Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee stage
Wednesday 8th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash (Con)]

Then I will defer to the noble Lord, Lord Knight.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Only if the noble Lord has finished; I do not mean to interrupt.

This is a really important debate on a very important set of amendments. They are essentially about two issues: parental involvement in the running of schools at a local level and whether every academy should have a local governing body. I see the two as being slightly different issues.

I support Amendment 23, and I probably support Amendments 24 and 26 as well. In thinking about this, I thought it might be worth telling the story of two multi-academy trusts. I know about one only through an article in Schools Week, so I therefore do not claim to really know anything about it at all and can only repeat what I have read. The other is the academy trust that I chair.

The Anglian Learning academy trust won the National Governance Association award for outstanding governance this year. I understand that it has 14 schools and its CEO, Jon Culpin, talks about empowering local governing bodies, not fearing them. His approach is that every academy in the trust has a local governing body, and it works very well. My understanding from reading about it is that the MAT board very much looks after the core operational side of the business—the finances and the schools’ capital—to take that burden away from the school business managers and heads. The heads then lead the teaching and learning on a school-by-school basis in conjunction with their local governing body. That works very successfully for them, by and large.

In one or two cases, they have had to essentially impose interim executive bodies as a MAT board because they have not been able to appoint local governing bodies, they have struggled to recruit, or there has been a problem. By and large, that has worked very well for them, and that sense of being really clear about where the MAT board adds value, and where a local governing body adds value, is important when thinking about this relationship and this issue around local governing bodies. Of course, parents would have been represented on every one of those 14 local governing bodies.

Long before I was involved in E-ACT, the previous CEO but one inherited the situation where a significant majority of our 28 schools were failing and were in low Ofsted categories—I think that maybe 25% were not. It was in a pretty poor state, academically as well as financially. I am sure that it was bleeping very largely on the radar of the noble Lord, Lord Nash, when he was the Academies Minister at the time. At that point, it had local governing bodies in each of the schools. However, the decision was made by the then CEO to remove all those local governing bodies because he had to make a lot of difficult decisions very quickly to turn around the finances of the organisation and the educational performance of the schools. As a result, we currently have no local governing bodies and I am effectively—in legal terms—the chair of governors of 28 schools. That is quite a considerable pro bono burden on my time, as counsel any Members of your Lordships’ House who are thinking of doing this. I get all sorts of letters from Ofsted and the department on all sorts of things about which, frankly, it is very difficult for me to know exactly what is going on, because they are about individual schools. I do not think that this situation is ideal either.

We have local ambassador groups in each of the 28 schools. The latest version of the academies handbook is encouraging us further around parental involvement and hearing from every one of those local ambassador groups if we do not have parental trustees on the trust board. I perceive quite an encouragement from the department for us to do that. In the next round of recruiting trustees, I am very keen that we should recruit parental trustees. This is why, in the end, I support Amendment 23 and have put my name to it. This is probably an issue for the articles of association—the department can then advise us on how they should be updated—rather than standards in the Bill. Nevertheless, that is a technicality, and it has allowed us to have this debate.

One of the other problems that exists when you have a large, geographically dispersed MAT, like this one, is that the trust board cannot possibly know all the details about what is happening in all 28 of those schools and communities. Therefore, it must delegate quite a lot of governance function to the executive leadership team, and there is a danger that they are then marking their own homework on some of the decisions they are making. That is another difficulty and tension within the system as it is currently constructed.

One of the things we are doing in my particular MAT is commissioning an independent external review of governance to see how we can resolve some of these tensions. I hope that we can do this. I do not want to anticipate how that will end up, but I want to ensure that we end up with better local intelligence at a board level about what is going on, so that we are cognisant of the culture and the views of parents. When I last visited our two academies in Sheffield, I had a great meeting with our ambassador groups; they are all parents, and I had great feedback and input from them around what was going on in those two schools. In the end, however, I do not think it is quite enough.

