Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness O'Cathain]

That is a marvellous statement that is simply not true, because it is actually said that you want to repeal the statutory requirement that sex education is not taught between the ages of five and seven. This amendment would repeal that statutory requirement. In other words, if you are saying that you want sex education for five to seven year-olds to stay exactly as it is, I have no problem.

[Baroness Whitaker]

I support Amendment 98, in particular new subsections (6) and (7). We live in a nation of many cultures and several faiths. I declare an interest as a vice president of the British Humanist Association. These many cultures and several faiths are a huge asset for our culture, understanding of the world, trade, regeneration and enterprise—lots of things—but to realise these assets we need to be at ease with our fellow citizens, to understand their culture and their faith, especially when we do not share it. If we do not have this opportunity in school, we risk losing out culturally and economically but, almost more importantly, we risk increasing bigotry and prejudice.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I have been mentioned. I have not resiled from the position I took on Monday and I continue to have concerns about the overcrowding of the required curriculum, as I am bound to say in talking about these amendments. None the less, I accept that PSHE is a very important part of education for many young people and that it will continue in schools, and rightly so. However, it seems that we are trying to impose the shape of education through legislation, whereas the shape of education is a matter of balance and balance is never formulated in a set of clauses in a Bill. The real issue is how well this is done and whether a balance of attitude is preserved. This applies to PSHE and to the teaching of religion and about other faiths in faith schools.

I have reservations. First, I do not think that we do PSHE very well. We have already had mention of the fact that teenage pregnancy numbers may be falling but we are still the worst in Europe. STD admissions are rising among young people. Whatever we are doing, and we have done a lot more of it the last two years, we are not doing it well. I am not sure that legislating in this way will change that. Secondly, it is very much a delicate balance. Thirdly, one of the ways in which you try to deal with delicate balances in schools is by having an adequate inspection system. I am not saying that the one we have is good enough yet, but if there were an adequate inspection system one of the things it would ask is, “Is the balance of sex education in this school, in this community and in this culture right?”. That is what you would expect from a good school inspection. It looks as if, in this Bill, many schools will be exempted from that kind of inspection and that is where I see the gap. I would be reassured about all this being written down in an Act if there were some way of ensuring that it were well done in schools. It is a delicate issue. How this is taught varies from one school and one community to the next and that can only be properly assessed by trained and qualified inspectors.

Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for this amendment. He makes many powerful points about homophobic bullying. This is a very serious issue. Research has shown that many young people who are gay feel excluded and even suicidal when they are bullied because of their sexual orientation. Bullying has become a very much more complex issue in recent years. It can happen to any child, and some more than others. The person who is doing the bullying also has problems, as well as the child who is being bullied. We have to tackle all that complex mix.

Mobile phones and the internet, in and out of school, have driven some young people who are bullied to suicide, not just to suicidal feelings. We need to look at this very seriously. The issue of keeping records is important, but I would go back to something that I remember Graham Allen saying recently. One thing is having the firemen to deal with a situation but, before that, we need to have smoke alarm systems. I want to talk about the smoke alarms here, not literally but metaphorically.

We need to teach about bullying, in PSHE or wherever, and address the reasons why some people are bullied, why some people do the bullying and the feelings involved there. That is the first point. We need to discuss bullying with pupils in school and have them express their feelings about it. It is also a matter of what is happening in lessons and within the school’s own ethos: how does the school tolerate this?

There is another issue about having a school policy on bullying and on behaviour generally. We mentioned school councils the other day, and I gave the example of the school where I am a governor having a council which sets for each classroom, in an agreed form, the classroom behaviour code. This should be encouraged by schools because it is devised by the pupils themselves. Where the pupils have an issue and make the policy—on bullying, for example—it is much more likely to be effective. While I agree with my noble friend about keeping records, it is also important for schools to have a policy on bullying which is kept to and agreed by the pupils.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I support my noble friend’s amendment for all the reasons that he set out so comprehensively, but also because identity-based bullying is a particularly prevalent experience for Gypsy and Traveller children. Indeed, it is thought to be responsible for much of the 20 per cent drop-out rate at secondary level. I have heard harrowing examples from Gypsy and Traveller members of the UK Youth Parliament about their own and their siblings’ and cousins’ experience, which included sometimes indifference, or even collusion, on the part of the teachers.

