Education Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Walmsley]

78A: Clause 18, page 25, line 26, at beginning insert “Subject to subsection (3),”

[Baroness Walmsley]

I shall speak also to Amendment 78B. Clause 18 abolishes the School Support Staff Negotiating Body. These amendments together amount to a commencement clause of in the region of 15 months by the time the Bill goes through Parliament. This body was in the process of negotiating agreements on pay, grading, working time and conditions of service for school support staff, but the staff of the body, who were seconded, have already stopped and gone on to other things. I shall make three brief points about this.

First, roles in schools have changed immeasurably with a greater number of support staff taking on a wider range of more complex responsibilities, so the picture of the employees who work in school, other than the teachers, is becoming more complex by the year. Therefore, there was an important job for the SSSNB to do. Secondly, it was not opposed by any party when it was introduced by the Labour Government in the ASCL Act 2009. It was doing a good and useful job. Thirdly, the Secretary of State has suggested that in place of the SSSNB, employers and unions should enter into voluntary agreements, but this may not deliver fairness, consistency and transparency akin to that enjoyed by teachers, who are, of course, subject to the School Teachers’ Review Body. I am proposing that we delay abolition by about 18 months so that the organisation can complete the role profiles and pass them to the local government employers. This would assist employers in coming to fair agreements about terms and conditions with school support staff, and it would be consistent with the requirement to have fairness, consistency and transparency in the system, which is bang on when it come to the coalition agreement.

The staff who were doing this job are still around and are doing other jobs, so it would be very easy for the Government to ask them to come back and finish that part of the job. After that, the organisation could be abolished, leaving employers with a very useful tool with which to go forward with their future negotiations. I beg to move.

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[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

With the change in role and the scope of responsibility being exercised by the local authority being radically revised, it will not be the same local authority that we will have to deal with and to which we will have to look. Where I live, we now have other bodies providing what has been provided in the past. Consequently, it is not just a return to the status quo. If this Bill goes through, the status quo is no more. In fact, it is not a status quo at all.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I am most grateful to all noble Lords who have taken part in the debate and to the Minister for his assurance that, as he understands it, a lot of this important work will continue. In the interest of making progress, I did not express my appreciation for the work done by support staff in schools but I certainly feel exactly that.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, this is not about the good work that is done by the school support staff. It is all about their terms and conditions and the way in which that is negotiated. I had felt that allowing the organisation to continue and to finish some of its work would prove to be useful to employers. I, too, am very keen on flexibility and autonomy locally. I must admit I had not realised that the ASCL Act did not allow employers to take on board the relevant information. That is a pity as it reduces their flexibility. I accept what the Government have said. I hope that the work goes forward without a lot of equal pay cases being brought because I hope that there will be no need for them. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 78A withdrawn.

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[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, briefly, I support the broad thrust of my noble friend's amendments because this is quite clearly an important stage of children's development. We have just had the second Frank Field report The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children Becoming Poor Adults, where again he emphasises that:

“The strategy should include a commitment that all disadvantaged children should have access to affordable full-time, graduate-led childcare from age two”.

I relate that also to the encouragement that the Government are, in my view, rightly making to encourage single parents and parents who have not been in work before to get into work—an additional need.

I of course accept that the exact number of hours may not be a possibility, but this is nevertheless an important area. It takes me back so many years to the beginning of nursery education. I always think of the noble Baroness, Lady Thatcher, who was very unkindly known always as “Mrs Thatcher, milk snatcher” when she was in fact responsible, much more importantly, for the abolition of the Act that stopped local authorities opening nursery schools and classes. I remember being one of a group going to lobby her about that, all those years ago, but even in those pre-school playgroup days there was that argument about the extent to which people ought to train and be trained. I was not always entirely on the side of the belief that everyone should be trained. You were learning so much within the process, with the help of experts in this field, that many of that generation went on to be very involved in dealing in their children's education.

I make that as a background comment in view of the enthusiasms of all these people who have been commissioned. There is Frank Field, Graham Allen, who is doing yet another report, and I have forgotten the name of the woman—

[Baroness Walmsley]

Clare Tickell.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

Yes. We will be seeing an update of this going on the whole time and, to my mind, it could not be a more important age group or area so I hope that the spirit of what my noble friend's amendment stresses will be very much borne in mind.

