Education Bill
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I want to focus on two aspects of the Bill which are generally not addressed in education debates. They do not figure in current proposals for education reform very much, and I think that will cause problems.
The first is the educational significance of the design of school buildings. We have heard of the Secretary of State’s remark that:
“We won’t be getting any award-winning architects to design new schools”.
I prefer his earlier remark, in 2006, that,
“architecture has the most profound effect on how we live … The consequences of poor building design are borne by us all”.
Of almost no building is this last point more true than schools, so I hope he will return to his former view. There is plenty of evidence about the powerful effect of school building and design on attainment, behaviour, including bullying, security, ease of supervision, efficiency and economy of use, and even crime reduction in the neighbouring area. But these are the product of award-winning architecture. Standardisation of an oversimplified kind is not the answer, any more than it was in the discredited SCOLA system-building of schools in the 1970s. I think that Mr Gove is interested in history, so I recommend to him Schools of Thought, by Richard Weston, on this subject.
The lack of requirement for new schools to be well designed is particularly disturbing in conjunction with the department’s consultation document on lifting planning permission for change of use to school buildings. I am not saying that a new school could not be set up in a sandwich bar or a hairdresser’s or a funeral parlour—some of the document’s examples—but those engaged in the education of our children should have to ensure that the design of their school is conducive to education in all its aspects. They are likely to need advice. So I ask the Minister how it is to happen that new schools have this advice, and what is the department’s capacity, after the capital review, to provide it? I wonder if we should not also think of an Ofsted duty to report on the effect on education of the schools’ buildings.
The second aspect of the Bill is those neglected children from the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. In education we look now at aggregates, percentages and averages of attainment. But in our society we still pride ourselves on valuing the individual. We should not ignore small numbers where the injustice to individuals is very great but does not show up in the wider picture.
The Minister is, I know, familiar with and concerned by the distressing facts so poignantly set out by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, about the educational fate of these children and the consequent devastating impact on their capacity to earn a living. But is he aware of the recent research by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain on the huge extent of bullying which is almost certainly part of the cause? Will he add that to the fact that, in his department’s study last year, a large proportion of these children opted not to identify themselves as Gypsy, Roma or Travellers, obliged, you might think, to deny their heritage to escape stigma and victimisation? These completely unacceptable findings point exactly towards the 1967 Plowden recommendations of special attention and planned action, now falling into abeyance.
In the Bill we have some provisions which reverse such targeting as there was, and others which make matters worse. The abolition in Clause 30 of the duty on schools to co-operate with local authorities to improve children’s well-being—which means, of course, also with all the local agencies which deal with health, social problems and justice, so relevant to truancy—is one such; the abolition of an appeal against exclusion, the removal of the right to reinstatement and the replacement of independent review panels are others. Between a fifth and a quarter of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, usually boys, are excluded from school, an astonishing and far higher proportion than any other minority ethnic group. It has not been paid much attention hitherto because it was not identified. There is no disaggregation to reveal it, for instance, in the Academies Bill equality impact statement. One cause is likely to be response to bullying. There is little home teaching arranged either. So any blanket diminution of appeal rights without a thorough examination of the justice of it is very risky. The Bill’s equality impact statement rightly commented on the low attainment of these children. But it does not seem to make any connections—it does not mention any impact of exclusions. I echo the concern already expressed on all sides of the House and ask the Minister what account was taken of the duty to provide education for Gypsy, Traveller and Roma children when considering the exclusion provisions.
We do have, finally, one good targeted service to help these children through the transition so many fear to secondary school, and to support them once they are there: the local authority-run Traveller education service. It is credited with securing a small but steady improvement in attendance last year. It is also a pan-European exemplar, recommended by the newly adopted EU framework for national Roma integration. But its lack of statutory backing has made it an easy target for cuts and it is rapidly declining. I think that we should look at some form of obligation to identify and support children who have become disengaged. It would take some of the burden off schools if it remained with the local authority, just as it has done with looked-after children—local champions of social justice, as the Minister put it. I look forward to his response.