Does that mean that I think that we should impose local governing bodies on every single school, even though I agree that it is perfectly reasonable to have two trustees who are parents on the main trust board? If they were local governing bodies, they would have to have two parental trustees on each one, so to aggregate that up to two out of 28 does not seem unreasonable. However, I do not, in the end, agree that we should impose local governing bodies in every case. There are circumstances, such as the one that happened at E-ACT some time ago, where we might want to be able to impose things while we turn things around and sort problems out, and then, hopefully, have the maturity and the reflection to decide, “Okay, we now have everything running well”—as, by and large, we do at E-ACT—“and now might be the time for us to re-empower schools and re-empower governance at a local level.” However, I am not sure that a blanket approach is appropriate. It is appropriate for the MAT board and the central MAT team, particularly around the educational activity in schools, to have more of an attitude that they are servants of the schools and not the masters of the schools—culturally, that is better—but there are other operational aspects where we want to be the masters, because in the end we can move resources around and sort things out. It is going to be different on a case-by-case basis.

So, in the end, my counsel to your Lordships is not to go with the imposition of every academy having to have a local governing body, but to ensure that we have better parental representation across the piece than we might have at the moment.

Schools Update: National Funding Formula

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Thursday 14th September 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Well, it is true that we are the first Government who have actually done this. It is not easy and I pay tribute to the officials in the Department for Education. They tell me that they have been working on this for at least 10 years, as I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Knight, knows, and are personally delighted that it has happened.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government and particularly the officials on bringing this forward. I certainly remember commissioning a review of the funding formula back when I announced one, about 10 years ago. Unfortunately it felt as if politics, with things such as general elections and changes in government, got in the way of implementing the outcome of that review. These things happen. I am particularly pleased to see sparsity issues recognised in this announcement.

My question relates to a welcome guarantee, if I heard the Minister correctly, of a real-terms, per-head increase of at least 0.5% next year and 1% the year after. That is important. However, I am also mindful of this week’s report from the National Audit Office regarding the recruitment and retention of teachers—and I remind the House of my interest in respect of my work at TES. At paragraph 2.2, the report states:

“To meet the increasing need for teachers, particularly in secondary schools, the Department for Education … and schools will need to improve teacher recruitment and retention. We reported in February 2016 that the Department has not met its overall target for filling teacher training places in each of the past four years. It has since missed the target for a fifth year”.


As the department reflects on that, particularly given that this week we have seen the pay cap go for the police, is it possible that it might reflect that the pay cap for teachers needs to be lifted? If so, will the department then ensure that the Treasury funds that rather than it coming out of the money announced in this funding formula? I would hate to campaign to raise the pay cap for teachers but then see the ensuing problems as schools scramble to try to fund 0.5% from what, certainly in some of the urban areas, will be quite a limited extra amount of money.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes some very good points about teacher recruitment and retention. Of course we have a strong economy with very high levels of employment and very low levels of unemployment which impacts on the ability to recruit teachers. We are doing a huge amount of work on improving our recruitment approach, which is a much more regionally focused approach to look at where we particularly need to recruit teachers. There is no doubt that the work of a number of our multi-academy trusts in career development, CPD and teacher retention will help teacher retention.

The independent School Teachers’ Review Body has recommended teacher pay increases. We have listened carefully to what it recommended and accepted the recommendations. We continue to work closely with schools to help them manage their finances.

Schools: Recruitment and Retention

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Tuesday 18th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

As we have discussed before, there is no doubt that initially pupils who either do not speak English or have poor English do make life difficult for teachers, but the evidence is clear that those pupils, once they can speak the language—which many of them do relatively quickly—can be, to put it bluntly, much more aspirational. As we now all know, although we spend a lot of time compiling statistics on what we call English as additional language pupils, it is in fact white working-class pupils who are falling behind dramatically in our schools. That is why we are making such a substantial investment in coastal towns, former mining villages and other such communities to improve education.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I refer the House to my interests relating to teacher recruitment through my work at TES Global. The Minister says that he is not complacent. When I look at the statistics for teacher retention and take out retirement because the number of those retiring has been reducing, I can see that the number leaving the service prematurely has been increasingly significantly every year since 2012. The figure rose from 28,630 in that year to 39,980 in 2016. To repeat the question: is this because of workload pressure or because of pay?

