Schools: Arts Subjects

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Tuesday 20th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

On average, pupils take over 11 key stage 4 subjects, so there is plenty of scope for the arts. The Secretary of State does not underestimate their importance, but we need to encourage more young people—particularly young women—to consider widening their options to STEM subjects.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that much of the advance of this country’s influence on the world in the last few years has lain in the field of film, literature, theatre, drama and television? In area after area we have received remarkable awards from international bodies and a widespread recognition of the extraordinary contribution that the arts and theatre in this country have made to our standing in the world.

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. We have invested £340 million in arts and cultural programmes over the last three years, including £3 million for the British Film Institute’s new Film Academy.

Schools: Local Oversight

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I do not recognise the picture that the noble Baroness paints. We believe that this system is efficient; in devising it we were advised by people who have set up national and international organisations. We find that the position of the party opposite is confusing. On the one hand its leader tells us that nobody wishes to revert to the local authority system, while on the other its policy adviser, Mr Blunkett, says that he wants to have between 80 and 150 directors of school standards, all supported by their own bureaucracies, and many of whom will be recycled local authority people. We do not think that that is the way forward. There is no role for RSCs on maintained schools; that is a role for local authorities, and, as I say, we have clarified their role.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, my noble friend will recognise, I think, that a substantial number of academies very much regret the lack of clear local accountability. Can he therefore tell us whether the new Secretary of State will consider a method under which local accountability can be more clearly established so that problems such as those arising from the Trojan horse story in Birmingham will be obviated at local level and not have to turn into a national horror of one kind or another?

Education: Free School Funding

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

All academies and free schools are funded on an equal basis to maintained schools. They may get some start-up grants, but their annual revenue going forward is equal. As regards the slur to which the noble Baroness referred, the Statement says quite clearly that Ofsted has reported that all schools, not just free schools, have more highly qualified teachers than ever before.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)]

My Lords, I understand that the very first duty of any education department is to ensure that every single parent will have the opportunity to place his or her child in a maintained school if that is what he or she wishes. I am concerned by what appears to be a fog of misunderstanding. My understanding is that there are at least 12 local authorities—I give as examples Teeside, Ruislip, Croydon and Bristol—where it is said to be impossible for a parent to find a place in a maintained primary school. That should be the first duty of Government. It would be very helpful if the Minister could say specifically that he does not know of local authorities that cannot find a primary school place for their children. If someone wants to send their child to a free school that is perfectly fair, but it should not be forced on them.

[Lord Nash]

I have said quite clearly that we have satisfied all the demand for free school places and we have funded local authorities to be able to satisfy that demand. Of course, we now have a system in which 60% of secondary schools and 12% of primary schools are academies. It may well be that in some areas the nearest school which the allocation process in the local authority directs parents to will be a free school rather than a local authority maintained school.

Schools: League Tables

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 10th January 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they will consider omitting from school league tables children on free school meals or statemented as having special educational needs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to giving parents more information rather than less. We want to raise the attainment of the most disadvantaged and lowest attaining pupils, and to report on how schools do in narrowing the attainment gap. We will also support such children through the introduction of the pupil premium, which will be targeted at those on free school meals, many of whom will also have special educational needs.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I thank the Minister for his reply and note that the Secretary of State for Education has recently decided that the judgments in league tables on the passage through GCSE for five subjects is to be tightened up, to ensure that schools choose not the softest subjects but rather the crucial subjects for their children to take. I commend him on that. However, given that schools will be judged on their work with not just the highest flyers but children with the greatest need, I wonder whether it would be wise in the league tables to exclude children with special educational needs from the attempt to measure schools comparatively, and to include a list or proportion of the number of specially educationally disadvantaged children at a school to ensure that head teachers and others do not attempt to escape from their responsibilities.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

First, I think everyone in this House agrees on the need to try to narrow the attainment gap. The previous Government did quite a lot of work in that regard, which I am happy to recognise. I recognise the challenge that schools have with special educational needs but, by the same token, many who know far more than I do about the issue would not want to take the step of excluding children with special educational needs from measurement or being treated in the same way as other pupils in the school. More generally, it is important to publish more information about a school’s performance. My noble friend is absolutely right that we need to hold those schools to account for their performance and we think that that is best done by publishing more rather than less information.

Schools: Pupil Premium

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what will be the requirements for a child to be eligible for a pupil premium.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the Government consulted on the eligibility criteria for the pupil premium earlier this year and that consultation ended on 18 October. This consultation included proposals for eligibility criteria, including free school meals, tax credit data or commercial packages, as well as on whether to include looked-after children and service children. We are considering the outcome of the consultation and will make an announcement in due course.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Perhaps I may remind him that at present children on free school meals get roughly half the proportion of GCSEs at A to C level as those who are not on free school meals—that is to say, their attainments are half as great. Given that, can the Minister tell us how he will ensure that pupil premiums are indeed paid to advance the attainments of disadvantaged children and that schools are not tempted to use those payments to encourage more children on the edge of getting five A to Cs rather than those where the return will be certainly slower? Will he consider making it an entitlement—not a general grant but an entitlement—for each disadvantaged child?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am grateful to my noble friend, and I agree with her that it is extremely important that the purpose of the pupil premium—to help the children who need it most—is upheld in the system we deliver. She is absolutely right about the disparity in educational achievement between children on free school meals and those who are not on free school meals: 54 per cent who are not on free school meals get five A* to C while only 27 per cent who are on free school meals achieve it. The point about ensuring the money is used for the purpose for which it is intended is absolutely right. Our intention is that it will be for heads to spend as they think fit the money which will go to schools, in the way that they believe can best deliver help to the pupils they know. However, they will have to account each year for how the money is spent. I agree with my noble friend that one would not want the money to be used for people who are, as it were, gaming the system. That is part of a broader consideration we need to take about how to ensure that the system is not gamed in future.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Tuesday 13th July 2010 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

