Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Quirk
While the Minister is taking the deep breath that the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has urged upon him, may I give him an extra couple of minutes of breathing time by saying what a difficult job he is going to have in offsetting the arguments presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and the noble Lord, Lord Knight? Surely it is the outstanding schools that need to be inspected in order to have reports coming out showing what can be done in state sector, mainstream schools. Once every five years is, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, nothing compared to the extra bureaucracy which we are threatened with in some kind of compensation for this. I hope that the Minister will bow to the wisdom that has been cast before him this afternoon.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I add my voice to those who have already spoken. I am greatly saddened by this Government’s attitude to inspection, which seems to me to be coloured by too many years in opposition listening to schools complaining about inspection. Indeed, inspection under the previous Government was not generally taking a constructive turn, but then, we had not constructed it in a constructive way ourselves previously. I had hoped that this Government would go back to first principles and ask what inspection is for. If you start by saying that it is to make sure that our children are receiving the best possible education, then you need a system which is much faster to react than the current one. It can take Ofsted three years to pick up that a school is going wrong, because their data are always backward-looking and they always want two years of that before they believe that there is any trend in place. So in the schools that I have seen and known to have gone wrong, it has been the third year or the beginning of the fourth when Ofsted have come to call and by then, a lot of children’s educations have been harmed. I would have been looking to produce something which was much faster to react, rather than something which is going to be slower to react.
To pick up the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, and the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, it is essential that inspectors, the people who are seeing a lot of schools, see the very best. The point about the best schools is that they are utterly surprising and jaw-dropping when you see them: you could not believe that what they are doing could be done. When you have seen it, you start to understand how other schools could do it too, but if you have not seen it, you just do not know; you just accept that the ordinary way of doing things is sufficient, that the platitudes that, “We are doing well by our children here” are right, because it is okay by the current average, rather than being anywhere near the potential of the children. When you see the difference that a really good school can make, you understand that there is a long way to go; not that schools are bad at the moment, but that the good schools can be a great deal better than they are. That understanding comes from going round outstanding schools and being able, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, to set your yardstick on the basis of what you know can be achieved with children like these in a school that really understands how to deal with them.
We do not have that; we have something that goes backwards. We have a decision to remove outstanding schools from the purview of Ofsted. However, things change. I came across a school by chance the other day—Glenthorne in Sutton. It is sprouting all sorts of new initiatives. You can study three A-levels and golf, as well as tennis and football, to a professional standard. It is great to see these initiatives but no one will take a look at them. No one will know whether they are going right or being balanced correctly. It will be three years before anything shows in the figures. However, a good, experienced head, going around six months into the project, would know whether it was going right. To think that you can do this by remote control—that we are looking after the future of our children by stepping back in this way—is a profound misconception. I am afraid I despair of changing the Government’s mind at the moment, but give it a year or two, let an outstanding school or two crash, and then we will think about it again.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I cannot improve on the contributions that we have heard from my noble friends and the noble Lords, Lord Quirk and Lord Lucas. I just want to add a few more points to the debate.
The first is one of principle. I believe strongly that not just the Government but we in this House and the other place are guardians of the public when they use public services. We have to take very seriously the arrangements we make to ensure the safety as well as the standards of those services. Secondly, as we have seen, the possibility of an inspection in any public service is not a guarantee of high standards. However, the certainty of no inspection surely means a huge risk of declining standards and, in this case, a risk to children. Thirdly, our experience in other sectors, particularly in health and social care recently, shows that pulling back too far on inspection has led to serious risk to patients and older people. Fourthly, there is the point that I made in my previous contribution, which, with respect, I do not think the Minister answered fully. Exempting outstanding schools completely is not necessary in order for them to have a qualitatively different inspection regime. We should keep them in the framework of inspection.
My noble friend Lady Morris asked the Minister to take a deep breath and think again about his position and responsibilities. I ask noble Lords also to think from the point of view of a parent of a child at a school, with which they may well be very happy as an outstanding school. However, they would not be happy to know that it would never be inspected again. A further point is that when parents are looking for a school for their children, they look not only at a school’s results but on the internet for Ofsted reports. In this instance, a few years down the line there will be no up-to-date Ofsted reports for those parents who are looking for a school to examine. They will not know the difference between the school as it was when it was outstanding and the school as it is further down the line. On this issue we all have a responsibility to consider all the points made, particularly the dangers inherent in this approach, and whether we are happy to support them.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, all the proposed amendments are more than worthy of acceptance, whether that is in the Bill, by us all or in guidance to schools and communities. They clearly set the sort of society that we are trying to achieve; that is, the big society, community involvement, or whatever one likes to call it. I agree entirely with the points made by my noble friend Lady Flather in speaking to her amendment. Of them all, it perhaps sums up the whole feeling that the school, and the arrangements of the school in what it sets out to achieve for the children, also involves the community, which is a sort of two-way process.
I should like to make one further point at this stage. When we look at all these additional changes and responsibilities that schools will have to cope with as a result of this Bill when it becomes law, one area that perhaps gets less attention is the role of the school governors. They are being asked to play an increasingly important role—I declare my interest as president of the NGA—on well-being and other issues. Whatever the issues are, these are added responsibilities. If I were to add anything, I would include something about the importance of not just management of the school but the whole way in which it operates under its governors. With that, I hope that we will get a favourable response from the Minister and perhaps even an acceptance of something of what has been said to go in the Bill itself. We shall have to wait and see.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I very much hope that my noble friend will pay attention to the speeches he has heard on Amendment 78. I well remember the debates that led up to and followed the inspired amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Alton, which got us out of some emotional difficulties. It expressed all our intentions well. This Government realise that measuring schools and setting them objectives has an effect on schools, which is why they introduced the EBacc, which is having an effect. Ofsted looks at community cohesion not because we expect Ofsted to go galumphing all over this territory but so that schools know that attention is being paid to whether they do it or not, and that, therefore, it will come within the list of things that they have to do. The noble Lord, Lord Quirk, made some pretty good fun of the provisions in the Bill about social, moral and cultural development, as if there was a way of measuring these things or a tape measure that could be run over them. But having that in the Bill means schools know that this is something they have to do and that, therefore, they have to give time to it and spend money on it. If schools are not given any mind in these sorts of areas, they will start not doing it in the way that they have been not doing foreign languages. Hence, the need to row back on that with some vigour, which I am delighted my right honourable friend is doing. These things matter and these particular words matter. The noble Baroness, Lady Flather, has my total support. I very much hope that in the Minister’s consideration of what might be done to improve this Bill, she will focus on those two words.
On the other amendments in the group, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, is aiming at. It seems to me that we are moving children between two regimes—that of the social services and that of the school, or the family and the school, whichever may apply. In terms of understanding what is going right and what is going wrong, it is important to make a measurement at the point when a child moves from one to the other so that we know whether the problems of literacy are being generated in the community or though a lack of attention in the school. I am not saying that this is the right place to put it but if we are doing value-added in a school, we should take an initial measure at the beginning and not two years in. A lot of value-added goes on in those two years in a good school. We should be doing that. I very much support the spirit of the amendment.
I also support my noble friend Lady Walmsley in her wish to see well-being included. The Prime Minister has been right to support that as a concept of wide application and it really should find its way into something as central as education. I look forward to the speech of my noble friend the Minister.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I had hoped to speak in support of the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, but I cannot do so because the debate has taken place in my absence. So I rise only to say in a very plaintive way that I left with a list of groupings which made it clear that I had time to attend to other business but having attended to the other business, I find that the business I wished to be here for had already been dispatched. I hope that is not going to become a regular feature of our proceedings because it is exceedingly inconvenient.
Lord Lucas
Before my noble friend sits down, will she agree to write to me saying exactly where community cohesion is dealt with in the draft framework document or the evaluation schedule? I must be reading the words wrong, missing them or misunderstanding how they work.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss
My Lords, I will say one thing briefly. It is important that we all remember that the Church of England is the established church of this country. That is why we have the Prayers that we have every day. It is appropriate that that should be recognised in schools.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, surely those who regard religion as an infectious and dangerous condition should, in the modern idiom, wish to immunise their children with the mildest possible form of the disease.
Lord Elton
My Lords, I will intervene briefly. I, too, apologise for arriving late. I was bending my energies to limit and eventually, I hope, rub out the use of cluster munitions—of which by far the greatest number of victims are children of the age we are talking about, so it was very germane. I understand that the amendment is not designed to stop the teaching of religion but to stop the demonstration of religion as part of the organisation of an institution; namely, the school in which the children are. That is a very valuable practice. The development of habit in early life can be enormously important in later life. I was carried through the most difficult patch of my life by the habit of going to church every Sunday. The impetus of that was enormously valuable. The institution of regular corporate worship, properly conducted, is enormously beneficial to the young. I deplore any attempt either to discontinue it or, as some of these amendments would do, make it impractical.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am enormously supportive of everything that has been said so far. I am greatly encouraged by what the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said about the TES. Government after Government have tried to find ways of spreading good practice in education. I was looking at an example the other day—the Harkness table, which is a way of teaching. It started in America in 1930. It is still trickling into schools over here, because information and experience do not move until teachers move between schools, and it is a very slow process. ICT has made it possible to do this better and at a greater speed, but I have not seen it happening yet. I did not know it was happening in the TES and I am very pleased to hear it. It ought to be the sort of thing that the Government are grabbing at ways of supporting.
I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, about personal devices. An element of this Bill is about enabling schools to ban them more effectively. Actually, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, they ought to be finding ways of using them more effectively, of incorporating them and of enabling those children who do not have access to a good enough device to participate. That takes the kind of transformation that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has seen in only a few schools, but they have done it, they have done it successfully, and it shows what is possible. Clearly this is going to challenge the whole way of teaching. Everybody can now have the best teacher in the world, or at least for a substantial part of the time. The transformation of teachers from people who are supposed to know everything, however inadequate they are, to people who are going to be good guides and really do know everything, is one to which I look forward with great excitement. It is going to take some getting right. I am looking forward to a very supportive speech from my noble friend on the Front Bench because I am a great supporter of what this Government are doing.
In the bits of the speech from the noble Lord, Lord Knight, with which I did not agree, he was celebrating his role as a great frog sitting in the middle of the department, croaking while everybody else listened to his croaks. Now we have ponds all over England full of tadpoles and no great frog. The noble Lord, Lord Knight, may claim to be the father of the tadpoles, but this Government have liberated education and have made things possible that, under the Stalinist bureaucracy of the QCA and its successors, was never possible. All the changes that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, is looking for would not have been possible under his way of doing things because the centre insisted on having things done its way and reaching its own decisions before it allowed other people to take action. That has been done away with. I meet people who used to work for Becta who are out there now doing wonderful things. They no longer have to wait for Becta to take decisions. They are out there spreading the word individually and making businesses and lives out of it. I think it is part of the transformation that the noble Lord, Lord Knight, celebrates that we have been through a period when there has been a dispersal of ideas. Now, instead of one great oak, we have a lot of acorns sprouting, and I think that is the right place to be when it comes to technology.
I celebrate the particular acorn that this Government have allowed me to sprout, something called Behind the Screen, which, to my great surprise, was adopted as government policy with the help of David Willetts, who must have briefly reincarnated himself as the Minister for Education. The idea is to take computing—in particular, coding—back into school in a serious way, to work with industry in doing that and to work on real-world projects with real-world software. The aim is to have no limits as to how wide it goes, to be able to invade other bits of the curriculum, to have no limits as to how far it goes, indeed to be able to involve oneself in university-distance learning, if that is where a particular idea takes you, to work collaboratively within and between schools, to research, to problem-solve, and for teachers and their partners in industry to be pupils’ guides rather than their instructors. Furthermore, it should get going immediately; the first projects start in November. We are going to write the whole curriculum—to the extent that you can write a curriculum for something that changes every six months—around the schools and industries involved. The whole thing is being generated from the grass roots and not from the middle. The way to tackle technology in education is to let all that expertise and interest and involvement, which is out there around the country, be the source of enlightenment for those of us who sit in the middle.
The noble Lord, Lord Knight, celebrates Apple. I curse my iPad every day for its limitations and for the rules that have been imposed on it from the centre. It will not get Flash. I try and do things with the iPad and it kills me half way through because the website has chosen to do something in Flash and Mr Jobs has said no. I do not want that to happen. I do not want monopolies to spring up and one voice to be the controlling voice when it comes to getting technology into schools. I want diversity. I want lots of different people to try to do it, and I want to see who does it best. That is the way that I think we will come through to a successful technology education system.
So I celebrate what this Government are doing for me and for many others. I celebrate, too, Nick Gibb in the middle of that. This may not be his natural style but he knows that, at the end of the day, anything I do has to come up to his standards. That is an Olympic-level challenge and I welcome it. Where you are allowing a lot of different systems to compete to see which is best, the important role for the Government is to be in the middle making sure that what you have is rigour and quality and is not subservient to fashion and ideas of the moment. I know that I can rely on my honourable friend for that.
Baroness Paisley of St George's
My Lords, I, too, support this amendment. I had two wonderful experiences recently. One was on board a ship that was visiting Belfast. On a tour of that ship we were shown an operating theatre. The captain said to us, “There is the theatre”. It was a beautiful operating theatre, and the captain explained, “There is a computer in the wall, and in mid-ocean we can perform life-saving operations on board this ship directed from shore hundreds of miles away”. I thought it was wonderful to see how technology had advanced to this degree. In other times this could not have happened.