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Mention was made of China and the Chinese results. Confucian cultures inspire a great culture of learning in the home and parents driving forward learning in the home. However, it is worth noting that as jobs are now moving in part from China to Africa, in the pursuit of cheap labour, the Chinese are coming over to this country to find out how we do creativity, make people inquisitive and make them entrepreneurs. However, we do not design that into our school system. At the heart of this amendment lies a desire to be less prescriptive about the curriculum. We should not introduce measures such as the English baccalaureate, which works against a broad and balanced curriculum.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I would like to make very brief comments as I intend to say more about the curriculum when we come to Amendments 86 and 88. This amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is very non-prescriptive. That should recommend it to the Government. I absolutely agree with her about the importance of balance and particularly about the importance of the arts. Only the other day, I heard of a school that had had its academic results transformed through its participation in the In Harmony music programme. Such participation supports other kinds of learning.

The Secretary of State is very keen on the education system in Singapore. I have been looking at the curriculum in Singapore. The Committee might be interested to know that right at the heart of the curriculum design in Singapore are core values and life skills. Therefore, the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about life skills are demonstrated in the highly effective education system in Singapore. I think the noble Baroness would be reassured if she read, as I have, the remit of the expert group advising the Secretary of State on the curriculum review because it allows it to come to conclusions about the national curriculum which perhaps she and I would welcome. I hope it does that.

When we are looking at the curriculum, we have to bear it in mind that the national curriculum does not take up 100 per cent of children’s time in schools. It is up to the school to design the school curriculum, and part of it is prescribed and part of it is not. This leads me to say something about teacher training. Unless we have highly trained teachers who understand pedagogy and the reasons why they do what they do and have deep subject knowledge, they are not going to be in a position to design a school curriculum which provides children with everything that they will need in their future lives and careers. The professionalism of teachers is an issue that we need to bear in mind when we are talking about the curriculum. We must not forget that it is not just the national curriculum. It is up to schools, teachers and heads to design the rest of the curriculum that they deliver to their children. It must be appropriate to the needs of their children. They cannot do that without good quality training.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I thoroughly support the idea of balance in schools and education, but there is a difference between a balanced education and an attempt to produce a balanced curriculum. I agree with the idea of a national curriculum. It was a very important innovation and has had very positive results over the years. However, this is tempered by my experience of sitting in and watching my good friend Ron Dearing, as he was then, trying to chair a meeting of the national curriculum advisory group. It was basically a Mecca for every lobbyist in the business. In addition to the topics we have listed here, which come after literacy, numeracy, understanding of science and exposure to languages and before the ones that are not mentioned: parental education, financial education—many of us would think that important—and emergency life skills, which we are going to see proposed as part of an essential curriculum. This is a road to indigestion and madness. It will not work in that form. A national curriculum, yes, and it has to be a core curriculum but if core subjects are inevitably boring—I say this with all respect to my colleague and noble friend Lord Knight—we might as well give up now. If teachers cannot teach core subjects in a useful, good and stimulating way, we have really failed the children in our schools.

What do I suggest? I suggest a fairly minimal prescription both in terms of core and time. There is no need to spend 100 per cent of the time on what some have said to be core subjects. This allows room for the professionalism of teachers and all that that implies, which we have re-emphasised time and again this afternoon. Time and again we have said that we respect teachers, so they must be given room to develop the teaching of their subject. If it were my national curriculum, I would have the writings of David Hume and Fyodor Dostoevsky required for everyone over the age of 16, but I think some noble Lords would want to draw the line. If you taught those well, you could do most of this.

I suggest that we go for a balanced education with a minimum core. The worry is that they do not produce a balanced education. Judgment is increasingly a matter for the department and for Ofsted. They should make assessments on the quality of the education in terms of balance, expertise and how stimulating it is. I fear that I cannot support this amendment.

