Education: Citizenship

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they propose to enhance the amount and quality of citizenship education in order to increase the democratic participation and engagement of young citizens.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, citizenship is a compulsory subject in maintained secondary schools. The new programme of study ensures that teaching is directed towards how our country is governed rather than the more issues-based content that dominated the former programme of study. This will help prepare pupils to play a full and active part in society. We will continue to promote resources for schools, such as the democratic engagement resource, Rock Enrol!

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

I thank my noble friend for that reply, but does he not agree that engaging in today’s hyper-complex, democratically challenged society, particularly for less able pupils, requires an absolute minimum of knowledge and the will to engage? What does he think of the effect, by contrast, of 56% of our schools—all free schools and academies—not even having to teach citizenship; of the rest not being Ofsted-inspected, vis-à-vis citizenship education; and of the number of specialist teachers teaching citizenship for examinations and pupils taking it being in freefall?

[Lord Nash]

All academies and free schools are required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and we trust academies to teach citizenship and prepare their pupils for life in modern Britain. I am sure that my noble friend will be delighted to hear that under this Government the number of pupils taking the full course of GSCE citizenship has more than doubled.

Education: Citizenship Studies

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am a little confused about the Labour Party’s attitude on compulsory subjects in the national curriculum. I thought that its study group had proposed that all schools should be free not to teach the national curriculum, but I will not attempt to keep up with this flip-flopping. We do not agree that it should be mandatory. A lot of people want to have subjects made mandatory in the curriculum but there is not room. Schools must teach citizenship at key stages 3 and 4. They must also teach about spiritual, moral, cultural and social responsibility and British values. The curriculum includes all the institutions to which the noble Baroness referred.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as the founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. I say to my noble friend that while he paints a very rosy picture of citizenship, at the moment less than 2% of pupils take citizenship education at GCSE. The free schools and academies do not have to teach it at all and Ofsted does not extend to citizenship in schools, while the Government have withdrawn bursaries for young teacher trainers to teach citizenship education. In the light of the statistics and the general sense of gloom in the citizenship community at the moment, will my noble friend please go back to his Minister and seek to do something about what has happened to citizenship education over the past two or three years?

[Lord Nash]

Ofsted reported last year that it found that in primary schools citizenship was “thriving” and that in secondary schools the quality of citizenship education was stronger than in its 2010 survey. It also found that head teachers recognised the rich contribution the subject makes to pupils’ learning, their personal development and the ethos of the school. We have substantially improved the citizenship curriculum from the previous, rather issues-based, syllabus and we are now enhancing the requirement to teach about British institutions and values.

Education: Social Mobility

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 13th March 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the Minister for this wide-ranging debate and particularly for its focus on social mobility. I am not an expert in the field of social mobility; I am a case study. I am so fiercely proud of the state education that I received that my title, The Vale of Catmose, was the name of my state comprehensive school. It is now called Catmose College, and in its 2012 Ofsted inspection it received “outstanding” in all four categories as well as overall. I warned your Lordships—I am fiercely proud.

I am the first generation of my family to go to university, and sometimes I still pinch myself to think that from a great-grandmother in service, to a mother who worked the most punishing shifts in a local factory, to my being on the Conservative Benches in the House of Lords is quite a journey. However, I am sure that I am not alone in becoming more and more grateful as time goes by for all the education that I received. A quick glance around the globe, particularly at girls’ education, should make us all appreciate the level of primary and secondary education available in this country at no cost to the child. Such education is pivotal and is the key foundation stone of all social mobility.

I have to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, that I have some unease myself with the term “social mobility”, as education is important for all human flourishing, and social mobility has somehow come to imply rising up some kind of economic ladder or even a class system. I have appreciated the Government’s focus on vocational education and apprenticeships, as I believe that good education will mean that someone at Eton who wants to be a plumber will be encouraged just as much as a budding brain surgeon in Brixton.

However, education enables children to be socially mobile in this limited sense, and the OECD report in 2010 marked us as the worst among the developed countries. Secondary education is particularly important to social mobility as this is when exposure to the workplace begins, particularly through work experience placements. It is so often a teacher who acts as a talent scout, spotting the gifts of their pupils, opening up horizons and offering them advice. When I began, at 16, to enjoy the more extensive freedom that existed at a sixth-form college, I was advised by a teacher that if I stopped skipping lessons I might get to a land called Oxbridge.