The other experience I had was in my own family. My great-grandson, who is two and a half, went to the computer, put in a DVD and waited until it came up on the screen. He knew which buttons to push to fast-forward it to pass the adverts to the part that he wanted to see, and of course he knew how to reverse it back if he missed something. If a two and a half year-old is able to do that, I think there is great hope for the future for technology and I support this amendment.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“Distance learning at Academies
(1) An Academy may admit pupils on the basis that they will receive all or part of their education otherwise than on the premises of the school.
(2) If an Academy admits such pupils, it may arrange for all or part of their education to be provided through distance learning packages without any teacher present, or by the pupil’s parents or other volunteers similarly.
(3) The Academy remains in all respects responsible for the educational outcomes of such pupils.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I think that we should take the opportunity of the freedoms afforded by the move to an academy education to explore ways in which we can reach some parts of the education system that have been left fallow by the current rather less imaginative arrangements. I am thinking of some elements of home education that would benefit very much from having partial access to school. I am thinking of prisoners and Travellers and I am thinking of others who, for one reason or another, find it hard to attend a mainstream school on a standard basis.
There are such schools around. There are schools that are purely internet based. I am thinking of InterHigh, but there are certain others. There are schools in the state system, including one recent free school which is prepared to make arrangements with local home schools so that pupils can attend school some days a week. As far as I know there is nothing along these lines in prisons and young offender institutions, but it would be a very good innovation to start getting real schools into those institutions and allowing pupils to interact with real schooling rather than the cut-down version provided in prisons. Indeed it would allow them to continue being educated at the schools they have left behind, if that were appropriate.
Travellers could get into a situation where they could have a relationship with one school rather than having to switch school every time they move site. There is no reason why these people cannot be visited and looked after. The Travellers Education Service does a very good job and there is no reason why that cannot continue in terms of human contact. Allowing academies to explore ways in which they can look after these rather low volume and eccentric demands provides a way for small rural schools to flourish. That has been the motivation, by and large, for looking after home schoolers. It allows small rural schools to draw in a rather wider, larger number of people, to address a local need on a more widespread basis, and to allow village schools to continue, whereas otherwise they might not.
This is the sort of freedom that we should be encouraging and of which we should take advantage. We should never lose sight of the need for quality and proper control, but we should take advantage of the liberties we are looking at in terms of academies, to address these small but, none the less, interesting and worthwhile problems. I beg to move.
Baroness Morris of Yardley
My Lords, this is an interesting amendment. It is certainly worthy of discussion and perhaps of support when the vote comes at some later point.
I have a couple of questions. Why only academies? I think that this is quite interesting for all schools and I am not sure why the amendment should restrict it to academies. My feeling is that there are initiatives like this already. I can think of an online school based in Birmingham, and I think in other areas, where children who have been excluded from school or just do not turn up—the school refuses to take them—are now educated online and are not based in school. If my memory serves me right, the legislation on Travellers means that children can stay on a school’s register even when they are travelling, and the Travellers Education Service would then aim to keep in touch with them.
My point is really that the beginnings of this are already happening, and this has been precipitated by the advances in information technology which have helped a great deal. I have no problem with a debate that furthers that. You need very strong boundaries so that children are not denied opportunities by somebody who does not have their best welfare at heart, and that would have to be discussed.
For the purpose of this debate, I invite the noble Lord, when he responds—or he may want to intervene now—to explain why he would restrict this to academies and not to any school in the system.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
No, but they still need teachers. You are quite right: they do not need qualified teachers, but they need teachers who help to communicate and teach subjects to pupils.
In conclusion, we believe that much of what my noble friend intends is already possible and is already happening. To the extent that it is not, I would ask him to recognise the value that a good teacher can add to the educational experience of a pupil. We recognise that there is a growing place for technology, alternative teaching and learning provisions. Many of us will remember, with gratitude, the impact of inspirational teachers during our own education and the difference that that personal motivation and contact made to our enthusiasm about learning. On that basis, I hope that my noble friend has been reassured that those freedoms already exist and that we may not need to return to this on Report. Therefore, I urge him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
I am very encouraged by what the noble Baroness says about all this being possible. I am also very pleased about what she said on the role of the church. I entirely agree with her. I hope that she will have a chance to pass that news on to the prison education service which appears determined to eliminate teachers and do it all online. Doubtless, I will come back to her or, I suspect, to my noble friend, on the subject of funding, which has arisen from time to time. The complexity of the guidance offered by this otherwise excellent department confuses local authorities from time to time and certainly schools as to whether particular arrangements qualify for funding and, if so, on what basis. To take a particular example, if a home-educated child wishes to go to a further education college at the age of 14, they can get no funding for that. Perhaps that is something to be followed up by letter rather than in this forum. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I am sure that it is out of order for me to speak at this point, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me. I was participating in a long-standing commitment to attend an awards ceremony for young people on the National Grid young offender programme. I heard about the success of four young men, one of whom left prison a year ago and is now moving into management in his firm. It was marvellous to see the enthusiasm of the young men and to hear their stories. It illustrates how important it is to find useful work that these men enjoy doing. I have been to ceremonies in the past and seen the young men with their partners and young children. They have shown that they can be fathers who are present for their children, who take an interest in them and who set them a good example. That is very much to be welcomed. I was sorry to hear at this event that Sir John Parker, the chairman of National Grid Transco, who has led the scheme over the past 10 years, is shortly to retire. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to his leadership in taking forward the programme and recruiting so many other companies and businesses. Soon they will have trained 2,000 young offenders for work. I declare an interest: I have received hospitality from that company in the past. I apologise for speaking out of order, but I hope that noble Lords will forgive me on this occasion.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I had better say to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, that I will not move Amendment 145 because I had a wonderful e-mail from the Minister saying that he had done everything he possibly could and that all sorts of wonderful reductions in paperwork were on the way. All I can say is thank you.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Henley)
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, and I have been waiting rather a long time for our cameo role in this Bill. I hope that my voice lasts the course of this debate. It has been a very useful debate, and I hope that I can manage to answer some of the points and give an indication of where the Government are going and how we wish to continue to speak to all noble Lords involved with apprenticeships and address the concerns that have been expressed. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Young, for saying that he welcomes what we are doing but wants, as I think he put it, to stretch out our commitment. That is the theme behind a lot of the amendments that have been tabled, and I would like to discuss them in due course.
However, if the noble Lord will bear with me, I shall start with the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, supported by a weighty list of noble Lords from all sides of the House. I know they have been discussing their amendment with my colleague John Hayes, and I am very grateful for that. I understand that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, had a further useful conversation with my honourable friend earlier this afternoon and that he is willing to work with the Government on a government amendment that would come forward on Report to achieve the shared aim of promoting apprenticeships to young people in a way that fits in with the redefined apprenticeships offer. I hope that after discussing this matter with my noble friend Lord Wakeham and the other noble Lords who tabled the amendment, the noble Lord will send his proposal to me or to my honourable friend. We have a reasonable amount of time because of the odd way this House is sitting and then breaking off so that we can all go off to our conferences. I do not know whether the noble Lord is going, but some of us are. There is certainly time for discussions to continue to take place on that. I give an assurance that doors are still open and that discussion will continue to take place.
I now return to the noble Lord, Lord Young, and congratulate him on his speech. I apologise for the fact that he was interrupted not once, but twice by Division Bells in the Chamber. I shall deal with one or two of the points that he raised in his amendment. First, he mentioned his concerns about the number of 16 to 18 starts. The figures the department has are that there were 99,400 starts in 2008-09, 116,000 starts in 2009-10 and 102,900 starts in the first nine months of 2010-11, and one hopes that there will be more. We hope that we will continue to see some sort of increase. I hope that the noble Lord will find those figures useful.
He also commented on targets. I note that the Government of whom he was a distinguished member were very keen on targets. I have always been less keen on targets and think that they can very often distort and end up producing the wrong result because people merely go for whatever the number is on paper. We do not want to have targets in this area, but we obviously have to work to planning assumptions modelled by the analysts based on previous years and future ambitions. That is where we get the figures that he was talking about. I think he should consider that targets in themselves can sometimes produce the wrong result.
I shall turn in slightly more detail to the noble Lord’s three amendments: Amendments 144AA, 144AB and 144C. Amendment 144AA deals with the offer. I understand the noble Lord’s concern, and I can assure him that the Government wholeheartedly share it. We also want to see many young people starting their careers on a sound basis through apprenticeship, as the noble Lord did himself. We differ only in our view about the most effective way to achieve that. That is why my honourable friend wants further discussions with the noble Lords behind that amendment.
The previous Government, of whom the noble Lord was a member, did much good work in building the apprenticeship programme. We accept that. They substantially increased the number of people undertaking an apprenticeship and put in place many of the structures and procedures that make the apprenticeship programme what it is today. We acknowledge that. However, the original offer set out in the 2009 legislation of an apprenticeship place for all suitably qualified young people in specific groups would mean the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency having to find jobs with employers for all the eligible young people who wanted an apprenticeship, but neither he nor Government can tell employers whom to employ. I think the noble Lord will accept that point.
Our redefined offer in this Bill constitutes a more robust deal for those same groups of young people because we know we can deliver it. The duty on the chief executive of the Skills Funding Agency to prioritise funding for their training once they have an apprenticeship place sets the right balance between the employer-led nature of the programme and the need for support from government that young people can rely on.
In Amendment 144AB, the noble Lord suggests that procurement could be used as a vehicle for encouraging employers to take on a number of apprentices. Amendments 144AB and 144AC raise three issues: first, increasing the number of apprentices working on government projects, secondly, regularly publishing the numbers and planned numbers of apprentices in the Civil Service, and thirdly, linking apprenticeships and Investors in People status. I know my honourable friend recently met the noble Lord to discuss all those subjects and to explain the Government’s fundamental belief in a voluntary rather than a regulatory approach. I have always believed that in government. It is a better approach to follow to avoid additional burdens, particularly on smaller employers and smaller businesses. I know that my honourable friend outlined the actions he is leading to drive up the number of apprenticeships in the public sector.
On procurement, the Government want to encourage more businesses to offer apprenticeships for the clear benefits they bring to individuals and employers, but we do not believe that the best approach is to impose this by adding to the mountain of rules and regulations that businesses face on procurement at the moment and which are really very substantial. Rather, we are committed to simplifying and streamlining the procurement process to reduce burdens for suppliers and public sector bodies. Within these parameters, I know that my honourable friend has reiterated to the noble Lord his intention to look again at our policies and the way they could encourage more apprenticeship places, without disadvantaging SMEs or, of course, breaching the law.
Turning to the noble Lord’s amendment on Investors in People status, I am sure that he would agree that Investors in People is the mark of an employer that cares deeply about the long-term skills needs of its workforce and understands the business advantages of skilled and motivated staff but, because of the wide range of benefits of Investors in People status to staff and employers, we would not want further to discourage take-up of the standard. If we were to add extra conditions at this stage, such as needing to demonstrate a commitment to apprenticeships, we possibly risk inadvertently reducing employer engagement with the programme.
Amendment 144C, which was tabled by my noble friend Lord Addington, relates to apprenticeship specification and disabled people. I understand that he is seeking assurances that learners who demonstrate that they have the skills and experience to meet the requirements of an apprenticeship certificate should not be prevented from receiving a certificate on the basis of any recognised disability. I understand that we have written to the noble Lord to provide reassurances on this and to explain the steps that we are taking to ensure that apprentices with a disability are at no disadvantage in the certification process for an apprenticeship. If my noble friend feels that is not sufficient, my honourable friend would be happy to have further discussions with my noble friend between this stage and Report.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
My Lords, I hear what my noble friend says; I am half comforted by it. As she knows, I edit the Good Schools Guide, and therefore have a long-standing and unhappy relationship with the Independent Schools Council inspection service, which has yet to return even one of my e-mails. Although I agree that it is inspecting much better than it used to, it still seems to take the school’s side rather more often than I find comfortable. I think that, because a lot of the people doing the inspecting suffer the same problem with difficult parents as the people who they are inspecting, they do not pay the attention that they ought to occasional signals of distress and therefore fail to spot underlying problems.
I am very dubious about mixing education and welfare; they are different concerns and different skills. How is a young boy in distress going to talk to someone who appears to be a schoolmaster if he will not talk to his schoolmaster? You need a completely different character, training and skill-set to be a good inspector of welfare—to understand what is going on in a family, if you are in a local authority context, or in a school. I am not anticipating great disaster. Schools are light years away from what they were when I was a child and there is no general problem, but we all know that a lot of girls’ schools have eating disorder problems. There is certainly still bullying in some schools to an unacceptable level. Spotting those things requires someone to go round the school who pupils who have not talked to and who people at the school feel able to take into their confidence. As I said, that is a different character of person. For myself, I would be surprised if the ISC does that well. It may be a long while before we have a problem arising from it, because problems are mercifully rare.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, if I may, I want to ask the Minister a little more about unannounced and announced inspections. If I remember correctly, the Children's Commissioner for England, Professor Al Aynsley-Green, when he was in office, was particularly enthusiastic about his power to make unannounced inspections. Professor Eileen Munro, in her final report on safeguarding children, recently advocated the use of unannounced inspections, principally because they relieved organisations of a bureaucratic burden. She felt that that would be less burdensome to them than announced inspections. I would be interested to hear from the Minister what is the current situation with regard to those two kinds of inspection—announced and unannounced.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Low, has articulated clear and comprehensive arguments for Clause 42 not standing part of the Bill. I shall make three brief points in support of those arguments.
