Education Bill

Baroness Stowell of Beeston Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Morris of Handsworth]

My Lords, as the debate has revealed, this is a very sensitive issue which has to be dealt with with the greatest understanding in respect of the problems that can arise, including the possible disruption of a school. Before this issue arises again on Report, the Minister might wish to consider producing detailed guidance to assist teachers in this area as regards the dos and the don’ts, what is prohibited and, indeed, what is acceptable. One point that has not emerged in the debate is that of who searches who and whether a pupil should be searched by a teacher of the same sex as himself or herself. That issue needs to be addressed; if not, teachers will be left vulnerable and exposed and may be subjected to unfair criticism and accusations. I hope that the Minister will consider bringing forward guidance to support teachers in this respect.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

My Lords, I echo the points made by my noble friend Lady Perry. I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which looked in detail at this clause. We sought to draw a distinction between searching a person and searching belongings. I think that this has been illustrated in our debate today. Certainly from my perspective, the searching of persons is the area which attracts most comment and requires a great deal of care. Notwithstanding the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, greater latitude and flexibility should be afforded to teachers when searching lockers and bags. I thought that it might be helpful to point that out.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, it is clear from this excellent discussion that improving standards of behaviour in our schools is a major priority for us all. It goes to the root of how we raise standards and lies at the heart of our determination to close the attainment gap between those from poorer and those from wealthier backgrounds. Most importantly, it goes to the root of how we keep children safe at school and college, particularly the most vulnerable because we know that they are the ones most likely to suffer from a disorderly environment.

I want to say at the beginning how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, about the sensitivity of this. She was kind enough to invite me along to the All-Party Group on Children where we debated some of these issues. I agree with her entirely that discipline is not just about punishment. Unfortunately, one of the ways that the various amendments have been grouped means that we are jumping from one strand of the clause to another and have not really had the opportunity to set it out in its context. I will try to do a bit of that. We will come back to some of the more sensitive issues around opposite-sex search, which I know a number of my noble friends and noble Lords will want to raise, and issues more generally such as those to do with electronic devices and deletion—which, again, I know is sensitive. With the agreement of noble Lords, I intend to concentrate on the issue of training, which is the core issue lying behind these amendments.

The Government know, as do noble Lords, that having a clear behaviour policy that is widely publicised and consistently applied, and which includes positive incentives as well as sanctions, is at the core of what good schools ought to offer. We can all think from our experience of schools which demonstrate excellent practice and we want more to do so. One way that we can help with that is to hold schools to account for the behaviour and achievements of all their pupils. Our proposals on Ofsted inspection will relate to that.

We know that, despite good behaviour management, serious incidents sometimes happen in schools. We cannot always predict when they will happen. The measures in the Bill are designed to support teachers’ powers to maintain an orderly environment, building on the measures introduced by the last Government. The powers to search in this clause are likely, thankfully, to be used rarely in most schools and only in serious cases. The overall purpose of the clause is to ensure that teachers, head teachers and principals have the powers that they need to deal with incidents when they occur.

My top-line response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, as to what the clause does—we will come back to that—is that in general terms it is trying to give schools the ability to respond to local issues and problems that they may face day to day, rather than having to wait for the Government to amend regulations or to sit here considering a whole range of specific issues that we might think that they need to respond to, then renewing the regulations each time in response to every challenge that they face. We are trying to provide a framework so that, if they need to, they can search for any item that can be used to commit an offence, cause injury or is banned by the school rules. We will come back to that.

My noble friend Lady Walmsley raised the important issue of training. In addition to the measures in the Bill, we are clear that we want all teachers to be trained to manage and improve children’s behaviour from the start of their careers. In our ITT strategy, which we published yesterday, we said:

“Improving teachers’ skills in tackling poor pupil behaviour is also vital: no issue is more important when it comes to attracting good people into teaching ... We know that there is some excellent practice in this area, and we will encourage support between ITT providers, so that struggling providers can learn from the best ... We will also help local networks of schools to develop teachers as behaviour specialists”.

On the point raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the Secretary of State has asked Mr Charlie Taylor—our expert adviser on behaviour—to consider how initial teacher training could give teachers the best possible preparation in behaviour management. Mr Taylor believes that ITT cannot be the end of training on behaviour management. Some of it can only be learned in school. He is also working with the department on our teaching schools programme to look at the issue.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raised the suggestion of a teach-in, which also came up at our APPG meeting last week. I think it would be a good idea to do that. I suggest that we organise a meeting with Charlie Taylor well in advance of Report stage where we can go through all these issues and noble Lords can explore them in detail.

Overall, these powers are permissive—I will come back to the amendment of my noble friend Lady Jolly in a moment—and no teacher can be forced to search a pupil or student. However, we think that it is right that the power should be available for an authorised person to use in extremis. The Bill builds on earlier legislation that recognised the usefulness of teachers having powers to search. In extending that legislation, it is important that we also add safeguards to ensure an appropriate balance between the rights of the individual, of the child and of all the children or students in the school or college.