Before global technology brought the world to your smartphone, many rural children needed the world opening up for them. I recently had my nephew Kyle in for a week’s work experience. He lives in deepest rural Derbyshire, and he commented that he had never met so many people from different countries before. None of his friends did anything like as adventurous as coming to London for a week, but I could not help wondering how to ensure that such work experience was opened up more equally to children. Your first work experience placement is often the first rung on the ladder of your CV. As a former lawyer, I was interested to note the recent comments of the Supreme Court judge, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, about the “startling leap” in the proportion of privately educated and Oxbridge lawyers now entering the profession. She said:

“One of the causes of this, apart from … the networks that their parents have, is the”,

preponderance,

“of work experience and internships in today’s recruitment criteria”.

So although primary and secondary education is one factor in social mobility, it is not the only one. Law is not alone as a profession in this regard; fashion, the creative industries, the media and of course politics all suffer from this. It is through the Twitter campaign, Intern Aware, and friends who work at the BBC that I have been told that you can no longer get work experience at the BBC through knowing someone who works there; everyone goes through a central system and is selected on merit. Could this be a model to be adopted for all public institutions? I understand that some commercial firms, such as Deloitte, are also adopting that strategy. Would it not be possible for the wonderful Peers’ outreach scheme somehow to connect that to the work experience placements offered in your Lordships’ House? I do not just mean with Peers ourselves, as I have outlined.

Recently I was on a train to Cambridge when I stumbled across two 18 year-olds, who were clearly going for the day, sitting opposite me. Obviously, their parents were on the opposite side of the carriage, being embarrassing. They got into a conversation and one of them happened to mention that she had been here to do work experience. At an appropriate juncture I interjected into the conversation and asked for some feedback about that, and inquired where she had been. She mentioned some department to do with seals that I had never heard of. She had had a wonderful time, which I thought was great. I asked her, “How did you happen upon your placement?”. She replied: “My daddy knows the person who runs the department”. When the taxpayer is paying to keep the lights on and to keep the place running, I wonder whether we should be looking at a more objective system of selection.

Secondary education will also be aided to enhance social mobility with what I consider to be this Government’s most radical and exciting policy: to get rid of the divide, however one wants to term it, between private and public schools. However, I believe that this change and partnership began under the previous Government with the significant change to the Charities Act so that no longer is education presumed to be a charitable benefit. One has to produce some evidence to receive gift aid.

I am pleased to note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, that schools have much to learn from each other. I commend Future First, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, which is bringing in something that private schools have been good at: keeping in touch with your alumni. The state system has lost much by not keeping records and not calling on the experience of those who have been through the system, which Future First seeks to introduce.

I grew up in Oakham, a small market town where, in relation to this divide, there is a context to look at. Oakham is dominated by one private school, but has a state comprehensive school. Over the years, when people have asked, “Where did you go to school?”, and I have answered, “Oakham”, they have immediately leapt to the assumption that I went to the private school. Back when I was being educated, there was complete separation. It was not safe for us to play sport against each other. We went to different bakeries at lunchtime, and we were instructed to use different newsagents. I know that things are changing, but the Minister would do well to look at geographical—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)]

I hate to interrupt the noble Baroness, but I cannot resist asking her whether she is aware that Oakham School and Uppingham School were founded by Archdeacon Robert Johnson in the 1580s for poor boys and poor girls.

[Baroness Berridge]

Yes, I am aware of that. Indeed, when Oakham was a grammar school my father passed the 11-plus to go there. I say that that was when I grew up. I believe the context is changing, but there are sometimes particular geographical issues which matter to children growing up in such small areas. There can be that divide between children at the private school and children at the state school. It perhaps does not matter if you live in London.

Most encouraging for this fiercely proud state-educated Baroness is that it seems that the daughters of the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister will follow in my footsteps.

Will the Minister outline how we are going to sort out the key problem of work experience placements on the “mummy and daddy know” basis? As I have outlined, I confess to my involvement in that system.

Schools: National Curriculum

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 9th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I know that the noble Baroness shares my concern about PSHE being an essential part of any school, particularly interpersonal skills and self-confidence. I do not think that we are apart at all on the necessity for all schools to teach that. Indeed, that is what good schools do; it is all part of a good education. The difference between us is that we do not feel that we should legislate for every ingredient of such education to be statutory.

For instance, on career education, I was in Norfolk today, where we were whipping up support for schools in Norfolk, which have consistently been below national standards. One of our meetings was with business leaders. There is no shortage of enthusiasm from the business community to engage with schools to help them with careers advice, work placements and so on. I then visited Wymondham College, one of our top state boarding schools, where we got into a conversation about careers. I said that I was constantly being asked whether careers advice should be more consultancy-based in schools and whether that was sensible for schools. It was absolutely clear. Everybody in the room—the top eight teachers in the school—said that a careers session of 50 minutes at the end of your school life was a very poor substitute for a good education and that they engaged widely with businesses for careers advice. They already practise the suggestion from my noble friend Lord Cormack of career panels.