First, as the noble Lord said, the power of the Secretary of State to intervene in complaints is currently very limited. He is able to address only a very small number of complaints. The 2008 consultation document on complaints made this clear, stating:
“In practice, this means that except where there is a clear breach of a specific duty (for example, a school failing to have a complaints policy or a behaviour policy) there are few occasions when the Secretary of State is empowered to intervene”.
It does not seem very constructive to argue that parents can appeal to the Secretary of State. Let us be clear, we are talking about unresolved complaints. We all agree that complaints should ideally be resolved at the lowest level, with the school, the head teacher or the governors, but where they remain unresolved after going through those processes, it does not seem reasonable to argue that parents can go to the Secretary of State when, in practice, the number and nature of complaints that the Secretary of State can hear in law is very limited. Where would parents with complaints outside that limited ambit go?
Secondly, the Secretary of State does not in practice investigate those complaints in person; they are investigated by civil servants in the department. There is an unhappy record of civil servants making decisions on individual cases whatever their nature. That is understandable because they neither know the detail nor have the local knowledge. We do not see consistency of decision-making across cases which are similar with such a system. It is not good practice for civil servants to make decisions on individual cases, but that is what happens in practice. A recommendation is then made to the Secretary of State, who also lacks any detailed knowledge with which to approve it or not. It is not a very satisfactory system from a parent’s point of view.
Thirdly, because of those deficiencies, an attempt was made, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, outlined, to see whether there was a better way. A pilot was launched whereby parents were able to take unresolved complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman. This started only a little more than a year ago—in April last year. We may well hear from the Government that take-up has been low. The scheme has not been very well publicised and, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, we have had little information on its impact—anecdotal evidence shows that it has been rather positive. We need clearer and more reliable information about the impact of the system, particularly parents’ and schools’ views. It seems premature to abandon that new method before we are clear whether it offers a more effective, more efficient and more satisfactory way forward.
If Clause 44 were to stand part of the Bill, we would be left with a very unsatisfactory situation. It was because of the problems with the system of parents going to the Secretary of State that there was an attempt to find another route. We should surely see whether the other system can be made to work more effectively from parents’ and schools’ point of view before we abandon it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, immensely persuasive. Bullying in schools has been a problem without a solution for a long time, as I am sure my noble friend Lord Elton would agree. It is very hard for a parent who has gone through the procedures outlined by my noble friend in his response to the noble Lord, Lord Low, and not achieved any success to be stuck in a position where their child continues to be bullied and there is nothing more that they can do about it. There is, in effect, nowhere else for them to turn. The experiment started by the previous Government of giving this responsibility to the Local Government Ombudsman must be worth pursuing and evaluating.
I have recent experience of trying out both the department and the ombudsman with a complaint, although not in this area. Someone who lived in Lambeth was referred to me because he had been unable to find a school place for his child. Lambeth had failed in its duty to the extent that, when this man went to the appeal tribunal for places at a couple of schools, Lambeth said, “You don’t need to bother. We’ve found him somewhere”, which turned out not to be true. Not only had Lambeth not found him somewhere but it destroyed the chance that he had of getting his child into a school. I have talked to the department about that. It has been perfectly courteous but ineffective. When I discovered that this was something that the Local Government Ombudsman could take up, I referred my contact to it and it has been wonderful. It immediately put someone on the case and gave him someone to talk to day to day. He feels totally cared for and supported. It is a completely different experience from dealing with a government department. That is no surprise; government departments are not set up to do this. I did not know that the Local Government Ombudsman was as good as this but it has clearly developed an extremely good service.
The other difficulty that I have come across recently is rather from the other side of the fence. I shall read something that was written to me by a local authority that was trying to deal with academies in its area:
“I am concerned that academies may not be complying in full with the provisions of the Pupil Registration Regulations. Some academies have withdrawn from Education Welfare Services, rather preferring to address matters of non attendance ‘in house’, however in certain circumstances they should, in accordance with the Pupil Registration Regulations, inform the Local Authority. For example, when a child has had 10 days or more continuous absence, and in other matters that are of concern to those in the Local Authority charged with safeguarding the welfare of children.
In addition, I would like to seek some clarity with regard to Free Schools and their obligations in keeping pupil registers, publishing attendance policies and advising other agencies when there appear to be concerns”.
Communication between schools and the welfare authorities is vital. If a local authority feels that a school may not be complying with its obligations, what is it supposed to do? Is it supposed to write to the Secretary of State, who is then supposed to chase individual academies? This is not the business of a government department, particularly when there is an agency that apparently does these things so well.
Home education is the other area in which I come across this. There are many people for whom home education is a choice. They prefer to look after their own children and educate them in their own way. However, there is also a large number of people who have been forced into it and have, particularly if their child has SEN, come to the end of their tether with the non-compliance of schools and local authorities in dealing with their children’s problems. To date there has been no good place for them to go. If the Local Government Ombudsman is to offer that sort of resource, it will be enormously appreciated. I could understand abandoning it because it had proved ineffective but to abandon it now is a great mistake.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, persuasively supports the persuasive case made by the noble Lord, Lord Low. I shall put two quick questions to the Minister. One concerns the admissions of looked-after children. I have been very grateful to him for the constant reassurance that these children will continue to feature at the top of the admissions criteria. However, who will enforce that duty on academies? Who will check that that happens, particularly in this case? I can see that there may be a virtue in this strong local ombudsman, who could take up cases of failure to meet this requirement.
Secondly, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, emphasised the value of local ombudsmen’s local knowledge. I join her in saying that I have great respect for the men and women of the Civil Service. However, there are tasks which they are very well suited to do and tasks which they may not be so well suited to do. Therefore, I ask my noble friend Lord Low whether he can produce a little more information about the professional background of local ombudsmen. Perhaps that is something that we can discuss outwith the Chamber.
I think, for example, about the success of the Youth Justice Board. In recent years, I have seen great improvements in an area where in the past there has been a lot of difficulty in dealing with children involved with the criminal justice system. The board consists of, for example, the director of the Children’s Society and a judge from a youth court. There is a great pool of expertise at the top of the organisation and it draws in experts throughout the organisation. There is a lot to be said for choosing experts as advocates, thereby improving outcomes for children. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port
Before the Minister sits down, may I probe a little further? He says that, in so far as 14 areas are currently exposed to the new method that has been applied since April 2010, most parents will not notice any difference. Of course they will not; there are only 14 areas where the trial is being implemented. The more important point is what results are coming out of that trial. From what the noble Lord, Lord Low, was telling us, there are quite important, positive and affirmative messages about the success of this new system that should, if the logic were applied, be made available to the whole country instead of just 14 areas. Certainly, proper time for evaluation is necessary before taking a draconian measure of this kind, which subverts something that has been argued for and put in place and is being accepted as a reasonable way forward—especially by a Government who tell us time and again that they want smaller government and for fewer things to happen from Whitehall rather than more.
I have one further thing to say. The Minister introduced one word in his summing up that has not been mentioned at all in the debate apart from in his speech. We have all talked about the arguments and argued the case, reason has been invoked and we have appealed to experience and the history of this problem as it moves forward, but I want the Minister to give me an assurance regarding the word that he introduced: finance. Is it for financial reasons that we are moving from one system to another? Is that the driving force that would stop something so logical, appropriate and appreciated from taking place?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I was waiting to see if my noble friend wanted to take advantage of a chance to reply. He has not yet convinced me with his arguments. We have had an experiment running, and if we are to terminate it we ought at least to be allowed to see the results so far. It really ought to be up to the Government to provide them to us, and I very much hope that between now and Report we will have the chance to see a narrative, if not an evaluation, of what has been achieved so far.
These are long-standing problems, particularly when it comes to bullying, SEN and children getting into home education when they do not really want to be there. I am conscious that this has happened over a long period and in quite a high volume without any indication that the current methods, which we are to go back to, have provided an adequate answer. What was proposed by the previous Government and is now being trialled is a transfer from one set of officials who are not specialised and have limited powers to another set of officials who are specialised and have better powers. That seems to be worth trying. That is not to say that this is something that should not be done by Government; rather, it is to say that if we do it in a slightly different way, it could be done better.
I am conscious of the suffering that is caused by the current system and its inadequacies, and I do not want to go back to it. I do not mind going back to it if the system being trialled turns out to be no better and more expensive, but we ought to know what the evaluation is.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Minister has asked me to withdraw my amendment and my opposition to Clause 44 stand part. I will do that for the moment but a number of points have been made around the Committee to which we may want to return on Report, if it has not been possible for the Minister to give us greater satisfaction on them. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on all sides of the Committee.
I shall clarify a couple of points. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, for making the point that we are talking here about unresolved complaints—complaints that have not been able to be resolved at local level. We all agree that complaints should be resolved at the lowest level possible, and it is only the unresolved ones that we are talking about referring to either the ombudsman or the Secretary of State.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked me to say a bit more about the Local Government Ombudsman. I cannot say an awful lot, but I imagine that his office is staffed by people who are versed in the law, administration and local government. That is what I would expect.
Like others, I am bound to say that I have not been completely persuaded by the Minister’s arguments. As the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, pointed out, the desire to bring everything back to the Secretary of State comes rather oddly from a Government who preach so much localism but practise so much centralism. That we are merely returning to the situation as it was before 2010 may very well be true, but it was the pre-2010 situation which was found to be unsatisfactory. That is why the move to the Local Government Ombudsman was made.
It may be that, because the pilots have operated only in 14 areas, the great majority of people have not seen the benefits of the ombudsman’s style of hearing complaints, but those who have not known anything better and are still mired in the pre-2010 situation might be pleased to experience the service that is offered under the 14 pilots.
Ministers have told us that bringing the investigation of complaints back to the Secretary of State would enable a quick resolution, but, as I said when opposing the clause, it has not been everybody’s experience that the procedure of the Secretary of State’s office has been all that expeditious in the past. It is clear that a lot of work still needs to be done before that route is fit for purpose.
It would be best if the Government were to put this on hold. If they can satisfy us by giving us the results of the evaluation before Report, that would be very helpful. If that is not possible, I would ask that the matter be taken back until there can be a proper evaluation. We might then be able to consider it again in future when another education Bill comes before the House.
The Minister kindly invited me to discuss the matter further with him, which I am happy to do. I would be very happy to join the discussions that he is having with the Special Educational Consortium and the National Deaf Children’s Society if that would help to see whether we can clarify the procedures at least in relation to children with special educational needs in the context of the implementation of the Green Paper.
Although, as I have indicated, there are a number of unresolved issues here to which we may wish to return on Report, I no longer wish for now to oppose that the clause stand part of the Bill. I do so in the hope that the matter can be progressed on the basis of further discussions between now and Report or, if not then, when the Bill comes back before us on Report.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, my noble friend Lord Avebury raised the question of virtual schools. Perhaps my mind was drifting as I listened to the Minister’s reply but I did not hear him address that subject. Virtual schools provide an interesting way of dealing with genuine Traveller education and providing them with a consistent relationship with school that is not disrupted every time they move, and we should look to encourage that. Does the Minister have a view on this?
Lord Hill of Oareford
We are due to address virtual schools later. I think that my noble friend has an amendment on the subject so we can return to it then. I can respond more fully to my noble friend Lord Avebury at that juncture.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that all Members of the Committee are considering these issues because they share with me a desire to improve the opportunity of outcomes for all children, including high-ability children. However, there may well be—I think there is—a difference between some Members of the Committee about the most effective ways of doing that. In this sense, Amendment 124D, to which I am speaking, takes the opposite view to that just expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Blackwell.
Under the Academies Act 2010, a selective school converting to academy status can maintain its selective admissions policies. Amendment 124D would remove the ability for selective schools to maintain selective policies on conversion. It would require any schools converting to academy status in future to have a comprehensive admissions policy upon that conversion.
I shall to cite three arguments in favour of our amendment. The first is on the basis of some of the evidence from international countries that are performing better than we are in education. Secondly, I wish to raise a point of principle and, thirdly, to look at the practical implications of the Government’s proposals on the issue—and whether as a result of the Bill the current ability of schools to retain selection in moving to academy status would lead to an extension of schools with selection policies. I question whether that is what the Government want.
First, in terms of the evidence, particularly from Finland—one of the highest performing countries on the educational spectrum in the western world—it is interesting that the Minister, following a previous debate, sent me a letter talking about the evidence for reform at some length. He cited Finland and some of the attributes of its system, particularly school autonomy and accountability for performance. However, that letter did not in particular mention the important context of the Finnish system, as well as some other systems—for autonomy and accountability. It is a system that the Finnish Government and people take very seriously, whereby schools are comprehensive and that you can achieve improvements in the context of a system in which schools take from a broad spectrum of pupils and overlay on that system powerful mechanisms for autonomy and accountability. That is what produces the substantial improvements that have been seen in Finland. Therefore, if we are going to use evidence—and I support an evidence-based approach to policy—we ought to take all the evidence we have, including that evidence from Finland.