9: Before Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Annual reports
(1) For each academic year the Secretary of State must prepare and publish a report containing information on—
(a) Academy arrangements entered into during the year, and(b) the performance of Academies during the year (see subsection (2)).(2) The report must include information relating to the performance of Academies which has been provided to the Secretary of State pursuant to—
(a) regulations made under section 537 of EA 1996 (power of Secretary of State to require information);(b) Academy arrangements.(3) The first report under this section must relate to the academic year beginning 1 August 2010.
(4) The Secretary of State must lay before Parliament a copy of each report under this section.
(5) In this section “academic year” means a period of 12 months beginning on 1 August.”

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I am grateful to the Minister and to the Secretary of State in another place for the consideration and care that they have given to the whole issue of accountability. The Bill has improved considerably as a result of discussions in this House. We have had long discussions about the issue of consultation and governing bodies, and the net effect of this has been that we have a much more accountable and responsible structure in the Bill than we had when it began. For that, and for their willingness to listen, I thank them both.

At an earlier stage in the Bill, when my noble friends Lord Phillips of Sudbury and Lady Walmsley were very concerned about issues of accountability, we came up with the proposal that there should be an annual report to Parliament, and it is still highly appropriate to hold on to that. It is correct that the Government should have accepted this amendment and I thank them for their help in drafting it.

The purpose of the amendment is to enable not only the Select Committee but Parliament itself to consider what is, after all, a major experiment in education. There will be many aspects of that major experiment that people will want to look at. What happens to the quality of schooling, the movement of teachers and school leadership? What happens to the heads and governing bodies? There will be many more questions. So it is appropriate that a wider body than even a Select Committee should be brought into this discussion. One of the important issues here is going to be that the basis on which statistics are laid down in the annual reports should be broadly comparable with those in other related reports. My noble friend Lord Phillips will say more about that.

I shall point to two things in particular that are crucial in this report that we hope will be made available on an annual basis from this year onwards. The first of those is to track the effects of the removal of a great deal of what one might describe as “micromanagement” from the schools. Many of us on this side of the House, and many of us in the coalition, have been concerned about the levels of micromanagement in schools, and we believe that there is likely to be a more innovative approach and a greater deal of discretion for teachers if this experiment succeeds as the Government clearly intend it to do. On the other hand, there is a valid question that hangs in the sky: might we be moving towards a two-tier system of education? The initial applications are a little troubling in that respect. For example, counties such as Surrey and Hertfordshire appear to be responding at a rate of around 10 per cent of the secondary schools that might be applicable to become academies, whereas areas such as Middlesbrough, Knowsley and other poorer parts of northern England do not seem to be caught up with excitement at the idea of academies and are therefore not applying in large numbers to join.

There is another, related factor. So far, the schools that have applied appear, from the London School of Economics study which has been published in the past couple of days, to be atypically low in terms of free school meals and youngsters with special educational needs. These things will need very close observation, discussion and scrutiny. An annual report will be crucial in making that happen.

Again, I thank the Ministers on behalf of my noble friends and me for the consideration that they have given to this issue. I hope that this—which will, in its way, be something of an experiment—will turn out to be a very useful, radical new proposal in managing government and making it more accountable to Parliament than ever before. I beg to move.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I added my name to this amendment, which I strongly commend to the House. I share my noble friend’s concern about the analysis of the socio-demographic groups of the children in the schools that have shown initial interest in this experiment. I hope that the attraction of the programme will spread more widely among the schools in this country if individual schools find it the best option for them.

I am delighted that the amendment is not too prescriptive. Noble Lords have mentioned in the course of our debates many groups about which they have concerns. An opportunity for a vigorous debate every year in Parliament about, for example, the impact of the programme on children with special needs, children in public care, children who are themselves carers, children in primary schools and children with the major deprivations that concern us all will be a very good contribution to the further development of the programme. It is important that Parliament has a vigorous and widespread debate about the progress of this programme.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I am very grateful to my noble friend Lady Williams for moving this amendment, not least because it gives me an opportunity, perhaps for the first time in our many lengthy discussions, to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I am grateful for that, if for nothing else—even though I obviously applaud the fact that that the amendment will deliver scrutiny and rightly give Parliament the opportunity to look at the progress of this important policy. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, said, we have had an interesting debate in which all sorts of views have come from some surprising quarters around this House. I welcome the support of her party to openness and parliamentary accountability, which is perhaps a shift from the position that it might have adopted a few months ago when noble Lords were calling for debates and scrutiny. However, that point may be unfair.

During the second day of Report, I agreed and was keen to reflect on the persuasive arguments brought by my noble friends Lady Williams and Lady Walmsley, and, I accept, by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, when we debated the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of the progress of academies and the impact of the Bill. I am therefore delighted that my noble friend Lady Williams has returned with the amendment.