That is the best practice, which we should encourage all schools to do, so that all schools fulfil the ambitions of the noble Baroness. As I said, however, what is between us is that we think that to legislate for it in a box-ticking way would lower expectations rather than encourage all schools to aim for the highest.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I should declare an interest as the founder and president of the Citizenship Foundation. I, too, would like to congratulate the Government on the outcome of their consultation and a lot of hard work all round. To have 17,000 people respond to a consultation must be a high response compared to some that we have had recently and it reflects the intense concern of people across the social spectrum—of course, including teachers and parents. I also recognise the dilemmas that the Government have in arriving at a curriculum, because so many subjects today call for inclusion, and there has to be some point at which you say, “Sorry, no more space”.

I particularly congratulate Michael Gove on resisting the advice from his expert panel and keeping citizenship education in the core curriculum at key stages 3 and 4. It has always seemed to me—and, probably, everybody in the Chamber—that the democratic world of today is unbearably complex. The work of this House is often beyond the ability of its Members to grapple with. It is irresponsible of us to the point of being hypocritical not to give our school leavers the chance, through a minimum level of competence, to take their part in this hyper-complex society—in particular, their democratic part. I fully endorse the conclusions reached that citizenship is part of the essential knowledge that we have to give our citizens, no less than teaching them the Highway Code before they get into a motor car.

I should like to ask my noble friend four questions. The framework document issued this week starts by saying, of citizenship, that the purpose of study is a high-quality citizenship education. I would be grateful if my noble friend would consider the extent to which we need rather badly to have a much greater quantity and quality of teacher education for that difficult subject. Secondly, I agree with my noble friend Lord Storey that this is a subject where you could bring in people from outside the world of formal teacher qualification. Very quickly, I think—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, perhaps I may remind my noble friend that this debate is for brief questions to the Minister.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I would be grateful if my noble friend would consider extending the Ofsted inspection to cover citizenship education. If it is not within the compulsory Ofsted inspection, that lowers its status. That is certainly not needed. Finally, I do not see why this subject should not be as necessary, compulsory and essential for non-maintained schools as for maintained schools.

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Phillips for his comments. I believe that we have greatly improved the citizenship curriculum, not least with the helpful advice from noble Lords such as him that it should be a much less issues-based curriculum, with greater focus on the political systems in this country. So far as Ofsted is concerned, I will look at that point in the context of what Ofsted already inspects for in terms of a rounded conversation and whether we can do anything further on that. As far as the core subject is concerned, I rather refer back to my earlier point that some independent schools teach citizenship very effectively in a much wider way. As far as teaching quality is concerned, we are doing all that we can to improve the quality of teachers. I may want to discuss with my noble friend further his specific points about citizenship teachers to see whether we cannot do more in this regard.

Education: Citizenship

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Cormack for instituting this debate, which is of the greatest importance. I also thank the House of Lords staff for a very useful briefing, and Democratic Life, a coalition of about 40 charities that are interested in citizenship education.

I declare a double interest: first, as founder of the Citizenship Foundation, which was established in the 1980s and now works with more than half of state secondary schools in citizenship teaching; secondly, the unyielding passion I have had for this subject since as a young bloke I started as office boy in a country solicitor’s office in 1957. My principal dragged me round the country courts—all of them closed now, of course—and I was instantly aware, as anyone would have been unless they were made of stone, that even then the law was formidably complicated. In juvenile courts in particular, one often sensed that the young offenders were completely mystified. I then got a local headmaster to let me loose on a class of 16 year-olds for a year to try to interest them in the law. Most people said it was impossible but it was not merely possible but actually very easy because the law is an extremely interesting subject when it deals with issues of current public concern.

I agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lord Cormack’s idea about a ceremony. I think that would be very telling. But I would like to start with a rather basic fact that we are supposed to give credence to; namely, equality before the law, which is, after all, the great boast of our court system and has been from Magna Carta onwards. One does not need to be cynical to think that to claim equality before the law in the present age is really not possible—as an ambition, yes; as a reality, absolutely not. Equality before the law presupposes that those going before the law have some knowledge and understanding of what they are dealing with when before a court and that they have, where necessary, legal aid to enable them to conduct their cases.