The second point is one of principle. The idea of a selective academy—not just what the previous Government were trying to achieve but what the current Government profess to want to achieve—is something of a contradiction in terms. Under Labour, academies could select only 10 per cent of their pupils—not on the basis of ability but of aptitude if the academy had a particular specialism. We believe—and in terms of what the Government have said to date, I cannot believe that they would not share this view; but I would welcome any contradiction to that effect—that academies should be comprehensive. If a selective school is to have the freedoms of an academy, it should by definition make a commitment to all the children in the local area and not simply cream off those whom it thinks are the most able. It should be committed to driving up the levels of attainment of all students, which means admitting those children whose backgrounds are such that they have further to go in reaching their potential because of some of the barriers that they face. That is a principle with which some Members of the Committee may not agree, but I put it forward to the Minister as a principle that I thought the Government shared.
The third issue is one of practical implication. Academies are their own admissions authorities. Research in this country has already suggested that, without checks and balances, academies have a greater opportunity covertly to select than perhaps we all would wish. Leaving that point aside, however, there must be concern under the Bill that if selective schools become academies it will lead in practice to an extension of selection. Clause 58 will allow selective schools becoming academies to widen the age range of their intake. This could lead to a state education system which allowed selection at primary as well as secondary level. Under the Government’s draft admissions code, popular selective academies can expand without agreement from the local authority or the Secretary of State. I should like the Minister to comment on whether that means that a selective academy could not only expand in size but also, as has been commented on, establish a cluster school elsewhere which would be managed by the head teacher and senior management team and thereby extend selection to a larger number of pupils.
That is the reason for my amendment. I should be grateful if the Minister could respond to the points that I have raised. First, do the Government want to see an extension of selection, or are they neutral about it? Secondly, do they believe that academies should serve the whole community and, if so, why are selective schools which become academies being allowed to retain selection? Thirdly, does not the Minister share my concern that that provision, together with the two elements of the Bill which I have identified, could—however inadvertently on the Government’s part—lead to an extension of selection? Would the Government be happy if that were the case?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 126A. The previous Government made a good deal of progress in closing the gap between state and independent schools, to the extent that two or three independent schools crossed back into the state sector. This Government have made considerable further progress in that direction. It is clear that the institution of free schools and the freeing-up of obligations on academies generally will reduce the demand for independent education and bring children back into the state sector. The pressures now imposed by the Office for Fair Access will have a similar effect.
There is a question to be asked of the Opposition. Do they share my ambition to see over time some of the independent sector reabsorbed back into the state sector? If so, how far are they prepared to go to achieve that? It does not seem to be going very far to allow a selective independent school to come back into the state sector as a selective state school.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, we discussed back in July how important it is that schools should be able to meet the needs of the most able children, and we talked then about some of the ways in which that could be done.
I shall try to answer some of the questions put to me about my view of the situation. The current position on the number of schools that may select by ability or aptitude strikes me as being one that we have arrived at in a typically English and messy way over many years. Our position is that it should continue as it is. These amendments seek in different ways to use the process of conversion to academy status as a catalyst for either increasing or decreasing the number of selective schools in the state sector, and the Government are opposed to a move in either direction.
We think that academies, with the freedoms and flexibilities that academy status brings, should be well placed to provide stretching and demanding provision for pupils with a particular ability or a general aptitude for learning. Our policy is to ensure that as many schools as possible are able to take up these freedoms, and that includes grammar schools and independent selective schools. However, we have been clear that we do not intend to increase the number of selective schools in the state system. Therefore, we have been clear that when independent schools convert to academy status, we do not think they should be able to bring their selective admission arrangements with them.
My noble friend Lord Lucas’s amendment would allow independent schools to become academies but continue to charge parents fees, though not, I appreciate, those who could not afford it. However, the principle that state-funded school education should be available free of charge to all children is one with which most noble Lords would agree.
We also know, however, that where there are selective schools in the state system they are often highly valued by local parents and are part of the education landscape, and we are equally clear that that state of affairs should continue. That was the position of the previous Government and it is one that we want to continue, so we do not think that those schools should lose their right to select simply because they become academies.
We support the right of state-funded schools that selected by ability prior to the School Standards and Framework Act 1998 to continue to do so, but it is not our intention to increase the number of selective schools. However, existing selective maintained schools and academies may expand—as they were permitted to do under the previous Government—where there is demand, where funding is in place and where such proposals have been agreed locally.
Rather ingloriously, perhaps, I find myself arguing for the status quo. I assure the Committee, however, that we are taking steps to ensure that as many children as possible have access to a good local school and that all those schools, whether they are academies or maintained schools, provide a stretching education for all their pupils. As my noble friend Lady Garden said in a previous debate on these issues, these steps include promoting free schools to increase good places, allowing good schools to expand and taking the limit off the published admissions number, freeing head teachers to take decisions on how to spend that money and slimming down the national curriculum so that schools can design a curriculum that best meets their pupils’ needs.
I know that my noble friend Lord Blackwell believes strongly in the case behind the amendments and that his concern is to try to increase social mobility and achievement for children from the poorest backgrounds so that they have the opportunity to flourish in a way that we would want to see. I am aware of his commitment to social mobility and the sense of moral purpose that he brings to this argument, which is not the preserve of one side in this debate. Saying what I have said about the Government’s position of leaving things as they stand and preserving the status quo will disappoint my noble friend. In spite of that, I hope that for the moment he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am not sure that I understand the moral difference between allowing a grammar school to expand and allowing an independent school to join the state sector as a selective school. Both have the effect of increasing the number of selective places in the UK state system. Why is one good and the other bad?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I do not think that it is a point of merit, as it were, and I would not claim that it were. It is a practical point. There are a number of schools in the maintained sector where selection already takes place. We think that it is right that they should be able to become academies and that, as has always been the case, they should be able to expand. The point about independent schools coming into the maintained sector and retaining selective arrangements is that it would increase the number of selective schools in the system. For reasons of practicality rather than anything else, the Government have come to the view that we do not want to increase the number of schools where selection takes place.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“( ) in the case of a primary school, a person nominated by the parishes (if any) from which the school draws significant numbers of pupils,”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, in the Localism Bill we have been setting out to create neighbourhoods that are involved, vibrant and powerful. If you do that you will create a band of people whose first care is the education and well-being of their children. They deserve to be connected with primary schools, particularly ones that serve their children, and that is what this amendment does. I beg to move.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 113ZA in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe of Idlicote, who mentioned to the Committee on Monday that she is not able to be in her place today. I assume, therefore, that she will not be speaking to Amendments 113A and 113B, but I do not have my name to either of those.
First, I thank the Minister for his amendments in this group and pay tribute to my honourable friend Dan Rogerson MP, the Member for North Cornwall, whose powers of persuasion in another place were so great that he managed to convince the Minister for Schools, Mr Nick Gibb MP, that we need the government amendments that we find in this group. The amendments ensure that school governing bodies are more representative of school communities. However, students play a central role in these communities but at present cannot become school governors. We have put down this amendment to try to ensure that students can serve as full members of school governing bodies.
Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child ensures that children are involved in all decisions that affect them and that their views are given due weight in accordance with their age and maturity. I very much welcomed the statement by the Minister for Children, my honourable friend Sarah Teather, in December 2010, that the convention would be given due consideration when making new law and policy. I now urge the Committee to consider how students’ rights to participate in decision-making can be strengthening through their involvement in school governing bodies. In 2009 the Committee on the Rights of the Child said:
“Respect for the right of the child to be heard within education is fundamental to the realization of the right to education … Steady participation of children in decision-making processes should be achieved through, inter alia, class councils, student councils and student representation on school boards and committees, where they can freely express their views on the development and implementation of school policies and codes of behaviour. These rights need to be enshrined in legislation, rather than relying on the goodwill of authorities, schools and head teachers to implement them”.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I accept that, my Lords. There are ways of dealing with that, but there are a range of other practical issues that one would need to think through. I would be very happy to explore some of them with my noble friend and others who have an interest and see where we end up.
On head-teacher governors, I again understand the arguments that have been put by both sides. That is probably why the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, having had both these opposing views, concentrated on other issues. I understand the argument both for their inclusion on boards, in the same way as a chief executive of a company might serve on a board, and against in the case of the voluntary sector and other charities, where the chief executive is often not on the board.
We know that there are issues, but overall the system is operating. We are working with the National College to develop training for chairs of governing bodies to assist them in the role of holding head teachers to account. Head teachers can choose to remove themselves from governing bodies. If individual governing bodies wish to move to the position suggested, they can do so and the head teacher can resign from the governing body. The thought of removing head teachers from every governing body in the land, from 25,000-odd schools, seems quite courageous, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Knight, said, these are issues on which we need to continue to reflect.
The noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, asked me a specific question about governors. Governors are not there to represent a particular group and should act in the best interests of the school, having formed their own opinion.
I therefore commend my amendments and ask my noble friend to withdraw his amendment, which he moved some time ago before we had many Divisions in the House.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for his comprehensive reply. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 114. I entirely support Clause 39. It is absolutely right that academies and other schools that are exempt should be given freedom from full Ofsted inspection. I have severe reservations about whether Ofsted’s regime in the past has been proven to do anything to improve standards in schools. In fact, the contrary appears to have been the case. We have to hope, of course, that Ofsted in its revised form will be a more positive experience. Nevertheless, it is right that these schools should be exempt from routine Ofsted inspection. However, as my noble friend has already said, academic standards can slip, but long before academic standards begin to show a decline in a way that can be identified, it is possible for a school to begin—usually because there is a change of head—to decline in terms of standards of discipline and staff morale. Therefore, the overall ethos of the school begins to change and, within two or three years, that will certainly begin to be reflected in the academic results and standards.
The proposal in Amendment 114 may be a little leftfield. It proposes that, instead of having a full inspection regularly, a school should have somebody assigned to it who just keeps an eye on it. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, suggested that this amendment brought about something like a school improvement partner, but that is not what is envisaged at all. This person would not have a role in helping the school to improve or develop; they would simply be a friendly eye, popping in two or three times over the year—at least once a term—just to ensure that the high standards that had been present before were maintained. If there is any question or doubt, this would be the early warning system; if the “visitor”, as the amendment calls this person, had reason to believe that things were beginning to go wrong, he or she would be able to trigger a full inspection by Ofsted.
I am sure that all of us in this Room with our tremendous experience of schools have seen schools change very quickly when there is a change of head. I have certainly seen schools that were very good begin to deteriorate in a couple of terms, when a weak head moved in—and, vice versa, a school that has been weak in the past can suddenly begin to pick up very fast when a good head moves in. Assuming that it is the case in some schools that they go down in standards, I believe that it would be very important to have someone keep an eye on that, rather than wait the two or three years before it begins to appear in the standards of achievement. I do not need to remind the Committee that these are children’s lives; they do not have a second chance. If the school’s standards begin to decline, down the line their success and achievements will also go down. So I very much hope that my noble friend will at least look sympathetically on this idea.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I take a more radical view than my noble friend, although if her amendment was accepted a lot of my worries would be dealt with. The Government are making a great mistake in going down this route. It is not that I like Ofsted—I do not like the old-style Ofsted; a lot needs to be improved about it. But going in this direction is going to cause considerable problems down the road.
Schools that are rated outstanding often do not stay outstanding. Quite a high proportion of them drift downwards. This is entirely natural, with changes in the staff and in tempo and other changes that mean that a school loses its grip on the excellence that it once had. Perhaps it was lucky to get a grade 1 in the first place and has just slipped back to its natural place in grade 2. Unless you have some contact with the school, you absolutely do not know that that is happening.
One of the main grouses that I have with Ofsted at the moment is that it is very late to pick up changes. Ofsted will pile into a school and put it in special measures when, if it had caught it a couple of years earlier, it would have meant a minor change of course. I can think of an excellent secondary school in Manchester that was dumped into special measures when it got a head who was being experimental and trying all sorts of things and forgetting to look after the basic management of the school. It was a very easy thing for an experienced head to pick up; if someone had just come in, as my noble friend Lady Perry suggests, and had a look at the school, they would have sensed that immediately.
I do not share the confidence of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches that these things get picked up by parents, since parents are by and large terribly loyal to their schools. They do not talk to outside people or to Ofsted. There may be a flow of information round the local circuit, but it does not get out of that; no one complains. Often, there will be a flow of propaganda from the school that what it is doing is right and that the course it is taking is the best one. Even if it is experimental and there are some worries about it at the moment, it will all work out. Parents are inclined to accept that and an outside expert eye can make all the difference. At the moment, Ofsted is deficient in that it does not look at schools often enough and this causes much greater problems than there ought to be. If we get to a position where Ofsted does not see schools at all, we will start to have serious problems going unchecked, to the point where the rot is so bad that the fruit falls off the tree and the educational lives of a great many pupils are seriously damaged.
Beyond that, we are considering opening up the curriculum so that a great deal of what a secondary school, in particular, does will be down to that school. So we will start not to know what a school is doing and whether it is doing well unless someone tells us what is going on. How will we know that PSHE in a school is being done properly, or what is being done, or what is being taught? We will rely entirely on what the school chooses to tell us. If it is a good school doing the right thing, fine—that will be all right—but how will we know if that is the case?
The proposals in this clause, as they are now, will fail schools, fail children and fail parents and the information they should have. We should seriously look to do something about this.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, the clause is very radical in its consequences. Amendments 113D, 114 and 114A are all firefighting amendments and I support them as such, particularly with regard to the importance of safeguarding. However, I agree with my colleague and friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that, if we move away from requiring inspection of a whole range of schools, danger lies down the road and that we may be in a different position when debating this issue in five or 10 years’ time.