We believe—this lay behind the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis—that academies already operate within a highly accountable framework. They are indeed inspected by Ofsted and have to report on their performance to the Secretary of State; but I fully accept my noble friend’s argument that this policy marks a significant extension of the academies programme and that it is therefore right that we should report regularly to Parliament on its progress.

On the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, decisions about debates are probably not taken by me; I do not know, and it is not my area. Others in the House authorities will take them. However, if such a decision is taken, we could certainly debate the issue and, after the discussions that we have had so far in Committee and on Report, I can hardly wait for another opportunity to discuss academies.

I thank my noble friends Lady Williams and Lady Walmsley for their help and advice on this issue. It is also true, having heard the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, talking about prodding and poking, that I feel prodded and poked by many of my noble friends, including the noble Baroness. I am grateful for that. I also thank all those who gave so generously of their time in Committee and on Report. A hard core sat through many hours, including Members of the opposition Front Bench. I should like to place my thanks to them on the record. I am grateful to noble Lords for the contributions made from all sides of this House. I am certain that the Bill is better as a result.

Amendment 9 will increase transparency and accountability to Parliament. That seems the right way forward, and I am extremely happy to accept my noble friend’s amendment.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I thank the Minister and will comment briefly on the agreeable words of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin. The purpose of this annual report is to enable us to find a great deal of wisdom and information on a number of things that we might be concerned about. I mentioned earlier, as did my noble friend Lady Walmsley, the socio-economic structures of those entering the academy pattern and whether there would be considerable diversity, given that it is likely to be a different group according to which academies come forward. Other noble Lords have mentioned their concern about SEN or how far local authorities will play a strategic role. We can get a great deal out of this kind of report.

I have long believed, not least in education, which is a long-term project by nature of the speed at which children grow up, that we would have been wise on all sides of the House if many years ago we had much more carefully considered the effects of what we passed in our respective Houses of Parliament, rather than moving on to the next piece of legislation without learning much from the previous pieces. For all those reasons, this is not an issue of political disagreement; it is a step towards the whole concept of an accountable Parliament in an accountable democracy.

Amendment 9 agreed.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, not for the first time I speak in support of my noble friend Lady Howe. I did not speak on this subject in Committee, but on Second Reading I did make the point that the Government’s handling of governors and governance issues had been “clumsy”. I had hoped that in the intervening weeks I would be able to withdraw that, but, unfortunately, according to the DfE website,

“no decisions have yet been taken on the composition of future academy governing bodies”.

That is a foolish way of putting it for all sorts of reasons.

I have spent the past 12 years visiting almost 400 schools. What have I learnt from that? I have learnt that successful schools are typified by engaged staff with good leadership from heads, engaged parents, and engaged governing bodies. In almost 400 schools I have never come across a school in which the relationship between a successful head and the chair of the governing body has been anything other than excellent. I am sure that it is possible to find one, but I never have. It is a pivotal relationship and I cannot imagine that a successful academy will manage matters differently.

I have a real concern. I think that in years to come, largely as a result of the work of the national college, and possibly the recession, we will have a generation of first-class head teachers. They will tend to be quite young and very professional. They will probably have led three, four or possibly five schools at different times in their careers. As they move on, the only continuity left to the community will be the governing body. If you begin to minimise the role of the governing body in some way and solely optimise the role of the heads—or, as we shall increasingly come to think of them, the CEOs—we could reap a whirlwind. The Government will make a massive mistake if they do not addressing the legitimate expectations of governing bodies.

I would go further. I think that there should be mandatory training for the chairs of governing bodies. I agree absolutely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. My own Government, in a dozen years, did nothing like enough in this area. To repeat that mistake in an educational environment in which this relationship will become ever more important as schools need to connect and remain connected to their local communities, will be a grievous error. I fear that academies which believe themselves able to get up and running while ignoring the role of the governing body will fail. There is a danger that they may simply minimise it, or go through something perfunctory such as having one or two people just because they feel they must. Governors are crucial to successful schools, and anyone who thinks otherwise has not visited enough of them.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, with one other thought. School governing bodies are related not only to the community responsibility for schools but to the whole fundamental concept of democracy. In many ways the idea of a governing body of a school is a simple, low-level neighbourhood concept of what democracy is about. It is about fulfilling one’s obligations to society and recognising that society has responsibilities that it carries out for all its citizens.

I am worried about reducing the importance and significance of governing bodies. I hope the Government will feel that they can support the idea of strengthening them, albeit with the legacy of the one parent governor in the case of a limited number of academies. In doing so, they would bear out one of the central issues that the coalition has repeatedly said it believes in, which is the decentralisation of power to ordinary people. Many people find their first step towards responsible democracy when they first become a governor of a school, particularly a primary school. There are powerful constitutional as well as educational arguments for recognising that the role of governing bodies is a crucial element of what one might call a mature democracy. I hope the Minister will bear that thought in mind.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Greaves]

My Lords, I move Amendment 17. In this group is Amendment 53 on a related issue, in the names of my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby and myself, to which my noble friend will speak later.

This is really about the accountability of the new academy system and of the Secretary of State when he is exercising the powers that he will have in the management of the academy system. It has been pointed out on a number of occasions in debates on this Bill that in some crucial areas the Bill represents and provides a significant increase in the powers of the Secretary of State and a significant centralisation of the education system and the school system with regard to the academies. The more academies are created, the more that will be the case. There is a movement of powers of supervision, monitoring and various other aspects that have been discussed away from local education authorities to the Secretary of State and the processes that the Secretary of State will put in place, such as through the Young People's Learning Agency.