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Lord is very experienced in this area, but he has picked one particular statistic. The fact is that returners to education employment have increased by 8% since 2011 and, as noble Lords will know, this year our recruitment programme has run substantially ahead of last year. We have again recruited 100% of primary teachers and 89%, as opposed to 82%, of secondary teachers.

Schools Update

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, further to the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Kramer, I too was drawn to the announcement of the further 140 free schools, which said that 30 would go through the local authority route. I am interested to know exactly how that works, given that this is the Minister’s responsibility, and how much more efficient that is than going through the department. Will he answer her question as to whether the local authorities concerned will get any money to pursue that route?

[Lord Nash]

Yes. As I said, we have been working very collaboratively with local authorities to plan much more accurately with them precisely where they want free schools. Local authorities obviously often produce free school sites on a peppercorn for no money. It is also clear to us that some local authorities have perhaps not been spending their basic need money, as they should have been, but relying on the central programme. I believe that this can be done efficiently. The local authorities that we work with certainly seem keen to provide many more of these schools. We go through a process whereby they decide where they want the schools to be and, effectively, an open process is then gone through whereby school providers can approach them and be approved, initially by the local authority and then by the department.

Fire Safety: Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, all new schools must comply with fire safety guidance before they are allowed to open and only in those assessed as low risk are sprinklers not expected to be installed. The number of fires in schools has halved in the past 10 years. The department is not aware of the claims that the noble Baroness makes. Our recent consultation involved discussions with experts from across the fire sector, including the Chief Fire Officers Association and the London Fire Brigade. We would welcome any intelligence that they or she have to offer in relation to this.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that the school immediately adjacent to Grenfell Tower is the Kensington Aldridge Academy. It has sprinklers installed, thanks to the regulations that I pushed through when I was a Minister, with the presumption that all new schools should have fire sprinklers fitted. Has the Minister seen the figures from the London Fire Brigade that show that, in the nine years since those regulations came in, there have been 717 fires in schools in London and in only 15 of those schools were sprinklers installed? I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said. Now is the time to go further than the regulations I agreed, to listen to the London Fire Brigade and to make sprinklers mandatory in all refurbishments as well as all new schools.

[Lord Nash]

I am fully aware of the situation in Kensington Aldridge Academy, which is right next door to Grenfell Tower, and that a number of its pupils have died. Of course we will look at this further. We have not changed the regulations. The regulations that the noble Lord introduced are still extant. Although we thought they were absolutely on the right lines, we thought that in some ways they were a little long and potentially confusing. We have been discussing some changes, but we have no intention of changing those regulations and we would welcome discussions with anybody about any further changes and improvements they think are necessary.

Schools: Gardening

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 24th April 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord’s comment about the therapeutic effect—both the British Medical Council and Natural England commented on this—particularly for children with disadvantages of some kind. I have seen this for myself in alternative provision schools and special schools. I will certainly pass on his comments about allotments.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Given the educational value of these gardens, now that the Minister has had a windfall of time landing in his diary over the next few weeks, will he find time to dig through the weeds of the school funding formula to see whether head teachers will have enough resources for school gardens? Then perhaps the seeds of doubt will sprout about whether the line he is about to give us about the school funding formula is wearing a little thin.

[Lord Nash]

I am most impressed with the noble Lord’s ability to weave into this Question something which might appear to be so off-piste, but he will know, from his experience of having done my job, that when all the MPs disappear to try to get re-elected it is the Lords Minister who does all the work. However, I will attempt to come back to him with a more fulsome answer to his question.