I was involved when Ofsted was established—I am sorry to be historical but this is relevant—and one of the earliest things I did was to go to a meeting with private school head teachers. I was wise to go to girls’ schools where they were mostly lady head teachers, who were much more reasonable. I challenged them and said, “If the state system can put up with this, what about you”? Much to their credit, they began to create an inspection system of their own and compared notes with Ofsted all the way down the line and found it beneficial.
On another bit of relevant history, five years ago during debates on the Education and Inspections Bill, a major issue about faith schools arose. Indeed, after re-reading Hansard and as I look around, it is like being back there—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharpe, Lady Perry and Lady Howarth, were all there when we debated it at some length. They may recall—I certainly do, as I tabled one or two crucial amendments—that there was an immense degree of what I can only call aggression. Except for the issue of assisted dying, I have not seen the House of Lords quite as split right down the middle as on the question of the future of faith schools.
We have had a sensation of that in this Committee but we have held back, I am happy to say. However, that could be recreated because the exemptions proposed include a number of faith schools that cause severe worries for Members of the House. This may reopen the whole issue of whether there should be any at all, let alone, as the question was, any new ones. I see, for example, Amendment 114 as a step towards this. There could be other ways in which one might take a step towards obviating the possibility of a certain kind of curriculum, the way in which it is taught and a lack of attention to community cohesion—which I believe were the words on which the amendments at that time focused.
The crucial issue was that there would be a backstop, and Ofsted would inspect all schools on the basis of their capacity to create cohesion in the community. That provided a net within which many of the worries of Members of the House were resolved sufficiently for them not to move down the much more radical secular path. I put it to the Minister that a number of us would be minded to introduce further amendment at the next stage if Clause 39 stands in its current form without these issues being dealt with.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will get some clever person to write me something that will explain why that is the case.
The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, raised important points about faith schools. He will know better than me that it is a separate inspection process. Faith schools, including exempt schools, would continue to be subject under Section 48 of the Education Act 2005 to a separate inspection into their religious education. This can also cover spiritual, moral, social and cultural development and reports will be published. That is not a complete answer to the noble Lord’s concerns but it is another part of a possible reassurance.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, asked me whether a cohort could pass through an outstanding school without any inspection. The absence of inspection does not mean that Ofsted will fail to pay attention to exempt schools. Currently outstanding schools have five years between inspections. The risk assessment would start at three years and be done annually but, if there were concerns before then, the whole point of the triggering process is that Ofsted would be able to look into them.
Overall, we think that a lot has changed in the past 20 years in terms of transparency and accountability. There is more information and the inspection system over those years has become increasingly proportionate. We have a large number of schools that are capable of evaluating their own performance and identifying and responding to their own improvement priorities. We are keen to focus inspection on those that need it most— underperforming and inadequate schools. I recognise the strength of feeling that has been raised.
There were a number of thoughtful suggestions, particular around the important question of the rigour of the risk assessment. I understand that Ofsted is due to publish its approach to risk assessment and I would like to use that as an opportunity to discuss these concerns further, to reflect on what has been said to me today and to raise them with the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Huyton. I hope that through that process—I will be happy to discuss it with noble Lords who have particular concerns and who have contributed to this debate—I can address some of the concerns that have been raised, reflect on them and then report back to noble Lords. I will certainly reflect on the mood of the Committee. I will listen to the advice that I have been given but in the mean time I ask my noble friend Lady Walmsley to withdraw her amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful for what my noble friend has said. I do not really think that saying that the system at the moment has its defects is a good reason for adding to them. I very much hope that, in what happens between now and Report stage in terms of an understanding of the Ofsted mechanisms and in discussions between ourselves, we can firm this up. It seems to me to be a serious disaster in the making and a very wrong step the Government are looking at.
I want to pick up on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland. Clause 40(2) removes the compromise that we reached at the end of that long and, as he says, acrimonious debate. I very much hope the Minister will take the time to read that debate and to understand why that clause got into the 2006 Act. It was a compromise, carefully worked out by the then Government, to deal with questions about the way in which faith schools fit into the system. By removing that compromise you are reopening the whole argument as to that relationship and inviting a repeat on Report of the experience of 2006. I hope the noble Lord, if only in preparation for that, will read through that debate. I am sure we will revisit this in October. I hope that between now and then we will have made some progress.
Baroness Walmsley
My Lords, this has been a very thorough and rigorous debate and I do not intend to summarise the whole of it. I will respond only on my own amendment as the Minister has been intervened upon a number of times. My understanding of what the Minister said in response to my amendment was that there is no reason to believe that outstanding schools will not take safeguarding seriously. Without intending to be rude to the Minister, I wrote in my notes, “Well, we are hoping for the best then”. Frankly, I do not agree that if somebody is good at one thing they are necessarily good at another. Only on Monday I talked about my own grandsons, one of whom is brilliant at maths and the other is brilliant at English. I think the same applies to schools.
The Minister said that Ofsted will now carry out a survey, but I understand that there are currently no plans whatever to inspect safeguarding regularly in schools that are regarded as exempt—and therefore will not be regularly inspected—unless, of course, the Ofsted survey advises the Government that there is no correlation between a school being good academically and being good at safeguarding. Can the Minister just nod if I am correct in that understanding of his reply?
Lord Ouseley
Thank you very much. I acknowledge what the noble Baroness has said, and I am about to conclude. However, I have not made many interventions in Committee and I intend to speak as fully as I can while being as brief as I think is reasonable.
The protected characteristics under the Education Act 2000 provide us with a basis to enable some of the other amendments in this area to address this issue. The amendments will need to remain as explicit as they are here if we are to do justice to what we want to see achieved, through inspection reports, in addressing the range of educational needs across all different groups of children. It is particularly important that we include those characteristics and enable, as part of any follow up, the guidance that the chief inspector should have.
When we consider groups on the basis of race, it is easy enough for a report to be blunt in the way in which it states that it has dealt with the issue of race and ethnicity. However, if you look across the whole range, groups such as Traveller and Gypsy children are very often excluded when inspections are taking place and the report does not relate explicitly and specifically to those groups which are underachieving, and the quality of education that is being inspected in the school tends not to address those particular needs.
Bearing in mind the time factor, I conclude by asking the Minister to explain why, when looking at the range of needs, the sharp focus is restricted to only two categories. Why is not this comprehensive amendment—which enables a broadening of the categories while maintaining a sharp focus—an appropriate way forward?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, and I hope that she brings her amendment back on Report.
As we discussed on the previous group of amendments, the research I have been doing for the Localism Bill about how neighbourhood planning works within cities, and mostly within London, has drawn the comment from a number of the people involved that one of the principal problems they face is the actions of faith schools, in this case the very small ones—I am certainly not referring to the favourite cause of the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy—both Christian and other denominations, which seem intent on focusing communities around themselves rather than reaching out more widely. That certainly relates to the point about community cohesion which the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, raised and which was the subject of long debates in 2006.
On the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lord Boswell of Aynho, I merely say that it is a well known problem that secondary schools take the prospectuses of FE colleges and others, lock them in the head’s cupboard and say that that is their duty to their pupils. This needs to be looked at, at least occasionally.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, I will ask a brief but important question in relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I should have stood up and asked her, but I have been told off before for standing up too soon, so I thought that I would wait.
I was unable to be present for the Statement yesterday about buildings, and I am sure that this might have been raised then. The question is whether or not a building should be a limiting factor in an Ofsted inspection’s outcome. Many schools now have huge problems with their standards, and I speak as a trustee of a college where the premises are totally inappropriate for the work that we are trying to do. This means that we can never get a good Ofsted inspection, despite the fact that the teaching is good and the pupils like going there. There would be nowhere else for these disabled young people to go if it did not exist. In the present economic climate, is this limiting factor appropriate when we know that it is not going to change? This school would have been redeveloped under the previous programme, which, of course, was abandoned.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Lucas
“Marks to be published at Key Stages 4 and 5
Where a student is awarded a grade in an examination at Key Stage 4 or Key Stage 5, and that grade is based on an underlying mark, that mark shall be disclosed to the student, and this information shall also be made available in or with any data set that include the grades awarded in such examinations.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, again I have received a very satisfactory e-mail from the Government on this subject. My object here is merely to try to persuade the Government to release more information about the actual marks obtained by students in examinations.
If you are trying to use data to evaluate schools, having things divided into grades is very inconvenient and is a very coarse measure of student achievement, which therefore tends to produce rather coarse judgments of how well individual schools and students have done. It is much more helpful to have the detailed grades. If the Government allow more access to government data in respect of not just universities but schools, that will help parents and whatever intermediaries they use—I declare an interest as the editor of the Good Schools Guide, which uses a lot of government data—and it will greatly improve the information that can be passed on to parents. Generally, it will also improve people’s understanding of where a school is. To have a C-D boundary—or even an A-B or B-C boundary—and to judge schools on how many children they get to one side or the other of that boundary is a very coarse way of measuring the performance of a school, which might be one mark either way. What is interesting is where the preponderance of the students are on a much finer scale.
I am encouraged that the Government are thinking of making this sort of information available. The information may not sink in with employers very quickly, but that will happen eventually. The Swiss publish individual marks, so that people can see where they are on a scale out of 100, and Swiss employers now understand that the mark is more important than some artificial boundary that has been inserted in the middle to say whether someone is a C or a D. I think that this would be progress for everybody, and I am very glad that the Government are prepared to contemplate moving in this direction. I beg to move.
Lord Peston
My Lords, I ask the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, to enlighten me, as I do not know much about what goes on in schools. Certainly, as someone who was once a university teacher, it never occurred to me that the marks meant anything at all. Is it the case that the pupil is given a mark by the teacher but the pupil does not know the mark and is instead given a grade? Is that what actually happens now?
Certainly, what used to happen in universities was that, essentially, you gave students marks and, if those marks corresponded to certain grades but there were not the desired number of people in the grades, you just changed the marks. In other words, the marks were meaningless. What does it mean to be given a mark of 80? It means nothing at all; it is not a measure of achievement because we could have given a mark of 0.8 or 0.08 or anything else. What matters is first how the students are ranked, and you then need some other measure of their achievement, which I do not believe is given in any way by either numbers or grades.
Can the noble Lord at least tell me what actually happens in schools? When someone marks the student’s papers, would the student know what grade they would get if they knew the mark? Are the marks adjusted to get to the grades, or are the grades adjusted to make them come out the way that they ought to come out?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps someone will rescue me if I get this wrong—there are several experts here—but, generally, rather than the marks being shifted, the grade boundaries are shifted, so you do not know what mark the C-D boundary is until the assessors have gone through the whole process of marking the papers and assessing how the students have answered the questions so that they can see where the level of difficulty lies.
The importance of knowing individual marks is that the information allows you to look more finely at how students have done and how a school has done. That would enable, for instance, parents to look at the results in a norm-referenced rather than criterion-referenced manner, if that was a judgment that they preferred to make. At the moment, you cannot say whether a child is in the top 10 per cent nationally, because you only have very coarse information as to where the grade boundaries are. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Peston, that there is no significance to the marks themselves—it is all a matter of relativities and rank and order—but my proposal would start to give us more and better information about schools. What use we can make of that information is down to our individual ingenuity.
Lord Peston
I would like to add another question. Is the purpose of this to compare schools? Is that the point? What you need therefore is some ruler which enables you to say that this school is more successful than that school “because”. I do not understand what you put in the “because” bit.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, comparing schools is a complicated business and you have to take all sorts of things into account. Exam results are part of that. To have the marks finely graded makes them a better part of measuring how schools have behaved. When the system gets used to it, such information will be better for students in that they could show that, for example, they are in the top 1 per cent nationally or that they only missed a C by one mark. In either sense, students would benefit from being able to display them.
Students can get the marks under certain circumstances now. If you ask for a regrade, you get to see what your marks have been but, because you cannot see everybody else’s marks or what the universe of marks looks like, there is very little you can do with that. So they exist but they are not disclosed.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, I want to make a couple of comments. First, much of the anxiety about the current grading system is because people have lost confidence in the way that the examinations are marked at the moment. I remember that, when I was doing O-levels and such-like many moons ago, there was much more confidence in the marking system and the legitimacy and accuracy of the examination boards. Maybe that was misplaced but that was certainly how I was brought up. Perhaps the scandals in recent times about the quality of the marking and so on have raised concerns and people want to dig deeper to know the underlying marks, which is understandable.
I am anxious, however, as to how this would work in practice. If the grades and the marks are published and if some children will only be two or three marks below the next grade up, if you run that parallel system of marks and grades, you will engender a lot of new appeals because anyone who is a short step away from the next grade up will flood the market with appeals. Unless we have a mechanism for managing that, therefore, there will be more discontent than satisfaction. I am not sure the system can run in parallel in the way the noble Lord is proposing. It may be, however, that the famous e-mail, which I should have seen but have not, spells out what the Government intend and will satisfy those points.
The Earl of Listowel
I have a quick question. Is there a measure that is easily understood and easily available to judge the progress that schools make in improving a child’s education? The Committee was discussing comparing schools. Is there a quick and easy measure that is easily accessible to say that this school is particularly good at taking children from one level to another, rather than judging all schools by one standard? Does that make sense?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, the difficulty is that the key stage 2 and key stage 1 data that are published are so coarse. The idea that you can effectively chuck children into one of three pots at the age of 11 and sensibly use that as a measure of anything is not something that I am comfortable with. If there were a better assessment, a teacher assessment, of where children were on a finer scale, you would have something that you could more reliably use to chart progress. Because of the coarseness of the base indicators, you can really only measure these things when large numbers of pupils are involved and the coarseness evens out. At the level of a primary school it is really pretty difficult, but at a big secondary you can get somewhere. Perhaps the Minister has something to add to that. I hope that the Government will consider releasing more and better data as part of what they are doing to improve the value-added indicator, which is a pretty important part of looking at how schools do.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
Before my noble friend sits down, the Government are looking at progress reports for schools, which would give a more descriptive picture of where schools were moving.
