Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Lord Hill of Oareford

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[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

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Lord Hill of Oareford

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[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.

Education: Academies Funding

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Lord Hill of Oareford

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: Funding

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Lord Hill of Oareford

Monday 5th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

On the first point, five does not seem to be a completely outrageous number. In the composition of the review membership, we have a fairly broad spectrum of people with a range of perspectives which we hope will help us to find cheaper ways of delivering capital. On the second point, I know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has spoken recently at the national college and I think that he is positive about the work that it does. As I have already said again today, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, about the work of the previous Government in encouraging national leaders. That was a successful programme on which there is much one would want to build.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for reading the Statement and for the sensitive and considerate way in which he expressed his feelings of a heavy heart with having to bring some curtailment to the BSF programme. While sharing his disappointment at the inability to continue the full programme, I should remind noble Lords that many of us felt extreme disappointment at the way in which the BSF programme was dragged out for many urgent cases. Exciting plans were bogged down in bureaucracy and the length of time that it took the department to respond. As my noble friend described, there were many stages, any one of which could make the whole thing fall and thus mean having to start again from the beginning. It was very distressing for many local authorities and schools to have to drag through that process, and to miss out on the plans which they had made.

Undoubtedly, many good projects are left. They may not necessarily be for new schools, which may have to be put on hold, but for refurbishment of some remaining very dilapidated buildings. Are there any ways in which the coalition Government can put pressure on local authorities to honour some of the more extreme cases of dilapidation and to spend such money as they have in their budgets to help those schools which really need help now?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to my noble friend and I will reflect on her last point. In order to make it clear, as regards BSF and the first point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, on investment and what the previous Government did from 1997, I do not doubt for one moment the good intentions of that programme and what they set out to do. The trouble is that along the way, the programme became encrusted with processes that slowed things down, pushed up the costs and forced out some good things. Coming out of this review, I hope that we will get a better process that will help us to do better by our schools.

Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Perry of Southwark and Lord Hill of Oareford

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

Before the noble Baroness speaks to my noble friend’s response, might the Government consider the arbitrary nature of the £100,000 cut-off for the deficit? For a very small primary school, £100,000 is a very high proportion of its total budget, whereas for a large secondary school it is a very small proportion. Would not a percentage of the budget be a better benchmark for an acceptable deficit than an arbitrary sum?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I will reflect on that. The point of the figure is to provide some benchmark. My noble friend Lady Perry is quite right to say that individual circumstances vary greatly from school to school, and each of those circumstances would need to be taken into account in forming a view as to what is a sensible sum. That figure has been included as a rule of thumb, but I take the point that one may need to exercise discretion.