We are legislating now at an average rate of 15,000 pages of new statute law a year, with repeals of 3,000 or 4,000, so there is a net increase in statute law of more than 10,000 pages a year—most of it so complex that it is noticeable how the numbers engaging in debates on Bills are declining year by year. Indeed, at lunch today I met an extremely able and distinguished Peer who said that he was not going to take part in debate on the Energy Bill, in which he is deeply interested, because he could not make head or tail of it and it rumbles on for tens of pages. That is not good enough. It is rather like expecting a Christian to be a Christian without having some knowledge of the New Testament, or a soldier to be put into battle without arms or protective equipment, or indeed a driver to go on the roads without having had tuition. That, frankly, is the crude analogy with the young people we send forth from our schools today into the big, wide world. Our society is intensely complex in every dimension and manifestation. To allow our young people to enter the so-called adult world with no training and no understanding of that world is self-defeating to a degree that really beggars description.

The old maxim, ignorantia legis neminem excusat—no one is excused by their ignorance of the law—is of course a grand maxim. Frankly, however, for us as a Parliament knowingly to deny the young people of this country the knowledge to escape that ignorance seems to me to be inexcusable—indeed, to be a derogation from our parliamentary and democratic duty. To go on as we do, legislating as we do, paying little or no attention to that is something that I suggest to the House—particularly to the people who are not here—we absolutely as a matter of deep moral necessity need to address.

I am aware of how difficult it is if you are Secretary of State to deal with all the competing claims on curriculum time. I am aware of the expense of these things. Nothing but nothing, however, is doing more damage to our democracy than the state of affairs we are debating today. My noble friend Lord Storey gave some of the statistics. One could give so many more.

I am absolutely of the view that we have to fight to achieve an acceptable level of school-leaving knowledge, understanding and competence in order for young people to become active, engaged citizens. I know from long experience with the Citizenship Foundation that if you give them half a chance, they take it—with alacrity and with keenness.

We have a mock trial competition in magistrates’ courts and Crown Courts right across the country. Thousands upon thousands of young people take part in it every year. They are thrilled by it. They are astonished to find that the court system is as it is; that there are lay magistrates giving of their time and substance and judging as they do, where they do, and how they do. We have to give them a chance.

I would like very quickly to run through just a few points. Michael Gove, the Secretary of State, said in February that he was going to reject the advice of his experts’ panels to take citizenship out of the national curriculum. God bless him for that. I am sure that David Blunkett and Bernard Crick, if he were still alive, would have cheered him to the rafters.

There are, however, certain things we need to address—and I hope the Minister will. First, teacher training is in decline. Secondly, the curriculum does not do enough on skills; in the draft curriculum there is no reference to the European Union or to the United Nations. We need more statistics and we need better funding, because, frankly, schools are falling out of citizenship education at a great and dangerous rate. It cannot continue.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash)]

My Lords, I thank those who have taken part in this debate, particularly my noble friend Lord Cormack for raising this important issue. I know he is committed to ensuring that young people leave school as active and responsible citizens. I strongly agree with my noble friend that young people need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to prepare them to play a full and active part in society. This is why the Government intend to retain the statutory status of citizenship in secondary schools as part of the review of the national curriculum. The new draft citizenship programme of study includes a requirement that all pupils should be given opportunities to undertake voluntary work for the first time. I believe that that will support one of our key aims, which is to ensure that our young people are committed to volunteering and that they will take that with them into adulthood. All good schools have an active programme of engaging with voluntary organisations and charities, and we shall certainly be encouraging all schools to do that. The Cabinet Office announced a new campaign today, as the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, noted, to get young people involved in social action. This is in addition to our youth social action fund.

We have revised the citizenship programmes of study to ensure that they direct teaching towards the core knowledge of citizenship: namely, teaching about the way our society is governed and its laws, including those that protect human rights, rather than the more issues-based content that dominates the current programme of study. The shorter programmes of study give teachers greater freedom to define what is taught. However, they require teaching about laws, which my noble friend Lord Phillips said is so important, about rights and responsibilities and about the liberties enjoyed by citizens of the United Kingdom. The new programmes of study are not just focused on the UK; they provide opportunities for pupils to learn about other systems and forms of government in other countries as well as our relations with Europe, the Commonwealth and the wider world. However, I take note of the points made by him.

Our proposed changes to the citizenship curriculum include having a stronger emphasis on teaching about our political system, our democracy and the nature of our laws, so that many more of our young people engage with the political process, as my noble friends Lord Norton and Lord Storey and the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, made a point about the importance of teaching political ideology and multicultural literacy and of reference to history and current events and about bringing all this and the teaching of our institutions to life. His speech was one of the best pieces of advocacy that I have heard for a rich cultural curriculum of the kind that this Government are determined to see in all schools for all pupils.