About three-quarters of local authorities collect information on racial and ethnic bullying. I am not sure that they always think that bullying Gypsy and Traveller children is ethnic bullying. In any case, the schools which do not supply the information or collect examples of that and other identity-based bullying most need their practice exposed and improved. It will surely help to address poor behaviour and, as my noble friend says, it will not be an onerous addition to raise the standard of the worst to the best. I hope that the Minister will entertain the possibility of accepting this amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, briefly, I support the amendment and the reasoning behind it. We seem to have been through this process on a number of occasions during the passage of a number of different education—indeed, other—Bills. Above all, it constantly takes me back to the business of early intervention, setting standards and leadership within schools. I am back again to Graham Allen. All his theories and ideas are exactly what we should be thinking about.

Things such as Sure Start have done a great deal to show us the way forward. Equally, some schools have taken positive steps with early mentoring for every new student who comes in, with a positive responsibility—through the ethos of the school and the head teacher—to look after and integrate a new child into the school community. All these things are necessary, not least, as has already been mentioned, in a society where particularly nasty practices can take place using phones and photography—not to put too fine a point on it—thoroughly disturbing, if not worse, the life of a young child emerging into the world.

We may not have the right answer here. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. This is an important issue and I am glad that it has been raised in this context. Of course, it is not just homophobic bullying; it is a whole range of issues. We all need to keep an eye on them.

Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 33 I shall speak also to Amendment 100. Looking around the Room and seeing the vast experience that is seated here, I realise that the link between Amendments 33 and 100 may be slightly unusual. Therefore, I begin by offering the Committee an apology and the feeble excuse that I have been waiting for some time for a minor operation on a troublesome tooth. Those who are more experienced than me calculated that the day when Amendment 100 would come before the Committee would be the very day that the surgeon was wielding the knife. Therefore, I am extremely grateful to those who have helped me and been so understanding, particularly the House authorities, who have been very helpful. I am grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley and Lady Whitaker, and the noble Lord, Lord Low, who is unfortunately out of the country today.

I also thank the Minister, who wrote to me on this topic. The Committee will not be surprised to hear that his letter was characteristically thoughtful. I appreciated it greatly. However, I regret to say that I did not find it altogether persuasive. That is because Clauses 4, 30 and 31 strike at the very heart of the proper development of children and the responsibilities that we all have, particularly the education services. The Committee will have noticed that the Bill removes the duties placed on the education services by the Children Act 2004 to co-operate with local authorities in promoting the well-being of children and young people in their area. These clauses could not be more comprehensive in their intention. They specify that they extend to schools, governing bodies, proprietors and FE institutions; they are indeed comprehensive. They make clear that, in future, these bodies will no longer even have to have regard or contribute to local plans for the well-being of children and young people.

In every inquiry that has followed a tragedy to a child with which I am familiar, two key messages have permeated every report like the lettering through a stick of rock. The first is that in future each service, including education, must greatly fulfil its particular responsibilities to promote the safety and well-being of each child. The second is that each service must develop the skills to work successfully across organisational boundaries and share information at an early stage. If any noble Lord, but particularly the Minister, can recall a report that does not repeat those lessons, I would be extremely glad to hear of it.

However, this is not just about reports. In every serious case review with which I am familiar—and there are getting on for 100 a year—these same messages are repeated to the point of tedium. Indeed, I recall a seminar in which a senior police officer said with some feeling, “Every time I have sat down to review what has happened to a child, the pattern has always been the same; as each service begins to put what it knew about the child and the family on the table, the meeting became quieter and quieter until someone said, ‘Well, if only we’d known that we would have acted much earlier’”—but of course in those situations it is generally too late for the child.