Technical and Further Education Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 27th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly in support of this amendment. I want to remind your Lordships and the Minister that FE colleges come in a number of different guises and there are some specialist FE colleges for which this is particularly important. I am particularly a fan of the Ada Lovelace College—the newest college, I think, to be given FE status by the department—which is the National College for Digital Skills, based in Haringey. We have an acute shortage of digital skills throughout this country, including here in London, and there is a massive demand for them. If we can allow more international students to come and take advantage of studying at that college, we would do our economy and some of those young people an enormous service. I urge the Minister to listen carefully, as is his wont, and to be sympathetic to this amendment.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the Committee will be aware that this issue is already being considered as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill. As a Government, we will want to consider our position across the board, and I can assure noble Lords that we are doing this. This topic is best discussed in the context of the Higher Education and Research Bill, where there will be ample opportunity to consider the issue during the forthcoming Report stage. However, I will briefly address the more specific points of the amendment.

While there are some further education colleges that have centres of expertise or offer higher level study that attract a significant number of international students, such as the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, as a whole the number of international students in FE is much smaller than for the higher education sector. Courses are on average shorter, and delivery is more locally focused and reflects local economic priorities. Where colleges take significant numbers of international students, the issues will parallel those that have been considered through proposed amendments to the Higher Education and Research Bill.

I do not propose to repeat the arguments that my noble friend Lord Younger of Leckie made during that debate. I do wish to emphasise that we have and will continue to set no limit on the number of genuine international students who can come here. The controls in place are there to prevent abuse of the system and ensure that the reputation of the UK educational sector continues to be internationally renowned. The immigration statistics are controlled independently by the Office for National Statistics. It is not up to the Government to create the statistical definitions. Our responsibility is to set the policy, which in this case places no limit on numbers of students.

As I have said, there will be an opportunity to debate these issues further as part of the Higher Education and Research Bill, which is the more appropriate forum. In those circumstances, I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

Education: Newly Qualified Teachers

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Monday 30th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my interests relating to my work at TES. Last Monday, the head of education for the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, was in London, at a meeting of more than 80 Education Ministers. He reminded them that this country is the world capital of rote learning—as opposed to the leading jurisdictions, such as Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong, which have far less rote learning because they focus on deeper thinking through mastery. Is not the retention problem in this country that bored teachers are having to fill bored pupils with too much shallow-level content and not enough deep thinking?

[Lord Nash]

I do not agree with the noble Lord, although I have lot of respect for his experience in this area. One thing we have done is improve the knowledge in the curriculum because cognitive science is absolutely clear that to develop skills such as critical thinking, you need knowledge to apply. We are also clear that some of our best groups are now developing much better teaching resources for teachers so that they do not have to spend time devising lesson plans and can spend much more time developing the kind of techniques that the noble Lord refers to.

Grammar Schools

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Wednesday 14th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord raises an extremely good question. We are surrounded in Pimlico by a lot of schools that, in one way or the other, partly because they are independent, are selective. But through our reforms, we are determined to see the selective sector—all selective schools, including existing ones—engage much more widely with the system, focusing particularly on lower-income households, so that we can help drive a school system that works for everyone.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

Parents in this country are spending an estimated £4 billion to £7 billion a year on private tuition for their children. I declare my interest in respect of my employment at TES. What is the Minister’s estimate of how much that private tuition bill will go up for those anxious parents and of how many teachers will be displaced from the classroom in order to pursue that lucrative business opportunity?

[Lord Nash]

I am fully aware that tutoring is a thriving business, and I know that many of these tutoring firms provide tutors pro bono to comprehensive schools—in fact, we have such a programme in my own schools. We are working with the Grammar School Heads Association to devise tests which are much more difficult to tutor for. As for the last question, I am not going to predict the answer to that.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Thursday 5th November 2015 Grand Committee

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

How will the progress measure account for churn in schools that have a big churn in population because of migration or Gypsy Travellers or because they are in a mobile community?

[Lord Nash]

I think—although I will write to the noble Lord—that it will not be calculated; they will not be in the stats, because they will not be there at the beginning.

