Birmingham Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Bew

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right that everybody needs to take their fair share of the blame in this. Nobody comes out of this particularly well. One could say, “How did the local authority miss these issues for years?”. It was only when Ofsted did a batch inspection of 21 schools and saw a common pattern of behaviour which had accelerated dramatically in terms of threatening behaviour in recent years that it became absolutely clear what was happening. As I said in relation to the actions we have taken with Park View Educational Trust, we dealt with these matters extremely speedily. We have now substantially tightened our procedures in relation to schools becoming academies and we will, as a result of events in Birmingham, look further at that.

[Lord Bew (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister acknowledge that we owe a great debt to Peter Clarke for this report and that its modulated contents disprove many of the concerns in the media at the time of his appointment? It is a modulated, precise report. As to its content, after the Minister’s Statement, I am much clearer about the Government’s thinking on the governance of these schools. However, the report also criticises the conduct of a number of teachers. I am not sure how the discussion is going to develop on the point of the teachers—as opposed to governors—whose conduct is discussed in the Clarke report.

Birmingham Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Bew

Monday 9th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, the great lesson of Northern Ireland is to combat not just violent acts but also extreme ideologies, communal ideologies and religious ideologies of bigotry. Can the Minister assure us, in the light of the statements of both the Home Secretary and the Education Secretary in the other place this afternoon, that the Government are still united on the basis that it is necessary to combat the ideologies of extremism as well as violent acts?

[Lord Nash]

I can absolutely give the noble Lord that assurance.

Education: Reform of GCSEs

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Bew

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I thank the noble Baroness for her comments. It is true that we now have the best generation of teachers that we have ever had. However, clearly we need to do more to improve teacher training, which in this country is very patchy. We need both to improve our TT colleges’ standards generally and have more training in schools.

I am aware of the issue of summer-born children and have seen the statistics, which are stark. I would be delighted to discuss the matter further to make sure that this is properly taken into account. The same goes for the agricultural and horticultural industries.

We believe that the turnaround time is long enough, but we will make sure that all head teachers are aware of the issue of the crossover turnaround time.

[Lord Bew]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for his earlier reply, in which he said that there will be discussions with the devolved Assemblies on the implications of these important reforms. May I ask him about the underlying spirit of these discussions? The Minister for Education in the Northern Ireland Executive—ironically, in this context, a Sinn Fein Minister—has said that he wants to see uniformity of standards maintained throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. Will the Minister reassure the House that this will also be the approach of the Government of the United Kingdom? These will be difficult discussions, but I hope the Minister can shed some light on the principles with which the Government will approach them.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a good point. The principles will be based on a strong attempt to achieve a uniformity of standards, consistent with our belief that this system of standards must be a rigorous one.