Education: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Whitaker
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they will address the shortfall in the provision of the Teachers’ Education Service for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, this year the Government have allocated £201 million to schools for ethnic minority achievement via the dedicated schools grant. This is higher than the amount provided in 2009-10 via the former ethnic minority achievement grant. Schools may use this grant to purchase additional support for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children or, if schools forums agree, local authorities may retain some or all of the allocation to deliver centralised Traveller education and ethnic minority achievement services.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reasonably sympathetic reply, but is he aware of the NUT report of last November which found that the Traveller education services were taking a disproportionate share of the cuts? Eight local authorities had completely abolished the service. Does he agree that the 20 per cent drop-out rate between primary and secondary school is disastrous for Gypsy and Traveller employment chances and that the school exclusion rate is higher than for any other ethnic group? What can be done?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, I agree with the statistics mentioned by the noble Baroness. Exclusion rates are, I think, three times higher for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children than they are for the average of the population. Their achievement both at primary and secondary school is far lower. Unfortunately, the attainment gap over the past four years has widened rather than narrowed, despite all the efforts that have been made. There is clearly not a simplistic answer to this problem. I know that the noble Baroness has been concerned and acted in this area for a long time, as have other noble Lords. There is no simple answer. Clearly, the Government hope to go in the direction of devolving more responsibility to schools. As I said in my Answer, schools forums can choose to carry on funding a centralised service if they think that will work better. I hope that the pupil premium will provide additional resources for schools where they have Gypsy and Roma Traveller children. A lot of this is cultural and educational. Ideas that the noble Baroness and other noble Lords may have as to how one can chip away at this problem will be gratefully received.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Astor of Hever
I remind noble Lords that we are on Report and encourage them to keep their speeches as short as possible.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I rise to speak briefly to Amendment 44A, which rather oddly is in this group. The arguments I made to ensure that the design of academies in new or refurbished buildings must be conducive to good education and not a waste of public money in Committee are still the same. I will not repeat them now.
I have tabled this amendment again because the answer from the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, although helpful, did not deal with what general minimum design standards would operate, and no letter was forthcoming from the department to amplify his, perhaps I may say rather vague, response that he had no reason to doubt that they did. I would not press for a statutory requirement if it were definite that the free schools network would include such design advice in the general advice that the Government are funding them to give to aspirant academy-makers.
The noble Lord cited the law covering access for students with disabilities, which was welcome, but I am sure that groups of parents, teachers or others need to get themselves guidance on how the broad provisions of the Disability Discrimination Act and successor obligations under the Equality Act should be translated into design.
The Government’s approach to housing, in their letter to me of 15 June, says that they will issue guidance by,
“setting out minimum environmental, architectural, design, economic and social standards”.
Are academies where children will spend a large proportion of their time at a formative period of their life really so much less important?
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I shall say a brief word about Amendment 52, which is tabled in my name, and I hope that I can perhaps win the prize for the briefest speech of the evening. The object of Amendment 52 is to impose the SEN obligations on existing academies, which we already discussed to a fair extent when we considered government Amendment 11. The Minister made it clear that the SEN obligations would be inserted into the funding agreements of existing academies. The only point of unclarity that remained was whether we would have to wait for the existing agreements to run their course or whether the obligations could be inserted before that. If the Minister accepts the spirit of this amendment, it would enable the obligations to be inserted into the funding agreement within 12 months of the Act coming into force. I urge that that approach be adopted, rather than that we should be made to wait a number of years for existing agreements to run their course.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Whitaker
“( ) requiring the appointed person to ensure provision of premises which meet designated minimum design standards, including standards which meet the needs of students with disabilities”
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I will try to race through this. I apologise for not signalling the subject at Second Reading, which I could not come to. It was, however, trailed in the Statement on free schools. I was grateful for the insight into government thinking which the Minister provided then.
Amendment 175, in my name, is predicated on one overarching fact—that the design of school buildings is fundamental to their purpose; and that a well designed school building, as well as keeping initial and recurring costs down and being environmentally sustainable, contributes materially and significantly to the educational success of the school. In the new Westminster Academy we can see even wider social achievements, including not only the educational results of a drop in truancy and a big rise in attainment, but also a drop in crime around the school. There is nothing in the Bill about the role of design; nor, as far as I can see, is it in the remit of the very interesting New Schools Network, about which the Minister wrote to us. Design was not directly included in the statutory remit of the original academies either, but they were to be created as part of a framework which insists on design criteria.