These amendments look at two aspects of this. The first is the creation of academies. There were amendments in Committee to make the academy orders—in relation to the conversion of individual schools, for example—subject to parliamentary approval. I think that there were some amendments from the Labour Front Bench suggesting that this should be the case. The argument was put forward, with, I think, considerable justification, that in most cases, or all cases, they would simply be a formality and that would clog up the system because there were going to be quite a lot of them. Rather than parliamentary approval being required for individual academies being set up or converted, however, this amendment would require parliamentary approval for the criteria by which academy arrangements will be created. It suggests that before entering into academy arrangements, the Secretary of State must make regulations that set out these criteria, and the criteria will be subject to parliamentary approval.

A later amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Whitty—Amendment 28, I think—is similar, in a sense. It refers to academy orders and says that the Secretary of State has to publish the criteria by which academy orders will be made, but it does not actually go as far as requiring parliamentary approval.

Whether this is about the orders or about the arrangements—obviously they are all part and parcel of the system that is going to exist—there are important policy issues here. It is not just a question of mechanically carrying out a system of creating academies; it is a question of setting out the criteria by which academies can be created. To some extent, it is a matter of whether or not schools qualify. To another extent, it is a matter of the model academy agreement, and it may be that that agreement, which this amendment does not cover, requires some sort of parliamentary scrutiny as well.

These are important issues. All these important central policy issues are being concentrated on the Secretary of State, who will have considerable power. No doubt Parliament can find ways of scrutinising these as it wishes through various parliamentary mechanisms, but there is nothing automatic in the Bill that sets that out.

That is the purpose of Amendment 17: to probe, and to promote yet again the concept that when the Secretary of State is making these decisions, the basis on which he is making them—the fundamental policy—really ought to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.

The second amendment, which my noble friend will speak to, is about scrutiny of the system after it has been operating. It is the other side of the same coin. I beg to move.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendment 53, which is also part of this grouping. I agree with my noble friend that the proposal that he makes under Amendment 17 would be appropriate.

Owing to the lateness of the hour, I shall keep to my own amendment, the purpose of which is essentially to give Parliament an ultimate level of accountability for what happens in the secondary and primary education system through the process of an annual report repeated every year about the progress of academies, their successes, their failures, their record and so forth.

I shall say clearly, but briefly, why this matters so much. The present structure of accountability is by way of local authorities through to, eventually, their electorates. That system will be largely disappearing by the time that this Bill is passed, certainly for whatever group of schools that apply to be academies. The question then becomes, as my noble friend has said, whether there is any level of accountability, other than directly that of the Secretary of State to Parliament, more precisely related to academies themselves.

It is of the greatest importance that we have a report to Parliament. There will of course be reports to Select Committees, but we all know that Select Committees—although we hope that this situation will be substantially reformed—do not get the public or media coverage that is given to Parliament itself. The idea of a report to Parliament in which all parliamentarians, Members of both Houses, can ask questions is of the first importance. I cannot emphasise enough the crucial nature of accountability in any major democratic reform of this kind. I will simply say that the purpose of Amendment 53 is to arrange for an annual report. That report would clearly be greatly strengthened by the belt-and-braces approach suggested by my noble friend, as we would then know whether academies maintained and ascribed to the agreements and arrangements that were made for them. Even so, the importance of a report to Parliament is central. We have reports to Parliament on a wide range of issues, so why not on a major part of the education of the people of this country?

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath]

My Lords, we see a bit of a dilemma. In order to give individual schools more authority over their affairs through academy status, the Secretary of State is having to take powers to himself to authorise that. Clearly, that approach has been used before, but with power goes accountability. There is a gap. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, that in some way the Secretary of State needs to be more accountable to Parliament for the responsibilities that he will discharge.

In Committee, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, we debated a number of amendments tabled by Members on this side of the House, which, in retrospect, were probably too detailed and would have required many hundreds of statutory instruments coming to your Lordships’ House and the other place. The noble Lord has come forward with a more sensible approach, which deals with the principles of the granting of academy status and allows Parliament to debate the criteria. As the Secretary of State will be given considerable powers in this area, it is right for Parliament to ask for greater parliamentary scrutiny. I certainly think that the noble Lord has got it right.

How quickly the party opposite has warmed to Executive power. For how many years have we heard noble Lords from both parties opposite ask for more parliamentary scrutiny? I find it surprising that the Government are not able to respond on this matter. Surely what the noble Lord suggests is not too much to ask.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Tuesday 6th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am supported in my amendment by my noble friend Lady Williams of Crosby. This amendment, although different in terminology, covers much the same ground as what was the Amendment 4 that I moved in Committee. I do not propose to rehearse in detail the arguments that I then advanced in favour of that amendment. Suffice it to say that the nub of this amendment is to ensure that before any academy is converted from a maintained school or created completely afresh, the Secretary of State shall take a strategic view of the need for such an academy and, in particular, shall be required to consider its potential impact on other schools —plainly those in the vicinity. It is commonplace to observe that a brand new academy will have to draw its pupils from somewhere. The amendment will require the Secretary of State, in considering whether to grant a request for a school, to consider how that could impact on other good schools in the vicinity. Therefore, the amendment is bang in line with an oft repeated objective of the coalition. In the words of my right honourable friend Michael Gove, we have the most segregated education system of almost any sophisticated democratic country and we need to raise up those who go to schools in underprivileged circumstances. I pay tribute to the previous Labour Government, who strove manfully to do just that, by the creation of the first wave of academy schools.

