Education Bill

Debate between Lord Knight of Weymouth and Earl of Listowel

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My noble friend says from a sedentary position that it does not sound like the Secretary of State, but it is also true that the Government have now closed down the COI. That also sends a signal about what they think about professional marketing and its importance. As a result of the advertising ban that we had once the Government took office, we have had a significant reduction in applications for people to be teachers, which also suggests that professional marketing works. I gather that we should just about scrape through in meeting the recruitment targets, but with applications 10 to 15 per cent down this year, that makes you question whether we will recruit the same quality, because we will be recruiting from a smaller pool of applicants.

The real problems will come next year because of the lag effect that we normally see around stimulated interest in teaching from people who are thinking about what jobs they will do once they graduate. I really worry about the effect on teacher recruitment for next year, especially in the shortage subjects, science and maths in particular, that we are so concerned about.

Hence the reason for tabling Amendment 76ZA. This repeats the clauses that established the TDA relevant to promoting careers in the school workforce. There were four main aims of the TDA when it was established in statute. I have simply repeated one of them: the aim of promoting careers in the school workforce. It is a probing amendment. I cannot pretend to be an expert parliamentary draftsperson and I cannot pretend to believe that the Minister—however reasonable a chap he might be—is suddenly going to cave in and allow this arm’s-length body to be created. However, the abolition of the Central Office of Information means that there is no other obvious capacity that I know of within government to do a professional job in running and procuring the integrated marketing campaigns to recruit teachers that we know from recent history are so effective in ensuring that we have the best quality recruits into the profession.

Therefore, the amendment proposes an arm’s-length body to perform this function to ensure that we sustain recruitment into teaching. If the Minister disagrees with my reasonable request to set up this arm’s-length body, I simply need him to give me a confident answer as to how this will be done as successfully as the TDA, and that he will ensure this marketing function is taken more seriously than in the current policy document. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask what the initials COI stand for.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

COI is the Central Office of Information, a substantial agency that works across government in order to provide capacity around buying advertising, marketing and so on. It was announced a couple of weeks ago that it was going to close with the loss of a few hundred jobs. When the initial arm’s-length body review by the Cabinet Office took place soon after the Government came in, resulting in the Public Bodies Bill which is currently in the other place, the signal was that the COI would be retained but—as I said—the decision was made a few weeks ago. On the noble Earl’s Amendment 78, which is also in this group, his proposal to retain an advisory board to government has some attraction to me as a defender of the status quo in that it is a variant on the status quo; it allows the Government to have their way to some extent by taking functions in-house as part of the centralisation of functions that this Bill represents. I would like to see the specific aim around professionalising marketing. I am pretty flexible about this but I think that those functions need to be retained.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise to speak to Amendment 78, which is in my name, and to support Amendment 76, to which I have attached my name. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, said, Amendment 78 would simply replace a board. Perhaps we can retain the current board as a special advisory group for the Department for Education.

The amendments are partly in response to a meeting recently of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Skills. The new chair of that group, in post for one year, concluded the meeting by saying two things. First, he said that when he visited Finland and had a meeting with politicians from across the political spectrum, he was very impressed by the strong consensus on education policy. Secondly, he said that the more he learnt about this issue the more it seemed to him that if politics could stay out of education, the better it would be for education. By tabling my amendment, I hope to probe the Government about how one might encourage that position of distancing politics from education.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to the rather disappointing results in recruiting teachers. It seems to me that this is a golden opportunity to get hold of bright young graduates who might have gone into the City at other times, but who might now choose to go into social care and education. It is sad that we are not getting the cream of the crop. If the noble Lord’s concerns are correct, and this is to some degree to do with interference from the Government, perhaps this is a good illustration of how it is sometimes better for politicians to leave the professionals and experts to do the job. There is an important role for politicians in ensuring that the right experts are appointed and that the criticisms from people sitting in their armchairs are answered.

I refer to the Youth Justice Board, which was an arm’s-length organisation. When there was a spate of thefts of mobile phones and muggings because of that, the Government responded by strengthening the laws around mobile phone theft. Unfortunately, one young man, Joseph Scholes, who had just begun at a children’s home, was out for the day with a group of young people. I understand that he was involved in the periphery of a mobile phone theft. Because of the response to the understandable and popular concern about mobile phone theft, when he was found guilty of being involved in this activity, he was placed in the secure estate, in a young offender institution, even though he was a very vulnerable young man. Unfortunately he hanged himself. The judge recognised that it was not appropriate for him to be placed in the YOI but that he should have been in a more sensitive environment.

Perhaps it is not a particularly good example, but it seems to me that the Youth Justice Board has a similar history to that described by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which was that the Government despaired of being able to do the right thing in youth justice in 1998 or so. They were disappointed in the outcomes. We have had the highest level of children in custody in western Europe. The Youth Justice Board was set up with good positive outcomes. In the past three years the number of children in custody has reduced by 30 per cent. One sees positive outcomes. I am sorry to go on for so long and shall try to wind up as soon as possible. However, in Hackney, for example, politicians decided to give great authority to two very senior social workers. They challenged a culture in Hackney that had let down a lot of young people and children. After three years, they reduced by 30 per cent the number of children coming into care and saved the council a huge sum in doing so. They did this by putting in charge people who had a lifetime’s experience working in this area and by backing their work.

I think we will see best outcomes for our children if we give as much responsibility to people who have actually done the work, who are experienced professionals, and if we can keep politicians—who nevertheless have an important role—as far away as possible from such decisions. The TDA is a good example of a body which worked as a buffer between politicians and education and had good outcomes. I am looking for reassurance from the Minister that this will not have the adverse consequences that I fear.