Design is not an amateur matter. We may all think we know a good design when we see one, but it is not just a matter of good taste. It is a matter of functionality, and of buildings or other objects which achieve a purpose. As regards school buildings, the standards—the modern ones in the Building Schools for the Future programme of the last Government—are well accepted. I entirely agreed with the Minister when he said in the Statement on free schools, in answer to my question, that the building regulations need a fresh look. I am referring not to this ancient corpus of law but to the up-to-date and innovative standards of our excellent new schools. If academies are to be built or put in refurbished buildings outside this framework, unless the sponsors have access to or understanding of school design skills, the children who study there will be deprived. Money will be wasted. I am sure that the noble Lord opposite does not want academy students to be let down in this way.
Listeners to the “Today” programme on 18 June will have heard new sponsors of academies being grilled about how even to get their building up in the first place. Procurement and construction are complex processes, requiring expertise and negotiation. If good design is not part of the process from the beginning, it invariably loses out and so then do the students, not least those with disabilities. My amendment would ensure that the appointed person in the regulations in Schedule 1—usually, no doubt, the sponsor—has a duty to find out what the appropriate design standards are and apply them. As I said, the standards exist. They could of course be adapted to allow for a range of educational models and school ethoi. This would work very well if the Government continued with the client design adviser system, another successful innovation.
I do not think that we should allow our children’s education to be vulnerable to the vagaries and variations in expertise of groups of people who may have clear ideas about the teaching culture they want to set up but no acquaintance with design. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, about the importance of design. There is such a thing as a dysfunctional building. Schools are buildings around which large numbers of children have to be moved every day. It is very important that they are well designed for that purpose, as well as for concentration and calm contemplation of the lessons. If the buildings magnify sound, they will not be very good for that purpose.
I am also concerned about the green credentials of schools. Will the Minister say something about the design standards in relation to the use of energy and water, and the disposal of waste and all those issues? I have often suggested that schools are ideal places for ground-source heating. They have large tarmac playgrounds under which you can put the pipes. It really is important because in the future energy will be even more expensive than it is now and we will all have to pay for it.
I recently went to an academy school where in order to switch the lights off at night the caretaker had to go to the top of the building. However, he was forced to leave the lights on all night because health and safety would not allow him to come down the stairs in the dark. That new, purpose-built academy building was ablaze all night. It was a disgrace and I hope that we will avoid that sort of thing.
The Earl of Listowel
I interject briefly to seek reassurance on those minimum standards. I am reminded by this debate of a report some time ago about a head teacher of a new academy school that had been built without a playground. The head teacher reportedly said, “We don't need one, we will have them working very hard in school all day, thank you very much”. A paper presented to the British Psychological Society emphasised the value to children of having play breaks in the school day, and looked at how those play breaks had been squeezed over time. It would be reassuring to know that there is something in the minimum standards about a play area for children in every new school. If the Minister would write to me on that, I would appreciate it.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have joined in at this dreadfully late hour. I particularly value the point about CABE, which is an economical and expert organisation that we hope will continue to be used as it has been. I am grateful, of course, to the Minister for the degree of his understanding, and for his assurances on accommodation for children with disabilities. I was not quite so sure about the firmness of his assurances about design standards for all schools. Perhaps he might write to me with the assurance that the current design standards will be used for academies, or perhaps we could have a brief chat about it. If the outcome is satisfactory, there will be no need to take the matter further; but we do feel strongly that there must be this assurance. I will read Hansard carefully and hope for another letter, or perhaps a conversation. In the mean time, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.
Academies Bill [HL]
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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The Lord Bishop of Bath and Wells
My Lords, in the diocese of Bath and Wells, which is very largely rural, we have some 184 church primary schools, which have served their communities for a long time. They are essentially community schools. That is reflected across the country to a greater extent than we might imagine. The essence of those schools is built around how you make a community and what is part of a community. Some of them have rather more effective relationships with their parish church than others. Some of them have Christian head teachers, others do not, but the essential ethos of those schools, founded within the framework of Anglicanism, has carried through to a greater or lesser extent in their religious commitment.