That is the purpose of the amendment. Not to have such a vital consideration plainly and simply in the Bill would be wrong. I take into account what my noble friend Lord Hill said in Committee, namely that it was his and the Government's view that even without an amendment of this kind they would be under a duty to consider the impact of new academies on neighbouring schools. However, it is a good rule for legislators not to leave principle measures out of a Bill, not least because many of those who in future have to make the Bill work, such as headmasters, governors and local education authorities, will not have access to expert education lawyers who can pick up some of the implications that my noble friend Lord Hill rightly said were in the undergrowth of the Bill. This measure is designed to make plain what is implied.

Finally, I have drafted the amendment to make it clear that it is not the only consideration to be taken into account by the Secretary of State in considering an application for an academy school—it is one inter alia. The prospects to which the amendment relates are important, and there will be a significant number of situations where the amendment will allow sensible, long-term strategic planning of our secondary school system and of our primary school system—but particularly of our secondary school system. I hope that it will commend itself to the House and to the Minister. I beg to move.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, I support my noble friend, because this is a crucial amendment that would greatly strengthen the Bill if it were to go through. This is not only because a local authority has a profound responsibility in arranging for the provision of adequate education for every child in its area, but for another reason that is very close to all of us at present: namely, the financial issues facing the Department for Education and many other departments. It is to those issues that I will address a few remarks.

It is worth pointing out—I looked up the figures recently—that in primary education there are 4,000,237 places, with 482,930 surplus places unused and unfilled at present which cost the Government a good deal of money. In secondary education, the figures are slightly, but not a great deal, better. There is a surplus in secondary education of 307,712 places, which is 9 per cent of the total. In the case of primary schools, 11 per cent of all places are empty. That puts a heavy burden on those, whether they are local authorities or churches, who are responsible for running the schools. Therefore, it becomes all the more important that, in creating a new school, whether it is a converted academy or a new school altogether, careful consideration is given to the impact on the number of places already being supplied.

An academy can do one of two things: it can add to the number of schools that already exist or it can replace those that are taken out. As many noble Lords know very well—I certainly do—it is not easy to close schools. There is usually a great deal of passionate commitment to them, especially primary schools, and the procedure for church schools can be long involving dioceses, parents and others in agreeing to such a provision being made. On the coolest statistics of all—the effect of financing education by having a large number of surplus places that are then added to—it is crucial that such an amendment is accepted.

From 1999 to 2003 the birth rate in Britain fell—not hugely, but by about 40,000. Those children who are just at the age when they go to school will be entering schools with already surplus places, which will increase because of the drop in the birth rate. That change in the birth rate goes back to a modest increase in 2003-04, which means that that group of children will not be reaching school until next year. For all those reasons, therefore, I strongly urge the Government to give due consideration to my noble friend’s amendment. I hope that they will consider it and feel inclined to accept it on grounds of cohesion, the satisfaction of people involved in schools and because of the fundamental financial difficulties.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I support the amendment and the comments of the two previous speakers. It is an important amendment in the context of yesterday’s announcement on Building Schools for the Future. I shall be interested to hear the Minister’s comments, given that Building Schools for the Future began in those areas of greatest educational need. By definition, those are the same areas where parental dissatisfaction is likely to be highest and where parents are most likely to want to start their own free school academies. That raises the scenario of brand new, state-of-the-art, beautifully designed schools effectively having to close down because parents send their children somewhere else and the schools end up being white elephants. That would be a scandalous misuse of resources. I shall be interested in the Minister’s comments and hope that he will support his noble friend’s amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord meant to refer to Amendments 3, 4 and 7, because I now speak to Amendment 5, which is in my name.

We on these Benches do not favour a complete ban on primary schools. However, as the Minister knows, we have considerable concerns as we feel that the issue of primary schools should be approached with considerable caution and careful thought. I leave my noble friend Lady Williams to speak to Amendments 22A and 24, which set out our ideas, briefly referred to just now. Amendment 5 paves the way for one of those measures, which is to allow schools to apply as groups. Clause 1(5) says:

“The undertakings are … to establish and maintain an independent school in England which … has characteristics that include those in subsection (6)”,

and so on. My amendment would change that to say that,

“the undertakings are … to establish and maintain an independent school or group of schools in England”.

It is a very small amendment, but it paves the way to the idea that my noble friend Lady Williams will address in a moment that we should perhaps encourage primary schools to apply as a group or federation rather than a single school.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, as the Minister knows, we have given careful thought to the whole issue of primary schools, and I am grateful for what the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, had to say about it, with which I very much agree. Primary schools have about them a number of characteristics that are simply nothing like as typical of secondary schools. Many of them are relatively small schools in rural areas, and 25 per cent of the population of primary school children in England and Wales attend 75 per cent of the number of schools. In other words, there are a great many very small schools in small towns in rural areas, which no less than 25 per cent of all our schoolchildren attend between the primary school ages. Secondly, of this group of schools no less than one-third are either church voluntary or church-controlled schools, mainly Anglican but some Roman Catholic and others of other denominations. That is a factor about primary schools that is far more significant than would be the case with secondary schools.