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[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I have made the case that technology is crucial in supporting the curriculum today and not simply an added extra. I hope that the Minister can give the Committee a clear undertaking that his Government are not luddites, that they are looking at the use of technology, that they are prepared to support its use across the curriculum and that schools will be required to say how and where they are using that technology. This is not a matter of spending a fortune on ICT within our schools. Like many noble Lords, I get quite irritated going into schools to be taken into a room with 20 or 30 wonderful new computers and have people tell me that that is what they are doing for ICT. It is not the computers; it is what you do with them. There are very simple devices, certainly costing less than £200, that can give all the capacity needed to deliver so much of the curriculum as it exists.

If having ICT in school and using technology in school effectively are important in delivering a 21st century curriculum, it is also crucial for children to be able to access the curriculum from home and for them and their parents to be able to communicate with school from home. Amendment 107C states that it is vital that children have 24/7 access in order to be able to complete their national curriculum work, complete their homework and be able to access a broader general education. The Minister’s response to a Question in Hansard about the number of children unable to access the internet at home is therefore quite disappointing. The Minister’s answer is:

“The Department for Education estimates that around 15 per cent of households with children currently lack access to the internet … Take up of internet access remains strongly correlated with household income with only 68 per cent of households with children eligible for free school meals having access to the internet at home”.—[Official Report, 07/07/11; col. WA 110.]

That means that 32 per cent of children eligible for free school meals do not have the internet at home. Can you imagine the difference in opportunity that that denies them compared with those children who have good access, live in homes with a computer in the bedroom and are in schools that can set them homework and projects where they can access all the sorts of learning materials that are essential to 21st century education?

If you look at the IFS study 18 months ago, right across Britain the poorest areas have the least access to the internet. The 32 per cent figure is not across the board. If you go to the north-east, you find that 41 per cent of homes do not have access to the internet. The figure is 36 per cent in Scotland and 31 per cent in Yorkshire and Humber. Some 27 per cent of our poorest households do not have access to the internet at all. According to the IFS study, the correlation between qualifications and use of the internet is equally stark. Some 55 per cent of individuals with no qualifications at all have never used the internet and do not have access to it. That is a shocking statistic if we are talking about a level playing field for learning.

Amendment 107C simply asks the Government to ensure that,

“all secondary age pupils in maintained schools or Academies who are eligible for free school meals, in receipt of the ‘pupil premium’, ‘looked after’ by a local authority”,

and who are the poorest and most disadvantaged on current measures, should have access to the internet at home and at school. I hope that the Minister will accept that amendment. It is something which his Government—I am sorry, I should have said our Government; you get so used to being in opposition in the other place—should feel proud to deliver. At the end of this historic period of coalition government, any Government would be proud to say, “No child living in poverty in this country is denied access to the curriculum because they do not have broadband and do not have a computer at home”. In saying that, I declare an interest as chairman of the e-Learning Foundation.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have my name to one of these amendments and should have it to the other one as well. I absolutely support what my noble friend has said. In relation to the first amendment in the group, if such a report were made by government, could the Minister look into the technology centres that are closing in a number of local authorities? They are centres of excellence and expertise and are of enormous value to schools that are trying to make the best use of technology not just for children who need assistive technology—that is a very important group—but for every child. Unfortunately, a lot of them are closing. That means that not only is the expertise going but the actual knowledge that helps schools to buy cost-effective equipment and have the technical support they need to ensure that the equipment works properly all the time. I would like to see that issue included in the report.

Amendment 107C concerns a subject which I am pleased to say my party will be discussing at our party conference in September. If the Government are set on reducing inequality and the achievement gap, making sure that every child from a deprived family has access to a computer and broadband is something that we should be prioritising. It is not a luxury. It is a tool for education and in this modern world it is an absolutely essential tool. It is very important for every child, not just, as my noble friend has said in his amendment, those from secondary age upwards, but going downwards as well. Knowing the sorts of deals that government can do with equipment suppliers and with the telecoms companies, I do not think that that would be anywhere near as expensive as it might at first seem given that you would be buying things in bulk. Not so long ago, there was talk of providing children with little laptops for £50. I reckon that you could probably get very basic ones for less than that now. Broadband should be able to be provided very cost effectively given the quantity that government would be interested in. This is an important measure. It is achievable and is absolutely in line with the coalition agreement and this Government’s stated aims in regard to education.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I beg to move that the debate on Amendment 83ZA be adjourned.