Education Bill

Lord Lexden Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lexden]

My Lords:

“Every effort should be made to help parents to send their children to schools of their own choice. The status of technical schools and colleges must be enhanced and their numbers increased. We wish to see that the rewards of the teaching profession are such as will continuously attract men and women of high quality”.

Those words appeared in the Conservative Party’s manifesto for the general election of 1950. Parental choice, high-quality teaching and a diversity of provision underlined in the manifesto by the reference to technical schools surely all remain essential if an excellent education is to be available for every child in our country. Yet, 60 years on, those great objectives still await full and effective implementation. This important Bill is designed to hasten their accomplishment and I welcome it warmly. I give it a much higher rating than my noble friend Lady Jolly, who marked it so harshly, although as I was once a mere university lecturer she is likely to be singularly unimpressed by that.

Some malign social trends have made the Government’s task infinitely more difficult. The Tory manifesto of 1950 was written by a wise and humane man, David Clarke, in the Conservative Research Department, where I have worked more recently. It would never have occurred to him, or to others of his generation, that in some schools 60 years later classrooms would come to resemble battlefields. It was a different world then, when 100 windows might be broken in an outburst of high spirits, as we heard so amusingly from Michael Gove’s fellow Aberdonian, the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood. In 2011, a comparatively small number of children cause a great deal of trouble over and again. As we have heard, every school day, nearly 1,000 children are excluded for abuse or assault against staff and fellow pupils. Long gone are the days when, in Winston Churchill’s well known words, headmasters possessed powers with which Prime Ministers had yet to be invested.

At the moment, severe disruption cannot be readily curtailed. Heads and their colleagues must be put in a position where they can take swift and effective action to restore order and discipline in the classroom in the interests of their pupils as a whole. Part 2 of the Bill provides the measures that are needed and they deserve emphatic support.

At first sight, it seems strange that such changes designed to improve conditions for high-quality teachers should be accompanied in Part 3 by the abolition of a body established just 11 years ago to help to raise professional standards—namely, the General Teaching Council for England. At the time of its creation, I was general secretary of the Independent Schools Council. Its constituent bodies, representing some 1,300 independent schools which could have remained entirely outside the GTC, decided to support it. A fine, enduring partnership seemed in prospect, thanks to the effusive response we received from the GTC’s founding father, the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, who has explained his position and view so powerfully this evening, evoking an equally powerful response from my noble friend Lord Willis. It is sad that the GTC failed to fulfil its early promise and I mourn its passing.

In these circumstances it is the united view of independent schools—which do not always reach a united view—that the GTC’s register of qualified teachers should remain in being in a format that is readily accessible to employers and other interested parties. Participation in the GTC forms part of a larger ambition, shared both by the Labour Government at that time and by independent schools themselves. Together they sought ways of extending and strengthening the serious academic co-operation undertaken for mutual benefit that has always existed between the maintained and independent sectors. The then Government provided funding on a modest scale in this area—Gordon Brown was not disposed to be generous—for special joint schemes between specific schools. The Secretary of State at that time, now the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, wrote to me stressing the potential that such arrangements had,

“in contributing to raising standards for pupils, teachers and the wider community”.

That spirit of partnership should be developed further and this Bill could provide the means. Part 3 transfers the functions of the Training and Development Agency to the Secretary of State. The process could be usefully accompanied by a re-examination of all forms of provision for training and for professional development with the aim of ensuring that the independent sector enjoys equality of treatment wherever possible. That matter might be explored in Committee. So, too, might the contribution that independent schools can make to the academy movement—a point so well understood by my friends, the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and Mr Graham Brady in another place. We shall find some common ground with my noble friend Lord Blackwell.

Parents can look forward to higher standards and greater choice as a result of this Government’s legislation but, at the same time, vigilance is needed in protecting choice and rights which parents have long enjoyed. I have recently drawn one specific cause of concern to the attention of my noble friend the Minister in my role as a patron of a campaign organised by parents of the Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School in London. Parents with children at the school are being denied their proper role on its governing body by the Roman Catholic diocesan authorities. This is a case which has implications for all 4,000 voluntary-aided schools in England. The law needs to be clarified. I hope that, either in Committee or through some other means, the Government will be able to set out their view.

The Bill touches briefly but very significantly on the education system in Northern Ireland, the part of our country which means most to me. Under Clauses 21 and 22, the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation—Ofqual—will work with the Northern Ireland Assembly to equip the Province with the high-quality system of vocational education which it has lacked for so long. As my right honourable friend the Prime Minister stressed in his speech at Stormont last week, the Province must have,

“a dynamic, prosperous, enterprise-led economy for the 21st century”.

The partnership between Ofqual and the Assembly will make a vital contribution to its development. It symbolises the continuing importance of Britain in Ulster’s affairs in the new era of devolution. It also provides a fine example of brisk action to those politicians in Northern Ireland who have failed for years to resolve crucial issues, such as the transfer arrangements from primary to secondary school.

Churchill’s wartime coalition conferred on this country the inestimable boon of a free secondary education for every family that wanted it. Yet an excellent education has not yet become everyone’s birthright. This coalition Government have an historic opportunity to complete their predecessor’s achievement—which owed so much to one of the greatest modern Tories, Rab Butler, who was also one of the greatest administrators, with a healthy dislike of quangos, particularly in education.