Furthermore, as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, implied—and we have tried to indicate on this side of the House that we share his view—primary schools are often at the heart of the community, the centre of civic life and the place where people meet to discuss things, where they feel themselves drawn to support the school. At a time when schools will need more support—among other ways, financially—that is a very crucial asset that should not be easily put at risk. I suspect that many noble Lords other than myself spend a certain amount of time attending school fetes and competitions and this and that, which all help to contribute some money to the financial needs of the school.

In addition, as briefly said by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, primary schools are peculiarly dependent on local authority support, whether for SEN, management issues, financial issues or simply to deal with a very difficult governor or parent. As chairman of the judges of the Teaching Awards, which I declare as an interest, I have repeatedly been approached by primary school heads who talk about the support of their local authority and say how important it has been to them. That is not something that I have tried to elicit from them; it is something that they freely mention themselves, over and again. That is even truer if the school is small, isolated or on its own.

Academies Bill [HL]

Baroness Williams of Crosby Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I support a great deal of what has been said today. I shall go back rather further. In the early years of the previous Government, there was an attempt to introduce citizenship. My noble friend Lord Northbourne and I hoped valiantly that young children would be taught not just about their relationships with their parents, but about how they would bring up their children and what sort of a parent they should be. Sadly, the whole citizenship exercise disappeared into a vacuum of being taught all around the curriculum, so it was never followed through.

Following on from the Ofsted report, I wish to comment on the success that the schools mentioned had on things such as bullying. In some schools, from the moment a child enters, he or she has a mentor. It is another child’s duty to settle the new child into the school. It would be a huge help if that could be taken seriously and become part of the way in which all schools integrate the next generation.

It may not be totally fair to blame the Government—certainly not all members of it—for the way in which the previous Bill disappeared into the sand, but now that they have this opportunity to look at the situation again, I hope that they will come forward with sensible proposals.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey of Darwen and Lady Gould, and my noble friend Lady Walmsley, have long been advocates and apostles of PSHE. Their difficulty has been that for a long time PSHE has been regarded as a “trendy left” view which has been dismissed on largely political grounds. Therefore, I want primarily to address my Conservative Party partners in the coalition. Three aspects of PSHE should give them pause.

The first was eloquently stated by the noble Baroness, Lady Gould. It is that huge threats to children, such as drugs and alcohol, need to be discussed seriously within schools at a very early age—the middle of primary school—and onwards if people are to realise their immense and devastating consequences on children. They have to counter great pressure from, on one side, teenage magazines and what one might call youth culture, and, on the other, the supermarket culture. That is not easy to do.

The second issue, which supersedes any political views and which I again ask my partners in the coalition to consider very seriously, is parenthood. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, has been famous for the way in which he has consistently argued in this House that we have neglected at our peril the parenthood of the human species, which is long in growing up. Long ago, when I was Secretary of State, I remember proposing that parenthood should be a fundamental part of sex education. In other words, the emphasis should be at least as much on the responsibilities of bringing up a child—families will devote a huge part of their energies to that process—as on sex education itself. You cannot divorce the two and in some ways we have done great harm to ourselves by doing that. We now look at what one can describe in some quarters only as an abdication of parenthood. I do not refer just to people who are economically deprived but to the many who wrongly think that money substitutes for time in the bringing up of children. There are huge lesions to be mended in our relationships with children. I strongly thank the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and commend him on the consistency of his arguments in this field, which desperately need to be listened to.

Finally, on the issue raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others who said that there are insufficient qualified teachers, conceivably the coalition might think of something rather unique and announce that it is its intention to introduce compulsory PSHE—with the emphasis as I have described—in three years’ time. That would immediately attract many young people to thinking about teaching in that field. We try to do everything instantaneously. Education, like growing a tree, is a slow process, and we need to think in terms of how one can obtain responses further down the line. In this case, many young people and many others who are coming into the profession would seriously think about a responsible approach to PSHE as part of the curriculum, although it may be unwise to introduce it immediately.

[The Lord Bishop of Exeter]

My Lords, I begin by commenting on both amendments; I recognise the importance of giving children and young people access to appropriate and high-quality PSHE, for which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and others made such a compelling and eloquent case. However, I wish mainly to speak to Amendment 70 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne. I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, in welcoming the emphasis placed in that amendment on parenting and the need to make young people aware of the parenting responsibilities that come with bringing a child into the world and, again, I salute the work of the noble Lord in this area, especially in helping young men to come to terms with what it means to be a father.

However, I have a couple of concerns with the amendment. First, it is not clear how the resulting curriculum would be determined. Research suggests that aspects of PSHE that have to do with sex and relationships are most effective if parents are involved to the greatest possible extent. That is why the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Gould, about engaging parents, were so well made. While the Church of England has not had a problem with statutory provision, not least with the impact that it has on teacher training provision, I am aware of those, particularly in other churches and faith communities, who feel that the engagement of parents would be more greatly advanced if it was stated explicitly that the curriculum would ultimately be determined, on an academy-by-academy basis, by governors in consultation with parents, so that this important subject is taught in a manner that is consistent with the ethos of the academy and parental wishes.