It is key for us to recall the requirement for a national curriculum of religious education. There has to be a commitment to that going across not just the faith tradition of the particular school but the wide experience of religion so that young people have an opportunity to understand it. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that many of these schools are committed to reflecting on the philosophy underpinning humanism. I was asked a few moments ago to try to clear up what is a faith and what is a belief. I shall not risk doing that, but I will say that all faith involves belief at some level or another and is committed to some kind of system. By definition, faith cannot ultimately be proved. Therefore, how we understand and develop these things depends on a whole variety of our relationships with one another in the wider spectrum of life.
I support academies. Indeed, I had the privilege of being the chairman of the board of education in the diocese of Southwark when the first of the academies in south London was formed. I am extremely proud of that, because it did indeed reach into that community at its most vulnerable level.
However, the concept of free schools raises for me real anxieties, particularly in the sphere of religious influence. That is not simply because I want to hold up my hand to say that the Anglican or Catholic churches have a corner of the market. I remind your Lordships of our national identity and the way in which we are tied into the concept of the sovereign as the head of the Church of England, under our constitution, and our relationship with Parliament. The issue is much more complex from that point of view.
There is real merit in our looking towards the development of academies, but I hope that the view of the future of good schools will not be that they should all become academies and enter the independent sector. We have many good schools and, if we go down that road, I fear that we will, in the end, marginalise some of the poorer communities.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I had not intended to prolong this long debate by joining in, but I have to confess that I, too, was made more anxious during the course of it. I share the anxiety of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. I should say that I, too, am a humanist. Indeed, I am now a vice-president of the association. Long before that, however, I felt strongly that we live in a plural society and we need more than ever to be at ease with our fellow citizens. Our education system ought to increase that. I have some sympathy with the approaches taken by the noble Lords, Lord Baker and Lord Lucas, but most of all with Amendments 61 and 133 in the name of my noble friend Lady Massey.
Perhaps I may quickly throw this in: “belief” is the name given by international law to those systems of morality or ethics that are not religious. I quite agree that it is rather an odd word for that purpose, but it is generally taken to mean that. My question for the Minister is—if he does not mind putting my anxiety in the anxiety basket, so that it is a bit heavier than the certainty one—in what way will academies teach the national curriculum in respect of religion and belief?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, we have heard about two extremes of school—one in which only faith is taught, and the other in which everything is taught. There has been no reference to a concern that we might have, whereby one may learn much about everything but not have a thorough understanding of any particular thing. Perhaps at this time our faith schools are more important than ever to our children because, as the report of the Church of England’s Good Childhood Inquiry showed us, an increasing number of children are growing up in families where their parents separate or there are family tensions. As the 2004 UNICEF report pointed out, at that time this country performed the poorest in terms of our child welfare. There was a number of dimensions to the report. It looked at family relationships and highlighted the fact that Italy came top as regards children spending time with their family on a regular basis and enjoying a meal together.
I am speaking speculatively, but perhaps the particular value that faith schools of various kinds can offer can give children a sense of belonging when they do not have that sense at home. The value of a Catholic school is that it has behind it a whole tradition of music, ceremony and dress. Children in those schools benefit from feeling that they belong to something. While I recognise the danger of extremes, and of having a Jewish school by a Muslim school by a Catholic school by an Anglican school, and the difficulty of different faiths interacting, perhaps if this is worked right, the stronger our individual identity is, and the stronger our basis in our religious community, the more we can relate in a positive way to those of different faiths.
Free Schools Policy
Baroness Whitaker Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
As I said earlier, the Secretary of State has made it clear that he sees local authorities having a role in shaping his thinking. We will need to reflect precisely on the criteria, how we set them out and what is then done with those criteria.
Baroness Whitaker
My Lords, I apologise for missing the beginning of the proceedings, but I do not think that anything has been said so far about design standards. The Minister will know very well that the impact of the environment in which children study is extremely important from an educational point of view. What guarantee can he give that free schools will conform to acceptable design standards?
Lord Hill of Oareford
One point of the policy is to give schools greater freedom and flexibility over where schools are set up and in what kind of building. Overall, the department intends to look at the whole set of regulations around buildings for all schools because our view is that they are expensive and bureaucratic and the process of building schools takes too long. Some of the regulations do not seem to serve any particular purpose while others serve an extremely good purpose. We will look at them all and, as part of that, we will obviously need to take into account important points about design.