The Bill provides that the Secretary of State will notify a school when it is coasting, and this makes the school eligible for intervention. As set out in the draft Schools Causing Concern guidance, which is currently out for consultation, regional schools commissioners will then consider whether the school has the capacity to secure sufficient improvement without formal intervention. In some cases, a school which falls within the coasting definition may have a new head teacher, governors or leadership team who can demonstrate that they have an effective plan to raise standards sufficiently. In other cases, they may be able to buddy up on a short-term basis with a nearby school and, in others, external support may be necessary from an NLE.

Where appropriate, regional schools commissioners will use their formal powers to ensure a coasting school receives the support and challenge that it needs, which may include becoming an academy. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, it is by no means certain that coasting means becoming an academy; there may be many different ways in which schools can improve. As he knows from his excellent work on the London Challenge, that could be school-to-school support. We see one of the advantages of academisation as the clear structure of school-to-school support that it can bring, but that may necessarily be on a temporary basis for a coasting school.

Amendments 1 and 2, tabled by the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, and the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and Amendment 5 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, propose alternative approaches to identifying and addressing schools in which pupils do not fulfil their potential. Amendment 2 gives Ofsted and the local authority responsibility for determining which schools are coasting. Amendment 5 seeks to broaden the definition to include achievement in sports and the arts and access to training, further education and the world of work. My concern with such approaches is that they remove certainty and transparency for schools; it would be unclear for any school whether it would be identified as coasting and, as such, could become eligible for intervention.

Being a teacher or a head teacher is a tough job. It is also in my view one of the most important jobs, if not the most important job, in our country at this time, given how highly geared these roles are to the future success of our country. We want to make the environment in which our teachers and head teachers operate easier, not more difficult, and more certain, not more uncertain. Our schools are inspected by Ofsted; that is right, and there is no doubt that our schools take great notice of this. But there is already enough uncertainty in the minds of our teachers and head teachers as to how their school will be rated by Ofsted without adding to that uncertainty and, yes, anxiety, by adding a vague coasting definition by which they are measured. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, for her observations on this issue.

We have chosen to base our proposed coasting definition on published performance data precisely so that schools can easily understand whether their performance will equate to them being identified as coasting. Under our proposed approach, many schools can already be reassured that their 2014 and 2015 performance means that they will not be deemed to be coasting when—looking at three years of data, as we propose—we identify coasting schools for the first time in 2016. Such a certain, data-driven approach has been welcomed by many school leaders and organisations representing them. For example, the chief executive of Outward Grange Academies Trust has said that he welcomes the definition,

“in particular the fact that it is based on performance data not Ofsted and the fact that it is measurable every year and compares performance at similar schools over time”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

It applies only to 2014 and 2015—and if it is not clear, we will make it clear in the future.

Amendment 5 requires draft regulations to be laid before and approved by each House before they can be made or updated. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, will allow me to discuss this important element of the amendment when we reach Amendment 8, which proposes exactly the same approach.

Amendments 2 and 9 propose that academies, alongside maintained schools, would become eligible for intervention, and, in the case of Amendment 2, subject to the statutory intervention powers in the Education and Inspections Act 2006, when notified by Ofsted that they are schools where pupils do not fulfil their potential.

I agree that coasting schools must be tackled—whether it is a maintained school or an academy. But academies are not governed by the statutory framework that this Bill seeks to amend. They are run by charitable companies—academy trusts—which operate in accordance with the terms of individual funding agreements between the academy trust and the Secretary of State. We have already published a new coasting clause for the model funding agreement, as I have said. But I want to reassure the House again that, even where academies do not have this specific clause in their existing funding agreement, regional schools commissioners will assess all academies against the coasting definition. Where academies are identified as coasting, RSCs will assess their capacity to improve sufficiently in just the same way as maintained schools, supporting and challenging them to improve and taking action under their funding agreements where necessary.

RSCs have already shown that they take effective action when academies underperform. Since 1 September 2014, when RSCs came into post, they have issued 58 prewarning and warning notices to academy and free school trusts. In the same period, they have moved 83 academies and free schools to new trusts or sponsors, compared to 13 in the previous academic year.