Lord Touhig
May I just respond to the Minister? The Government are quite wrong. This is the second occasion on which they have sought to curtail debate, but that is not their role. Members are entitled to take part in the debate as widely as they need to or want to. The Government should stop trying to intervene and control the timetable of this Committee by telling people not to speak.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is misinterpreting the rules of Committee. The Minister speaking does not curtail debate in any way; it merely gives us a bit of information on which we can base our further debate.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, we need not just information, but a little guidance as this Committee stage could go on and on. I think that we all accept that.
The problem with my noble friend’s comment just now is that, alas, as we heard earlier, one or two people have personal experiences of finding the whole business of sitting outside an assembly or religious occurrence in a school very disturbing. This is something that we all need to take into account. This issue has gone on and on. I was remembering, as the noble Lord, Lord Peston, was on his feet, having these arguments in the Communications Committee. However, we managed eventually to come to a satisfactory conclusion and we moved on.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, I support the idea that schools should have discretion in relation to admissions policy but it should be a clear, publicly stated admissions policy. Out of that, however, come two difficulties, one of which is the possibility of anarchy. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, indicated how that was the case. As a young, innocent parent who came to joust within the Inner London Education Authority, longer ago than I care to remember, there was an element of anarchy in the system. As a parent, if you were not savvy or did not know x, y and z, you could not crack it. There is an issue of anarchy here. If every school has its own admissions policy and there is no co-ordination, parents will find themselves in an anarchic situation but will not quite know it. The knowing and the well attached will do well. The second danger is fairness and unfairness. The point has been made and we need someone to take responsibility for saying whether or not cumulatively these admissions policies add up either to anarchy or unfairness. There may be better ways of doing it. The best way is having many excellent schools, but we are where we are.
I draw quick comparisons with universities. There was a risk of anarchy in admissions systems a number of years ago as a number of universities expanded in the 1960s and thereafter. That anarchy was dealt with in part through creating UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. For example, there was an agreement that you could not apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, and that if you wanted to apply to one of them, you had to apply earlier. Rules were worked out so that people knew where they were.
On the question of fairness, and here I put a direct question to the Government, in universities there is a sudden interest in fairness and access and OFFA may well have its powers increased to deal with a set of financial regulations about how universities are funded. It is interesting that in one educational context regulation and the imposition of fairness and unfairness is taking place, and yet in schools the same question of fairness is going in the other direction. We need consistency here.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I look forward to what my noble friend has to say because I share some of the concerns of other Members of the Committee. I think it is important that we should continue to move schools admissions towards fairness. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has pointed out, this is not the history of schools. They have always been interested in finding ways of covert selection. The history of the last 10 years or so has been a gradual winding back from that. We even have Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, that great Catholic school in west London, removing some of the most objectionable means of social selection which were in its admissions criteria. There are other examples of progress throughout the UK.
The Anglican church has been very helpful in what it has done to make schools fairer. However, it is a process that goes against the natural inclination of schools and governors. Once parents capture a school, they tend to want to keep it captured. I find it hard to understand how the proposals in the Bill will improve fairness. At this point, I shall sit down and listen to my noble friend.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I will be brief. I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurances that children in the care of local authorities will continue to have first priority in school admissions. I am looking for a further reassurance on this occasion. I think we all agree that when the state takes a child away from his family, the least that the state can do is ensure he gets the best education possible. We know that that has not been the case in the past. There is great instability in many of these children’s lives, particularly when foster placements break down in the middle of the school year and a child has to move to a new area and a new family. Teachers have told me that these children end up in the poorest schools because no places are left in the good schools by the middle of the year. I hope that the Minister can offer me further reassurance on this matter. I have missed the letter on admissions that might have already answered the question. How will he know that these children are continuing to receive priority? I should be grateful for information on that and I look forward to his response.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
I shall speak also to Amendments 140 and 141 in this group. I was fascinated by the previous debate on admissions, when many wise and challenging things were said. My noble friend Lady Morris, I think, said that we have a system littered with schools trying to do their best but fighting a losing battle because of other local schools selecting pupils. We heard some comments about schools selecting parents, rather than the other way round. I know that the Church of England has recently been looking at this and I hope for some clarification on its thinking.
The Minister talked about autonomy and variety. Autonomy and variety will not solve all the issues in front of us concerning admissions. I want to talk about faith schools. My first amendment to the Academies Act 2010 would prevent academies and free schools with a religious character discriminating on admissions; my second would prevent voluntary-controlled faith schools which convert to academy status from increasing the priority of religious criteria in their admissions policies.
As my noble friend Lady Hughes said earlier, admission to school is extremely important. We know that many state-funded faith schools use their legal privileges to have highly selective admissions criteria, giving preference to the children of parents with particular beliefs. Academy schools which have converted from state-maintained faith schools are, of course, their own admissions authority, and they religiously discriminate up to 100 per cent in admissions. Free schools with a religious character may discriminate in up to 50 per cent of admissions. Will that remain the case? Will that be the case for looked-after children who do not have the same faith as the school they want to go to?
Discrimination by faith schools can cause segregation along both religious and socio-economic lines. Professor Ted Cantle, author of a report into community cohesion in Blackburn, describes religious schools as,
“automatically a source of division”,
in the town. In other areas, faith schools that are their own admission authorities are 10 times more likely to be highly unrepresentative of their surrounding area than faith schools where the local authority is the admission authority. Separating children by religion, class and ethnicity is totally opposed to the aim of social cohesion.
In addition, voluntary aided faith schools have, on average, 50 per cent fewer pupils requiring free school meals than community schools. Pupils starting at faith schools are also, on average, more academically able than pupils starting at inclusive schools. That is because faith schools’ selection criteria mean that they usually—not always, but usually—take fewer deprived children and more than their fair share of children of ambitious and wealthier parents.
I share an office with a colleague from Northern Ireland, who constantly asks me: “Have we not learnt the lessons from faith schools in Northern Ireland?”. All schools should include and educate pupils of all beliefs together so that they can learn about and from each other, instead of being segregated by their religion. Prejudice was mentioned last week in Committee. I heard that homophobic bullying is more likely to happen in faith schools. The amendment to the Equality Act 2010 will stop maintained schools—voluntary and foundation schools—with a religious character from discriminating in admissions by removing the opt-out from the Act.
Any religious discrimination in admissions is against the ideal of an open and inclusive school system. No state-funded faith school, including academies, should be permitted to discriminate in their admissions on religious grounds in any circumstances. My first amendment would rule out religious discrimination in admissions to all new academies. If the complete prohibition of religious discrimination in the new academy and free school system cannot be achieved, and my first amendment does not pass, my second amendment would ensure that voluntarily controlled schools which had not previously been permitted to discriminate could not begin to discriminate on conversion to academy status. I beg to move.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 138. I like faith schools and I want parents to be able to choose them, whether or not they are of that faith. I share the distress of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, at the idea that schools become ghettoes for their own religion. Wherever that is widely practised it has been disastrous. Northern Ireland in particular and also the west of Scotland are examples of where this has caused and causes continuing division and strife that we do not see in the rest of the UK.
Lord McAvoy
I am loath to sound authoritative on the English and Welsh system, but I know something of the system in the west of Scotland. It is a complete travesty to say that the tragic history of the west of Scotland has been caused by, exacerbated by or would be solved by the removal of Catholic schools. If he has some time, I will give the noble Lord a history lesson on prejudice in the west of Scotland.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I would be delighted to share tea with the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, if I get the chance, but I would say that those in charge of a number of Scottish universities have spent many years refusing me information about which schools their students attend on the grounds that, if it is known that a student at a Scottish university attended a Catholic school, they would be subject to discrimination and harm as a result. If that is the kind of society which the noble Lord, Lord McAvoy, is happy with, I differ from him.
I think that separate education is not desirable. On the other hand, I recognise that a religious school with no pupils who follow that particular creed would be a very strange animal indeed. I propose a compromise which has been reached on a large scale in the Anglican community that schools should be open for around half their pupils—in many cases more—whose parents are not of that religion but who accept that they want an education in that religious tradition.
Lord McAvoy
The noble Lord’s amendment states:
“(2) Notwithstanding subsection (1), an Academy with a religious character may require all pupils admitted to the school to take a full part in the school’s religious life”.
Has he any idea how that would work in practice? Does he realize the division and animosity that that could cause by imposing the ethic on a Catholic school which now becomes 50 per cent Catholic and 50 per cent mixed variety? What right would the Catholic 50 per cent have to impose their point of view on the 50 per cent who are not Catholic? How would that be policed?
Lord Lucas
My Lords, that phrase comes from the admissions criteria for Ampleforth, which is a well known Catholic school, where it works extremely well. Parents who want to send their children to a Catholic school should accept that it is a Catholic school and that it will educate its children in the Catholic religion. I send my children to an Anglican school. I am not religious myself, but I entirely accept that my child is being brought up within the context of school as an Anglican. I value that tradition of education. Again, it is perhaps an illustration of the conditions in the west of Scotland that such a thing is inconceivable to the noble Lord. For me, it is just ordinary. I beg to move.
Baroness Perry of Southwark
My Lords, my name is also to Amendment 138. For me, these two paragraphs together describe the ideal nature of a faith school when it has the freedom of being an academy. Subsection (1) makes the point that a faith school should not in any way have admission criteria that insist that all children shall have some kind of allegiance to the faith of that school. We have all heard stories about parents suddenly turning up at a church in the last few months before their application to a school that happens to be the best school in the area and a faith school. That is unfortunate; it distorts what should be an open choice by parents of a good school that has a particular ethos. Subsection (1) is inclusive and says that faith schools would be inclusive. Around half the children they took would share a commitment to their faith, but the other half could be of any faith or no faith.
I strongly believe in subsection (2). Exactly as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, if parents have chosen a Catholic school, an Anglican school, a Jewish school or a Muslim school for their children, they must respect the traditions of that faith. It is not a secular school; it is a school of that faith. They should be included in the general ethos of the school and pay tribute to the customs within it that reflect its faith. My experience and that of noble Lords who spoke earlier reinforce this; parents of other faiths welcome the ethos of a Christian school, and perhaps parents of other faiths will welcome the ethos of a Muslim or a Jewish school as well.
Parents are looking for a school with strong values, and if those values are based on faith, the parents will accept that. The success of faith schools has been widely demonstrated by their popularity and their academic success.
Lord Lucas
“Music licensing
After subsection (1)(g) of section 173 of the Licensing Act 2003 (activities in certain locations not licensable) insert—
“(ga) on the premises of a school or college”.”
Lord Lucas
The amendment is self-explanatory. As I have had a very clear and supportive e-mail from the Government today, which I hope has been widely circulated, I shall leave it at that and beg to move.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
I support the amendment and have read the helpful letter from the noble Lord, Lord Hill. I restate how much I agree that getting schools to apply for licences in the past has been a very unwieldy way to get them to put on fairly simple forms of entertainment. I very much support the Live Music Bill of the noble Lord, Lord Clement-Jones, to which the letter of the noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred. I am very pleased to hear that the Government will be supporting it in its progress through Parliament. That obviously goes much wider than dealing with live music in schools; nevertheless, it will be helpful.
When I said to my colleagues that I was also very pleased that the Government had committed to looking at the Licensing Act 2003, they said, “You’re going to regret saying that, because it took us for ever to get a half-decent balance on licensing music and alcohol provision. Good luck to you”. My instinct is that we should look again at the Licensing Act. I am pleased that the Government will be doing that, and I look forward to that debate.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, I know that many in this House share my noble friend's view that public performance of music should not be licensable in schools. We agree that schools currently face unnecessary bureaucracy when they organise events such as school plays, concerts or swimming galas, and we are taking steps to address that. We heed the warnings of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, but we have announced our intention to consult on Schedule 1 to the Licensing Act 2003, which currently regulates the public performance of live music and performance of other creative and community activities, such as dance, plays, film and indoor sport. Our intention, subject to the consultation, is to deregulate those activities as far as possible in schools. That is possible through secondary legislation.
The Government have also expressed clear support for the Live Music Bill introduced by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, which completed its Committee stage on Friday. I know that, because I was there. It seeks to deregulate in certain circumstances the provision of live, unamplified music in most locations and live, amplified music in workplaces such as schools, as well as licensed premises such as public houses, subject to restrictions on audience size. These planned changes will free schools from the unnecessary bureaucracy they currently face and allow them to use music in a sensible way to deliver the best possible education for their pupils. On the basis of that reassurance, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very content with that reply and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, about 5,000 English sixth-form school pupils a year take Open University modules, which is a very good approach to this matter and something that we will come to on the 25th. Those modules are not reflected in the performance tables, and the data on the performance of these children are not available to celebrate their achievements and those of their schools, as I think should be the case. It should be possible for children who are capable of taking on these things to be allowed to expand and flourish, and for schools to be rewarded for that in a way that they understand—that is, through recognition and, indeed, money. At the moment, the YASS scheme seems to exist on the good will of schools and their interest in the attainment of their brightest pupils, rather than on any great support from the Government.