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[Lord Lucas]

I should declare an interest, in that I run the Good Schools Guide and therefore spend an inordinate amount of my time inspecting schools, or rather causing schools to be inspected, and thus have a keen interest in the topic. Inspection is a crucial aspect of the Bill. We are considering schools that will be innovative, free schools. They will be newly founded, often with untried and untested combinations of people involved, with no established sponsors or with sponsors who are relatively new to the job. That will be at a time when there is considerable pressure on the central and local systems of support provided to schools.

The lesson that we have from the United States, as I am sure Rachel Wolf has told the Minister, is that charter schools succeed when they are properly regulated and inspected. If you think about it, it is obvious. If a school starts to go wrong, you can see it. If you can catch it reasonably early on, it is not too much work to put it right. If you let it go for a year or three, you will be in serious trouble.

We are also at a time when inspection itself is up for inspection. It is clear that this Government are reviewing the inspection regime in some detail and are prepared to make big changes—not surprisingly, if they want to cut the overall budget by 25 per cent. This is a good time to look at Ofsted and to ask: does it do what it is supposed to do; could we do better; could we do it for less?

Parents want, first, a regular report from Ofsted. The idea that you wait for four, five or six years between inspections is ridiculous. You want to know what is happening this year. You want to know that the school that you are about to commit your child to is still in good condition. Secondly, if Ofsted produces an adverse report, you want support. You want to feel that, whatever the problems at the school, they are now going to be gathered together and looked after. In both those aspects, Ofsted fails miserably. Most Ofsted reports are out of date. When Ofsted puts a school into special measures—this is my experience of the process, which has always been from the outside—parents spend a month or so in ignorance and, even then, when people start to react and be supportive, Ofsted just stands on the outside throwing rocks at the school, keeping on criticising, rather than being part of the support network.

Ofsted is also clearly not what schools want. Schools want support, advice and help in steering in the right direction. They want a constructive relationship with the people involved in inspecting the school. The most recent example of that that I can think of is the old FEFC inspections under our previous Government. They had that relationship with colleges. They would inspect regularly. Subject inspectors would be in and out of the college once or twice a year. Support and advice would be coming through the college. You worried about whether you might be ticked off for something, but the general relationship was supportive. You expected that the inspectors’ visit would, on the whole, be a constructive experience.

What the Government want out of Ofsted is value for the money that they are putting in. We are a long way short of that. After a fashion, we have an effective system of calling schools to account. Spreading good practice, knowing what is going on in schools and making sure that, say, PSHE is being properly taught, even though it is not being examined, are functions of the inspectorate. By and large, I do not have criticisms on that, except that it costs far too much to get there and does far too much damage to schools.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I am sympathetic to the noble Lord’s argument, but why does the word “interim” appear in this amendment? Should this not be consistently carried on, rather than being purely interim?

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I apologise if the wording of my amendment is not exact. It is merely there to bring up the subject of inspections and to make it clear that I want them to be regular, not just every five years or so.

There is a good model of how this could be done. Every year, we are retiring a few thousand headmasters and deputy headmasters who have immense experience and the ability to judge a school pretty rapidly—the good ones. They know how to read a school, how a school works and what to look for. They have the ability to be immensely supportive and they are not that expensive because they have pensions. They have a commitment to the job and all they want is a reasonable return for the effort that they are putting in. If we were to pay £300 a day, that might be a figure with some echoes—we do it for that. It should not surprise us that heads and others with a real vocation and dedication to helping other people are prepared to work and put in similar effort for a similar amount of money. You are not looking at a lot of money. You are looking at people whom parents and heads naturally trust. You are starting off on a pretty good basis if you are staffing your inspectorate with that sort of person.

These people could go once a year into every school—and I do say “every school”. What is the point of an inspectorate not visiting outstanding schools? How are inspectors ever going to learn what best practice is if they never go into the best schools? Part of the point of an inspectorate ought to be spreading good practice. They should be there to say, “This is what I saw the other day”, or, “Why don’t you talk to him or her about that because they seem to be getting it right?”. If all you are doing is going round the schools that are not performing well, all you can do is spread bad practice. To be an effective inspector, you need to be in touch with good practice and with what is going on in the world of good schools. A simple report to parents—a paragraph or so, to say that since the last inspection report things are progressing, this is particularly good, there is still a bit of trouble on that but, overall, we are happy—is what parents need to know that they can take a baseline from the previous Ofsted report, read through it, know that things have improved or are much as they were and take a reasonable decision. Most schools with a head who is open to ideas will benefit enormously from having someone such as that around.

Once schools have come to trust the system, you would find that they were asking for extra days. When I was a governor of a college under the old FEFC system, we were looking to have these people in more often. We would say, “We’re not doing what we should do in biology. Let’s get the biology man around to give us an extra bit of help there”. Schools, particularly primary schools, are little, isolated, lonely places. They want support and they want to have contact with people who can provide that support and good ideas. At the moment, all we have is the school improvement partner system, which is too low-level and local. We would do much better if we moved to making that part of the inspection system. I think that we could run that bit of the inspection system for about £10 million a year and have a report on every school, every year. Over and above that, you obviously need a full inspection system. Every now and again, you need to go in and do the whole works. Even if you are quite generous on the budget and say that you will spend 10 man-days on average every five years, that will cost you only £20 million or so. Then you have the central system over that.