This is more than about keeping a child safe. We need to place child safety in the wider context of our and the education services’ responsibility to have the wider vision of promoting the proper development of every child. I hope the Minister will take the time to read again some recently published national reports on matters such as childhood obesity, children acting as carers, sibling care, teenage pregnancy, online grooming, drug and alcohol abuse, children with disabilities and those with special needs—to mention just a few. The unbroken thread through each of these reports is this: all these children are of the age to be in the education services, which have a responsibility for each and every child.

Only last week Mr Lansley, the Secretary of State for Health, went out of his way to make it absolutely clear that in the new arrangements that are being proposed for the National Health Service, the specific responsibilities placed on the health services—not just to safeguard children but, as he put it, to promote their welfare—will continue. In fact, if Amendment100 is acted on, the education services will be the only key services to be excluded from these activities. What is more, it just so happens that the education services are the only services that are universal to every child.

Earlier this week Mr Maude talked about teachers’ strikes, and he went out of his way to say that schools not only teach but carry out important wider childcare functions. The Minister in our House did a brilliant job, if I may say so, answering a Question on Monday. Perhaps I may read out his answer rather than my own text. Only yesterday in our consideration in this House of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, the Government introduced amendments to promote the police’s responsibilities with regard to the well-being of children.

The development of children’s plans and children’s trusts under the Children Act 2004 were designed specifically to place the well-being and the promotion of care of children in this wider context. In the letter which the Minister sent to me, he said that the Bill simply reverts to the earlier position. I urge the Government not to do that and to accept that exhortation and hope have proved to be inadequate ways of ensuring that all the key agencies, but particularly the education services, fulfil their unique responsibilities.

If we remove the duties placed upon the education services, as the Bill promotes, it will give not only a huge message to the education services but a negative message to all the other services that have to play a key role in all this. I know, because of my experience with Members of this House, that this House has a great concern for the well-being of children in general. I very much hope that if the Minister cannot agree to the amendments, he will at least be willing to meet some of us to discuss this so that we can consider the matter more roundly. I beg to move.

[Baroness Whitaker]

By adding my name to the amendment in this group, which was moved and spoken to with such authority and experience by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, I want to draw attention to a particular group of children where the role of local authorities and others in areas conducive to education—family issues, justice, mobile families—knowledge of the social services is crucial. If there are problems here, children may be disrupted and may drop out of school. Gypsy and Traveller children are particularly vulnerable to the combinations of circumstances that lead them to drop out. Their drop-out rate is far higher than any other group—very, very much higher. School alone cannot easily know all the factors behind this.

So if you want to give these children a better chance, a fair chance, and a chance that is comparable with that of other children, schools need to co-operate with local authorities over well-being. It must be done without exception and it must be a statutory obligation. Of course, it applies particularly in the harshest measure—exclusion.

The Minister referred in his closing speech at Second Reading to local authority children’s services. He said that they had,

“a critical role in the early years”.—[Official Report, 14/6/11; col. 773.]

Why stop at the early years? The need is just as great in later years. The Government’s White Paper on teaching says that local authorities have a role as “champions” of vulnerable pupils. Local authorities cannot exercise this role if schools choose not to co-operate with them. I support the amendments.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am happy to find myself in my more natural position of supporting amendments rather than throwing four anchors astern. I pay tribute to the eloquence and passion of my noble friend Lord Laming and the experience on which that has been built. At Second Reading, I asked a specific question, which was that if there was a possibility of permanent exclusion—and it is included twice in the relevant clause in this legislation—there had to be a plan B. If any pupil is permanently excluded, there is a major problem that we cannot afford to put out into the wilderness without knowing the direction of travel that society ought to, and will want to, take.

The noble Lord, Lord Laming, has given us one possible solution to this—and I should like to think further about the details of Amendment 100—but there must be a solution, a plan B, and we need to know. If someone is permanently excluded, not simply from school but, as mentioned in Clause 2, from a pupil referral unit, we have a problem. What is plan B?

Education Bill

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[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

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[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

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[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

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Whitaker]

175: Schedule 1, page 16, line 8, at end insert—
“( ) 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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

Amendment 175 withdrawn.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Whitaker Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[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

Monday 21st June 2010 Lords Chamber

[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.