It is wonderful for me to find myself agreeing with my noble friend Lord Blackwell. I have often found myself in opposition to him but I think that he has struck a very clear note here and I am very happy to support him. Of course, I agree with other noble Lords that there are many ways of doing this, and mathematics taught as a mixed-ability subject can be very strong. I recommend my noble friend to the works of Professor Jo Boaler on that subject. We know from the Oxbridge admissions statistics how much we are generally failing in this area. We need to do much more to give the brightest children from the poorest backgrounds the education and ambition that they deserve.
However, as it is fashionable to talk about international comparisons, I also point out that Singapore reckons that half of its most crucial entrepreneurs were in the bottom 10 per cent at school, so it is not just the bright children who need our attention.
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch
My Lords, this debate has been a model of brevity. We have got in an enormous number of points in a very short period. Perhaps we could learn something from that. Therefore, I shall not prolong the debate, given the lateness of the hour and the fact that most of the points that I was going to make have been covered.
The debate has underlined for me that the whole thrust of the Government’s future schools programme is based on school autonomy and that we are rowing back here in talking about schools needing to co-operate. Someone pointed out that local authorities used to provide some of that element of co-operation for specialist education, whether it was for specialist GCSEs and A-levels or whatever. We are trying to reinvent the wheel when some of those mechanisms were already there to provide at least some of that.
I very much agree with what has been said. I had a similar question to that of my noble friend Lady Morris concerning what happened to the gifted and talented scheme.
My only other concern relates to the wording of, particularly, Amendment 106, which talks about,
“high ability or aptitude for learning”,
as being the only area for which we should make special provision. Again, I very much agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and others, who said that talent goes far beyond academic talent. If we are to pursue this, I hope that the mover of the amendment will look to broaden it out. I am not trying to water it down, but talents and gifts come in all sorts of forms. As much as we need leaders who are academically bright, we need sports men and women who are world leaders, and there are lots of different ways in which we want our children to excel and eventually to provide leadership in this country. Therefore, I have a concern about the wording of the amendment, although I think that there is an enormous amount of agreement around the Room about how we should go forward on this issue.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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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.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I entirely agree what with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, just said. I would have said it myself if I could have said it as well. It is crucial that children learn these things at school. It is daffy to prescribe that individual items should be learnt. One should look at the outcome. The only sensible way of looking at the outcome is inspection. This Bill is setting out to destroy that aspect of inspection rather than building on it, so I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, in my concerns. The only other thing I would like to say is that this is a great subject to be debating in this room, under a picture of a PSHE lesson.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
This whole business of PSHE is almost written on one’s brain because the argument for it has come up again and again in all the education Bills. Relationships are so crucial in everything that we do. I am very much of the view that it certainly does not need to be prescribed and in the Bill. I go along with the approach of my noble friend Lord Sutherland on this. Nevertheless, the whole area is crucially important.
I wish the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, was here because when the previous Government introduced citizenship lessons, there was at last great hope that children would be introduced to the business of parenting—not just getting on and understanding their difficult relationships with their parents but actually what a child needs: love, support and caring. That never happened; it got shunted around to different lessons, if it ever took place at all. I would not at all mind having an inspection with that written into it: how is it doing and is it increasing the happiness and the general well-being of our children?
Returning briefly to the business of teaching religion, and what was said just now, it is crucial for all of us to know about the different religions in the world—and none. It is essential that we accept and know and are tolerant about this. One of the horrors in the rest of the world is that that form of tolerance does not exist. So we must do whatever we can in that direction. However, I hope that in the process we are not going to end up with ways that actually restrict the excellent work that many of our religious schools are doing. I am not thinking of these amendments but perhaps some that will come subsequently.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Lucas
“Physical contact between pupils and school staff
(1) The governing body of a school may adapt and promulgate rules on physical contact between pupils and school staff.
(2) Such rules may permit physical contact between pupils and staff in defined circumstances, including in particular contact required for teaching physical skills, providing first aid and comfort to pupils, and avoiding harm to people or equipment.
(3) Such rules may permit physical contact between pupils and staff when no other adult is present, and between a pupil and a member of staff of different genders.
(4) If a complaint concerning physical contact between a pupil and a member of staff is made to the head teacher of a school, and the head teacher considers that on the balance of probabilities the member of staff acted within school rules, the head teacher need take no action to suspend or otherwise restrict the member of staff concerned while investigation of the complaint is in progress.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 74 very briefly because apparently the Government have today come forward with some guidance on the subject, or at least a firm view, which I would very much like to hear before I take up a lot of your Lordships’ time telling you what my opinions are based on what the situation used to be.
I find it ridiculous that the schools I have used and been involved in will not put a plaster on a child’s knee when it has hurt itself and will not comfort a child who has been bereaved because they are frightened. I entirely understand why they are frightened. As soon as a complaint of any kind is made, the schools feel compelled to cast the teacher adrift, to throw them out to the local social workers. If they get on with them well, that is fine—then there is a pattern of dealing with the problem which is well understood. But in many cases they do not; in many cases there is not the necessary degree of trust and understanding, and under those circumstances schools choose to protect their teachers, which I entirely understand.
I understand that the Government have developed a position on this that they can tell us about and it might help us all if the Minister told us where they find themselves so that we can then have at them in the knowledge of where we are now rather than where we were yesterday. I beg to move.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I want to raise an issue on the back of this amendment and ask the Minister to reply to it. More than a few members of the Committee were very concerned to see a report in the Telegraph this morning that the Government have issued what they call in their press release the,
“final, clearer guidance for teachers”,
on how they should deal with bad behaviour. This final, clearer guidance includes and enumerates all the issues that we debated not so long ago, upon which a vote has not been taken, as we are in Grand Committee. Therefore, I contend that there is as yet no final resolution of this House, nor of the other House, on these matters. I feel that this is precipitous in the extreme of the Government and quite discourteous to the House. I fail to see how final guidance can be issued which refers to matters that we have yet to decide upon.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am grateful to the Government. It is exactly the answer that I had hoped for and I look forward to it being applied in schools. I can think now of several that I shall be e-mailing when I get home to point out the URL of the new guidance. Perhaps I might say two things to the Minister. First, the brief advice given by my noble friend Lord Elton is absolutely crucial—parents should know what the school’s policy is. If my parents asked me what a week in school had been like, I can remember that I would say, “Well, I got slippered twice and my maths teacher hit me over the head with a slide rule and drew blood”, and that they would then ask, “Oh—what had you been doing wrong?”. In those days that was the policy. Parents will take what they have agreed to; it is if something happens by surprise that they get upset.
Secondly, when the Minister gets back to the department could she please give a long hug to whoever produced this guidance and say, “But you could have done even better if you had circulated this to the Committee when you published it”. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Lucas
“Teacher performance
(1) If the head teacher of a school considers that the teaching performance of any teacher is poor, the head teacher shall—
(a) give written notice of that conclusion to the teacher,(b) not permit that teacher to teach without such support as is required for the experience of pupils to be at least satisfactory,(c) provide a programme of support and continuing professional development designed to improve that teacher’s performance.(2) If after six months the head teacher considers that the teacher’s teaching performance is still poor, the head teacher must support the teacher in finding a post more suited to the teacher’s abilities.
(3) If after a further six months the teacher remains in his or her original post, and his teaching (in the opinion of the head teacher) remains poor, the teacher may be given a full term’s notice of dismissal on the grounds of poor teaching.
(4) Any teacher subject to such proceedings may appeal at any time to a committee of the governing body against any relevant decision or proposal of the head teacher.”
Lord Lucas
My Lords, again the Government have pre-empted me by sending me this morning a very helpful e-mail describing their proposals for what are still called disciplinary proceedings, but I do not think that is the right phrase to use for these things. They are much more to do with performance, and we should try to get the word discipline out of this because it implies that the teacher has done something wrong rather than that the teacher is just in the wrong place. If it is a matter of a teacher having done something wrong, of course it is discipline, but this is about a performance review, and the consequences of a performance review.
It is crucial for children that they have good teachers. There are always inevitably going to be teachers in the system who are not up to scratch. The first response of the system ought to be to try to support them, to try to find ways of improving their performance, for their colleagues to help them, for them to go on courses if necessary and whatever needs to be done to encourage them back to a position where they are doing as well as their pupils deserve them to be doing. However, at present, certainly to judge from conversations with head teachers, they find the whole process of dealing with teachers who are not up to scratch so difficult and slow that many of them just give up and put up with substandard teaching. I do not think that that is a satisfactory position.
I do not know whether the e-mail sent to me was more widely circulated around the Committee. I think it perhaps should have been. I think that applies generally to messages going round in response to amendments. As I am sure my noble friend has seen, the interest in each question is pretty general around here, even if it has been proposed by just one or two of us. However, it seems to me that the Government are having a go at tackling this and are proposing quite interestingly simplified guidance that ought to enable this process to improve from both a teacher’s point of view and from the point of view of pupils and schools.
May I ask a few detailed questions? Is it possible under the new scheme for pupils to be involved in these proceedings? Pupils’ views on how good teachers are are often quite accurate. Is it envisaged that there will be some way of feeding that back into the system? I see that support is given to teachers throughout the process, which I thoroughly approve of. Is it proposed that once the point has been reached where it has been decided that a teacher should leave a school, there should be support for the teacher in making their next move, in whatever direction that is? It does not seem to me unreasonable that a teacher, having been supported all the way through the process, should not just be pushed off the edge at the end of it.
I note that a teacher who appeals successfully can be reinstated. That seems to me a good principle to apply to pupils too. I very much hope that, having set this new system in place, the Government will take an interest in how it is going and in a year or two will look to see how it needs adjusting and improving. I beg to move.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I have not seen the guidance, letter or e-mail, but I am grateful that this measure has been tabled because it concentrates our minds on a number of issues. A pupil, child or student cannot repeat a year, so if they have a teacher who is not up to the mark they have lost that year and that opportunity. Over several days of our discussion a constant theme has emerged that the most important thing in education is not the amount of equipment available or the quality of the buildings but rather the quality of the teachers and support staff. If you have quality teachers, you will have education at its best.
I do not have the relevant figures readily available but only a handful of teachers have been asked to leave over the past few years because of their inadequacies as teachers. I ask myself why that is the case. Then I reflect on how difficult it is to ask a teacher who is not performing well and is not good enough to leave the school. We have had debates about the quality of training and of the first year’s experience in school being the best that we can possibly provide. We have talked about the quality of support in school and in-service or CPD provision in schools. We have a performance management system in schools whereby every teacher is set performance targets every year. Those targets are monitored and evaluated and lessons are watched. If a teacher fails their performance management, it is a bureaucratic nightmare to try to do something about it. Frankly, does even the most experienced head teacher really want to go through that bureaucratic process which may involve teacher associations and will certainly involve a plethora of appeals and systems? They do not. The teacher concerned knows that he or she is not up to the job. Perhaps there could be a simplified system which would give them the support they need. I have seen teachers who, perhaps because of personal circumstances, have been struggling, have been given support and have come back up for the job again. I look forward to seeing a simplified way of dealing with this important issue.
Lord Lucas
I am grateful to my noble friend. I agree entirely with the noble Baroness, Lady Howells. This does not belong in legislation but this is the way in which we get a chance to talk about it. Secondary legislation and guidance can all flow past us without having a chance to stick a pin in it. I am delighted that my noble friend is thinking along the same lines as me. This is one of the difficulties in making schools good, which ought to be cleared out of the way. I am very cheered that something is being done about it. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My view is that independent schools are independent, and I would not look to the taxpayer to pick up the tab. That is my reaction off the top of my head. It is probably the answer that the noble Baroness hoped for, even if I have disappointed my noble friend Lord Lexden. Some noble Lords will know that I am a great supporter of the independent sector, but the word “independent” is important in that regard.
I thank the noble Earl for giving us the chance to have this debate and ask him to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am very encouraged by what my noble friend said in response to the amendments. Perhaps I may pick him up on a couple of points. He said some good things about the integration of the independent and state school sectors. Will he confirm that there is no longer any consideration of the idea of excluding teachers in independent schools from the main state teachers’ pension fund, which would make migration between the two sectors extremely difficult?
Secondly, there has been a history of initiatives, of which teaching schools is the latest, intended to develop and spread good practice. In my view such initiatives have always foundered on the lack of information flow between good schools and schools that need good advice. I will not detain the Committee with ideas on how that might be improved, but when the Minister is no longer under so much pressure, perhaps I might try to persuade him that the Government have a role in helping to set up structures to enable information to flow better than it does.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I support my noble friend’s first amendment. Making sure that British education around the world is of high quality does Britain a great deal of good one way or another. There are many countries where our education system comes under far less criticism than it does here and where our qualifications are very highly regarded. All the work that we put in here to make sure that they are even better is important. Now that the system of inspection here, with which we are happy, reaches out to some of those schools, we should acknowledge that by extending to those schools the abilities in terms of raising young teachers that we would accord to them if they were in the UK. They are schools following the British system, using British qualifications and mostly British teachers. I see no reason why we should cut them out of that.
I disagree with my noble friend on his second amendment from two points of view. First, if only 15 or 16 people are failing, why are there so few? What kind of rigorous examination has so few people failing? It really cannot be a mark of quality that so few people fail their induction year. I cannot believe that, as set up now, the processes that allow someone to begin an induction year are so perfect that only that small proportion should fail.