Amendment 2 would remove the Secretary of State’s power to issue an academy order for a school that has been notified that it is a school in which pupils do not fulfil their potential. While some coasting schools may choose to become academies in order to benefit from the strong governance and support of a multi-academy trust, we have been clear, as I said, that enforced academisation will not be the default solution for all coasting schools. RSCs will want to consider whether a coasting school has demonstrated that it has the capacity to improve sufficiently on its own, and in some cases this capacity will be evident, or it may need advice and support, for example from an NLE, and that may be sufficient to bring about the required improvements.

It is important that RSCs have the discretion to make an academy order where it is clear that a school’s leadership does not have the capacity to improve sufficiently and where the school needs the support of an experienced sponsor in order to fulfil the potential of the pupils. We know that sponsors can bring new life to schools. For example, the City Academy Whitehawk in Brighton and Hove opened in September 2013. The year prior to its becoming an academy, only 39% of pupils achieved level 4 or above in reading, writing and maths at the end of key stage 2. By 2015, the provisional figure has increased to 75%. It would not be right to deny coasting schools this support where it is appropriate.

Amendment 7 would provide the governing body of a maintained school with a right of appeal to the First-tier Tribunal when it considers that the data used to define a school as coasting could have been interpreted in a different way. This amendment is unnecessary. Our clear and transparent data-based definition will not be open to interpretation. Schools will be certain, based on the data, whether they have fallen below the coasting bar or not, but regional schools commissioners are already required by virtue of public law to act reasonably in exercising the Secretary of State’s powers. As I said, they will work with schools to consider all the relevant factors when deciding what action to take.

The draft Schools Causing Concern guidance already includes a number of examples of the type of factors they should consider. As I said, we have been clear that intervention in coasting schools will not be automatic. Nick Capstick, the CEO of the White Horse Federation outlined this clearly when he said:

“It is right that the coasting definition is based on transparent performance measures. It is then clear-cut for schools whether they fall within the coasting definition or not. The majority of schools will therefore be able to carry on free from fear that they suddenly and unexpectedly be judged as coasting”.

I know that noble Lords support our ambition to ensure that all pupils, whatever their background, receive an education that enables them to fulfil their potential. I hope that, following this debate and having seen the detail behind our coasting policy—alongside the proposed coasting definition set out in our recent consultation—noble Lords will be reassured that our approach is the right one.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

Will the department record the interventions made as they are made on coasting schools against the different categories the noble Lord described earlier, so that there is a dataset that we can then interrogate to understand in practice as it rolls out how that balance plays out?

[Lord Nash]

When we formally intervene, we already publish that information, so it will be in the public domain. In view of what I have said, I hope that noble Lords are reassured that our approach is the right one, and I therefore urge the noble Lord to withdraw the amendment.

Education: PISA Results

Debate between Lord Nash and Lord Knight of Weymouth

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord. I think that the answer to his questions in brief, although I will elaborate, is that this situation has been caused by a lack of rigour in the curriculum and in teaching methodology. I agree entirely that this lack of rigour and methodology, which is expressed in one way in textbooks, is one of the reasons why we have declined. One also needs to look at workbooks. In far too many state-maintained schools, there is a complete absence of workbooks. We are finding that some of the much more successful schools—not just academies but maintained schools—insist that all their pupils have a workbook. A workbook is something pupils can be proud of and it can be marked. Pupils do more homework and they get more feedback. In all senses, we need to instil more rigour in our school system.

[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government’s reforms borrow more from Sweden than from any other jurisdiction, but the position of Sweden in these tables is going backwards. As we have heard, the reforms also built on what the previous Government did on academies. Therefore, regardless of politics—and I regret the highly political tone of the Statement—should we not learn from the top three, from Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore? There, parents are much more involved in their child’s learning, and those jurisdictions are designing-in collaborative problem-solving to meet the needs of employers. Given that those skills will be tested by PISA in 2015, how does the Minister think our children will fare then, given the Government’s new emphasis on rote learning and individual testing?