Government. Ofsted is being changed very radically and made much more professional and much more limited in its inquisitorial role. That is a good thing. Nevertheless, for most teachers and schools, there is still a sense of being watched rather than being trusted. I believe passionately, as well as having seen the research evidence, that trust and value enable professional people and others to perform at their peak.

There must be accountability to balance autonomy. The more freedom that we give to exempt schools, the more it is essential that we decide what their autonomy should be. I would very briefly say that I think that there are three levels of autonomy that we should trust. The first is the professional code, to which teachers themselves rightly aspire. The conscience of the teacher in wanting to give his or her absolute best is the first level of accountability. That is what we must foster, help and encourage by giving them more freedom to do that, because it is the real guarantee of quality. It is only when teachers really feel that they are responsible for their own performance and that they are required to give the best to their pupils that the quality can really be guaranteed. The second level is that the head of the school and other senior people in the school are responsible for the quality of education in that school. We must foster that. Instead of their thinking that somebody is going to come from outside and judge them, they should take responsibility for themselves and be prepared to make those judgments and deal with any underperformance.

Finally, we have forgotten the role of governors here. The last port of call, rightly, is and ought to be the responsibility of the governors over the quality of what goes on in the school. If things start to go wrong, it is the governors who should blow the whistle and start taking action by changing the head or the other staff of the school. It is a matter of absolute principle that we should stop thinking that the Government are always the best judge of things and people. I love the phrase in the department’s Explanatory Memorandum to the regulations where it says:

“The intention is to give the best schools the power to manage their own performance and to be more accountable locally to their communities, rather than to central government”.

That is what I believe should happen.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Hughes of Stretford

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[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?

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Baroness Hughes of Stretford

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[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.