Secondly, I want to argue against the premise that people who fail should not be allowed to retry. I know one of those 15 people and I have had a long conversation with him as to why he failed. In my view, the basic reason is that he wanted to make maths fun and would not put up with the Gradgrind methods that he was told to use. It was silly of him to argue. He should have just knuckled down and gone through it for a year. Then he would have been free to teach and to explore his own way. But he did not because he is a headstrong young man and full of what strikes me to be very good ideas as to how to enliven a subject that I have always enjoyed but many people have not. Where such people have come up against what in my mind is the wrong verdict or have tackled things in the wrong way, they should be given another chance. I look at this in both ways: a lot more people should be failing and they should be given a second chance.
Baroness Garden of Frognal
I thank my noble friend Lord Lexden for giving us this opportunity to talk about induction, which is an important part of ensuring we have good teachers in our schools. Induction is like a probationary period. It provides a statutory national framework for supporting new teachers to make the transition from initial teacher training to their career in teaching. It ensures that NQTs receive support, training and development. At the end of this time, new teachers have to pass an assessment and can then become full members of the teaching profession. Before I come on to the amendments in detail, let me set out briefly some of what the Government are doing to get excellent teachers into the profession, because induction is at the end of the process and needs to be viewed in that context.
Our initial teacher training strategy, which we recently launched, includes the following measures: we will attract the best graduates by offering one-off training bursaries of up to £20,000; we will double the size of Teach First, a scheme that has been highly successful in attracting graduates from some of our best universities into teaching; we will raise the bar for entry to teaching by funding training only for those with at least a second class degree, and by introducing literacy and numeracy entry tests; we will focus teacher training better on the skills that teachers need most, including managing behaviour and teaching early reading, items which we have already touched on in this Committee; and, we will give more schools a strong role in the recruitment and training of the trainees that they will go on to employ.
Alongside these reforms, we have been reviewing teacher standards, including those that trainee teachers must meet. We expect shortly to produce new, clear standards that raise the bar for newly qualified teachers who enter induction, so the Government are doing much—
Baroness Garden of Frognal
My Lords, the schools will need to be judged outstanding by Ofsted, so there will be levels of academic attainment within that. However, we are in no way underrating the value of schools such as the one to which the noble Earl has referred. They may well be able, say, to work in partnership with a school that was rated outstanding, bringing the special skills they have developed in those very challenging schools to bear on the induction period.
Finally, let me turn to the issue of induction at British schools overseas, which was my noble friend’s other amendment. The British education sector overseas is growing rapidly. It appeals both to English-speaking expatriates and to local parents in many parts of the world, who want their children to have an education instilling British values and ethos. For those reasons, I agree with the noble Lord that British schools abroad should be able to offer induction.
In response to the question from the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, there will be no impact at all on current arrangements between England and Wales and between England and Scotland—those will not change.
The good news is that primary legislation does in fact already allow this. These schools are legally independent schools, and independent schools are able to offer induction to their NQTs if they choose to do so, providing the teacher has QTS and the school can provide a suitable post. However, there is currently a legal barrier to this happening, in secondary legislation. Following our review of induction arrangements, I have therefore asked officials to ensure that proposed amendments to the induction regulations will include changes that allow certain British schools abroad—those that have been inspected under the British schools overseas arrangements and accredited by COBIS or other reputable British schools overseas organisations—to offer statutory induction to their NQTs.
I hope that my remarks have provided some reassurance to my noble friend Lord Lexden, and that he will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, since the noble Baroness is in writing mood, will she enlarge slightly on the questions that I asked in regard to the second amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden? If we are focusing hard on trying to get high-quality teachers, we need to be careful to ensure that we have not built into the system disincentives to getting rid of teachers who are not up to the grade. It was always the problem with hanging someone for stealing a sheep that juries would never convict. It seems to me that we have a similar situation here, as the penalty for failing an induction year is so harsh—the person may never teach in a maintained school again. Most people strain to get these individuals through their induction year and to pass them just because the penalty is so harsh rather than because they have done well enough to be passed into the teaching profession with all flags flying. Therefore, I would like to understand the logic behind the Government’s decision to keep it as “once only” rather than allowing a second chance.
Lord Elton
Another class of people who deserve a second chance is those who fall over their shoelaces in the first term and lose the respect of children. They are never going to get that back in that school and will never get a fair trial. They need to go to another school and start again, where you may get a very good teacher out of the experience.
Lord Sutherland of Houndwood
My Lords, before the Minister sits down, would he accept that there is a difference between a system in which, by and large, those who make the assessment—that is, the referees—are either coaches or mentors or colleagues and a system in which the independent referee is not also a coach? The difficulty in that relationship is, I think, the point of the amendment.
Lord Lucas
Yes, it would be rather like driving tests being administered by the driving instructor.
The Earl of Listowel
Can I trouble the Minister just a little further? I was grateful for his response about ensuring that there is a high-quality mentor for trainees. If he had a little bit of time to drop me a note on how the mentors will be selected—both for the teachers in initial teacher training and for those in the qualified teacher year—I would be grateful to him for that.
Baroness Howe of Idlicote
My Lords, the more I listen, the more I am sad that we did not have the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, because that would have put things into a much clearer perspective. I have the gravest doubt the more I listen, frankly, and I agree more and more with my noble friend Lady Howarth.
Lord Lucas
I always find it very hard to agree with the Telegraph, so I have been having a terribly tough time over the last 15 minutes or so. Although I would say to the Telegraph and others, as they said of us, that they have brought it on themselves and that I have every sympathy for wanting to look after teachers, we have to produce legislation that is practical and that works. I cannot see how what we have in front of us works with Twitter, Facebook and the inevitable communication that there will be between parents and, particularly, pupils. You really cannot have a teacher hoicked out of school with these sort of allegations and not have it flying around on the net. The wording in front of us seems to seek to tackle this by criminalising the children and the parents who will be doing this. That is most unwise. The damage really only occurs when some newspaper picks up a story and eviscerates a teacher to entertain its readers. That is the evil; I do not believe that we should be trying to curb more than that.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I can remember an occasion that illustrates my noble friend’s last amendment. Some boys went to a headmaster and asked if they could have a videotape to use for a project they were doing. He picked one off a shelf and gave it to them, and it was the evidence. People do put these things in the public domain by mistake. I particularly welcome my noble friend’s Amendment 73HJ. There has to be the right for pupils and parents directly affected by this to discuss things. It is the obvious way in which things will come forward. Anyway, it is going to happen. You cannot criminalise that sort of conversation within a school community about something that is happening within the school, so it has to be possible. It will be done on Twitter and on Facebook. These things will not spread. No teacher is Ryan Giggs. There is no national interest in the person’s name. They will remain in a little corner of the social media, of interest to pupils in the school and to the parents of the children, and that is where it will remain. No great harm will be done because, frankly, the school community knows already. I do not see any objection in the wider media carrying just a basic statement that so-and-so has been accused and has taken leave of absence from the school as a result. That is scarcely something that in that form is going to hit the national media, but it at least means that the basic facts that that has happened are, as they should be, a matter of public property.
Surely the evil we are trying to prevent is a newspaper aggressively trying to dig up information about a particular individual in order to make a story, which you might call a human interest story, for people who have never heard of this person and have no interest in him otherwise. It is just a composed story that might be about anybody, but it is immensely harmful to the teacher concerned. That is the sort of thing that we are trying to prevent. The fact that an allegation is made is there and is fact. It should surely not be hidden. We are not in super-injunction territory. I find my noble friend’s amendments very persuasive.
Lord Black of Brentwood
My Lords, I support the amendments tabled by my noble friend Lord Phillips and will speak also to Amendment 73M. Just for the sake of the record, I draw attention to the interests I declared earlier. I was very struck by what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said earlier. She said that this clause as currently drafted is unworkable and that unworkable legislation simply brings the law into disrepute. My noble friend has just said that we are not in super-injunction territory, but I fear that, because of the impact of digital media, which I shall talk about in a moment or two, we will be in super-injunction territory at a sort of local level that will cast this legislation into that disrepute.
If we are to have legislation, at least let it be workable. I believe that the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, try to do that by importing into new Sections 141F and 141G the concept of the public domain and the public interest. The exclusion of any mention of the public interest in Clause 13, as it stands, is quite remarkable. I cannot think of any other legislation dealing with incursions into the freedom of the press and freedom of expression which do not have a public interest defence. That must be put right.
In my view, these amendments are crucial because the real problem with this clause—the unworkability factor—is that it takes no account of how allegations are spread and the damage that they can do to schools and to innocent teachers in the absence of responsible press reporting. As I said at Second Reading, my concern is that this legislation will simply drive innuendo and rumour underground and new Section 141F(12) will encourage that. Its definition of “publication” is designed to catch the media, which is not at the root of any mischief here, by tying it to material addressed to the public at large. That is the wrong target. The Minister in another place, Nick Gibb, made it clear that this legislation is not intended to capture private conversations, which include e-mail exchanges, texts, Facebook postings, Twitter and all sorts of other mechanisms. That is precisely where allegations and innuendo, which it seems to me that the Government want to be at the root of this legislation, will build up, now that Clause 13 makes it impossible for them to be dealt with in a responsible way in the press, which is constrained by the laws of libel and contempt. In a short space of time, the weight of individual private exchanges may mean that in a small school everyone knows when a teacher has been accused of something, but only the local newspaper will be unable to report it.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, perhaps I may pick up on what my noble friend said about private conversations not being included. I entirely understand that, but I do not understand where the Government think the border is in modern social media between private and public. Does he agree that Twitter is at all times public but that Facebook is a pretty difficult area? Kids these days communicate over Facebook in the way that we use e-mail. Communication between children talking about a particular allegation and saying, “Has this happened to you?” or “Have you seen anything like that?” will take place in an environment that might be considered public even though the kids will see it in the same way that we see e-mail. Will the noble Lord say which bits of the social media are public and which are private for the purposes of the Bill?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I will have a go, and if I need to follow up subsequently, I will. We have made it clear that an offence is committed not only when somebody publishes an article or broadcasts a programme in the traditional media, but when somebody posts an allegation on the internet, even anonymously. I recognise, as the noble Lord pointed out, some of the practical challenges posed by investigating the source of allegations on the internet, with which we are all familiar: but that is the intent. It will not affect private conversations, including via e-mail or text. However, where such communications constitute a publication—this is the definition in the clause, which I am sure we can have some fun with—by being addressed to the public at large, or to any section of the public, we propose that reporting restrictions will apply.
Education Bill
Lord Lucas Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Stowell of Beeston
It is right that we reach decisions based on responsibility and that the head teacher and the governing body should be able to decide what is right for their school. If they are clear, for very clear reasons that they believe in, about what they feel is the right future for that child, they should be able to decide that and put in place the necessary new arrangements for that child.
I concur with the remarks that the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, made about piloting the new arrangements. Schools being responsible for the education of children whom they have decided they can no longer take care of in their own school is an important new provision, and one that I would certainly support.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Morris, I, too, am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. As has been said several times today, the committee reviewed this part of the Bill carefully and reported on it in detail. It is worth me highlighting the fact that the committee divided on this matter. At that time, I abstained—I did not vote with the committee, because at the time I was not persuaded by the legal arguments one way or the other. After the committee, I looked again at the Bill when preparing for Second Reading, and the conclusion that I came to was that the reason why I had not been persuaded by the legal arguments either way was because this is an issue of principle. It is right that people in charge of schools—head teachers and governing bodies—should be able to make decisions for themselves. Obviously, there needs to be a review process, which this proposal provides for, but I want to see us having a system that is based on responsibility rather than people simply being able to exercise rights. For that reason, I do not support the amendments and I support the Bill as it is drafted.
Lord Lucas
My Lords, I am hopeful that my noble friend will answer the question that I asked him at Second Reading on the statistics behind this. I think that he quoted a figure of 600 pupils a year being reinstated. For the average secondary school, that is one every 10 years. What proportion of them are children who, it is accepted by everybody, have actually committed the sort of crimes that must mean their exclusion from school, such as serious bullying or drugs or bringing knives in? I am aware that a case was mentioned in the Sun a few years ago, but are there more than that? Why are we unbalancing the scales of justice to deal with such a tiny and infrequent problem?
My noble friend has already outlined the right approach, which is to make schools responsible for the future of the kids they choose to exclude, because most exclusions are due to problems with the school, not the kids. The example that I would choose is St George’s in Maida Vale. When I first got interested in schooling it was unbelievably awful, with children running around corridors and abusing and hitting teachers. There was a total paucity of education going on. It was the school, as noble Lords will remember, where the headmaster was murdered at the gates. Last year, it received grade 1 from Ofsted, with the same intake and no exclusions. Nothing has changed with the kids, but everything has changed with the school. That is what we should bear in mind when we think of exclusion as a punishment following something done by the kid, rather than as something caused by other people that is being demonstrated in what the kid is doing.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I remember sitting in a school classroom in a secondary school that is five minutes’ walk from your Lordships' House and seeing one boy disrupt the whole class and the poor teacher clearly at the end of her tether at the end of the period. The boy moved to a different seat as soon as she turned her back, and it was a great joke, but it clearly caused her a lot of anxiety.
This is a very complex question, as this debate has shown. Further to what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, in my experience many looked-after children have families who are not working well before they are taken into care. However, after that, the key stepping stone into care is their exclusion from school, which puts all the additional pressure on the family that the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, referred to. Excluding a child is a very grave step to take without the right means to ensure that the child goes somewhere appropriate, where they will get the support that they need.