There is an enormous obsession with data in the current central system. Collecting the data imposes immense burdens on schools. Teachers worry about measuring every aspect of every child’s performance because the school improvement partner or the inspector may pick them up on this or that, which is not constructive. You do not need to look at data on that level. Any mathematician will tell you that, apart from in pure mathematics, figures are always wrong. Figures do not provide value on their own; they provide value only in relation to what is happening on the ground. Inspections should be about the human aspect of schools: the quality of the teaching; the quality of the atmosphere; the staff; and the relationships in the school. They are things that numbers never throw any light on, although numbers can be useful in confirming what is happening.

If we were to budget £50 million a year for Ofsted as a whole, that would be enough. We could then perhaps devote another £50 million to the same organisation, perhaps, if it was running well and was focused on supporting schools that were having a hard time, bringing them round and making them straight—if it was picking up schools that had scored four and setting them right—which needs a lot of concentrated help and advice very fast. That would still be half the current budget, but it would provide about 10 times the value. I beg to move.

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[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I want to say how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and, unusually, disagree with my noble friend Lady Perry. The points that she makes about partnerships are precisely correct; indeed, a number of academies are part of these behaviour partnerships, which are working extremely well. In exactly the same way, many school confederations are working well. Many of us are now saying, “What a good thing confederations are”, although initially some of us were a little hesitant about the Government forcing schools into confederations. Where there have been confederations, many members of staff have found them very useful.

I particularly endorse Amendment 73 on the need for academies to participate in the behaviour partnerships in exactly the same way as other locally maintained state schools should. As the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, said, getting on the telephone and talking to other heads is precisely what it is all about. The partnership does not need to be heavy-handed or forced; it can be very light touch.

I also agree very much with the arguments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. The low-incidence special needs can be overlooked and it is extremely important that they are not disregarded.

We are all concerned about these exclusions because we do not want these young people to fall by the wayside into the category that we call NEETs—not in employment, education or training. They are drop-outs from society, so it is important that we meet their needs. Many pupils with low-incidence special educational needs get disregarded. They are not a great nuisance. They sit at the back of the classroom, playing games and talking among themselves, but they do not get educated as they should because nobody has looked at what their needs are. We have got much better at this over the past few years, but it is vital that academies, too, pay attention to these young people. The Minister has promised to come back with another look at the process surrounding special educational needs and I hope that he will incorporate the issue in the review that he is undertaking.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

My Lords, as another former Secretary of State, perhaps I may say how strongly I agree with what was said by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, as well as by my noble friend Lady Sharp. I will be brief. First, like other noble Lords, I have first-hand knowledge of the fact that, in some cases, schools have decided not to accept a child with special educational needs—for example, one who is dyslexic, dyspraxic, deaf or blind—when they believe that that would lower their standing in the league tables. The league tables have been devastating in that way, by making it difficult often for an ambitious and able head teacher who values their position in the league tables to take such children. There is a danger, as my noble friend Lady Sharp said, that if you begin to regard the position of children with special educational needs, or children who are difficult, as somehow excluding them from being part of the academy, that academy will become still further removed from the problems of the whole of society. I feel strongly about this.

Perhaps I may refer to the interesting comments of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, about Denmark. It is interesting also that the incidence of permanent exclusion in Scotland is proportionately a long way below that in England, because Scotland has chosen to go for short-term, temporary exclusions rather than for permanent exclusions that far too often condemn the child for the rest of their life to being outside society and often lead them straight on to being young offenders and things of that kind. I have a great deal of sympathy with what was said by both noble Lords. I hope that the Government will seriously consider a different kind of approach to children who are excluded.

The noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, whom I congratulate on her open-mindedness on the issue, has indicated that partnerships play a large part in this. My noble friend Lady Sharp has seconded the view that they are crucial and significant. However, beyond that we must look at the whole situation of excluded children: why they are excluded, whether earlier intervention would save them from being excluded and whether temporary exclusions should be more common than permanent exclusions, with their devastating effect of taking the child almost altogether out of society.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I agree in many ways with what the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, has just said. We face a long-running problem of how to deal with kids who get themselves into a position where they need to be excluded from school. She said that the Scottish example is that schools retain ownership of these pupils. You cannot throw them away because they are still part of you. Even if they are not on the premises, the school has a commitment to help with their education.

That is one approach. Another might be through the use of the pupil premium, when we get that going. The kids will suddenly become much more valuable because they have been excluded. The resources to help them and deal with them will travel with them. Certainly, there is scope for free schools to innovate in this area. Many of the children’s homes that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, talked about are privately run. The troublesome end of education has become increasingly well looked after by the private sector. There is a real opportunity. I do not expect to hear it today, but I hope for a commitment from my noble friend to deal with this. We have a chance, if we are sharp and inventive enough, to make real progress.

The problem raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, is rather more intractable. Imagine that I said to your Lordships, “Right, there are 800 of us or thereabouts. I will take £500 from one of you, but don’t worry, I will give each of you £1”. That is all very nice, as 799 of us will go and spend the pound and feel a bit better off, but someone will feel very upset when they get a bill for £500 and only have £1 to pay it with. That is the situation that we risk landing ourselves in with schools with low-incidence problems of any kind. If we do not operate this on a pool basis so that the school with the problem can find the funds, all the other schools that do not have the problem will have spent the money and we will be in trouble. Again, I am interested in how we will solve this in a world where not 200 but 2,000 schools are academies and the problem becomes much more obvious.