I agree with the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford about the importance of RE, which is compulsory as part of the basic curriculum. RE GCSE will count towards the “best eight” measure. I am delighted that the dioceses are engaging so actively in the academies programme.

A number of noble Lords, including my noble friends Lady Perry and Lord Storey, said that citizenship is a whole, across-school ethos, and that all good schools should embrace this approach. This is all part of a good education and not part of a prescriptive list. We trust teachers to deliver this.

I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, supports us in making financial education statutory for the first time at secondary level in the citizenship curriculum. Pupils will be taught about the functions and uses of money, the importance of personal budgeting, money management and a range of financial products and services. In addition, the mathematics curriculum has been strengthened to give pupils from the ages of five to 16 the necessary mathematics to prepare young people for making sound financial decisions, for example about mortgages and loan repayments.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked for an update on the National Citizen Service. As one of the original supporters of this programme when it was just an idea, I am delighted that it is becoming so successful. Our ambition is for this to become a universal programme—a rite of passage for all 16 and 17 year-olds. In 2011-12, 8,500 young people participated. This increased to 26,000 this year and we announced yesterday that we will be expanding the number of places to 150,000 in 2016.

My noble friend asked what the Government were doing to enhance the delivery of citizenship and ensure that head teachers take the subject seriously. We have made our commitment to citizenship abundantly clear by retaining the statutory status of citizenship in secondary schools as part of the review of the national curriculum. Citizenship is one of only six subjects in the new national curriculum to be compulsory at key stage 4. A GCSE in citizenship currently receives credit in the school accountability system through the school performance tables, and will continue to count as part of our proposed—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to my noble friend for giving way. Will he say something about the impact on the status of citizenship education as a subject which is not inspectable because it has been put into the second tier and is no longer compulsorily part of an Ofsted inspection? Does he not think that that has severe consequences for the subject’s status and standing?

[Lord Nash]

My noble friend is perfectly right in what he says. Ofsted has to inspect on social, moral and cultural issues and carries out triennial reviews of all subjects, including citizenship. However, he is right and I will take his points back. Citizenship is part of the best eight.

I thank my noble friend Lady Byford for highlighting the excellent work that the House of Lords outreach programme does with young people. Almost 1,000 visits have been made to schools in every region of the UK, and House of Lords Chamber events have brought young people to Parliament to explore and debate a range of issues.

My noble friend Lady Byford also highlighted the fantastic work of the cadets programme. We know about the transformative effect that cadet units can have on schools by increasing attendance, engagement, participation at 16 to 18, self-confidence and discipline. The cadet expansion programme was a key strand of the Government’s Positive for Youth policy. Early work was based on a pilot of between 10 and 15 third-party funded units, but this number was increased following the announcement on Armed Forces Day last year by the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, who challenged departments to deliver 100 new units by 2015, with a longer-term goal of meeting all school requests for a cadet unit by 2020.

The Government are also committed to promoting the voices of young people at both a national and local level. That is why we are extending the funding to the British Youth Council. This funding supports initiatives such as UK Youth and local youth councils, where youth-led forums represent young people’s views.

In addition to a demanding curriculum, good-quality teaching is fundamental, as my noble friend Lord Norton said. There is strong evidence that links teacher quality, above all other school factors, to pupils’ attainment. The Government’s reform of ITT demonstrates our commitment to recruiting the very best graduates and to giving teaching schools more of a role so that schools close to the needs of particular types of pupils can develop the appropriate training. Teachers have access to a wealth of continuing professional development material and support through their subject associations. There is support on financial education, for example, through specialist charities, such as the Personal Finance Education Group, which are well respected, and private sector experts, such as the banks. Organisations such as the Association for Citizenship Teaching and the Citizenship Foundation also offer a range of support to teachers.

The importance of emergency life-saving skills and first aid were highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare. The provision of emergency life-saving skills is not compulsory and is a matter for local determination, but I will take back his observations.

I thank noble Lords for engaging in this debate. I believe our commitment to helping young people to develop as citizens is abundantly clear.

Young People: Personal Finances

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with my noble friend. Schools should provide these pupils in particular with all the information that they need, including budgeting, student loans, bursaries and any other products available.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I declare an interest as president of the Citizenship Foundation. With his very welcome news when he first answered this Question, does it mean that citizenship is now going to remain part of the core curriculum?

[Lord Nash]

There will be a Statement on this later. It remains part of the core curriculum but it is not a mandatory GCSE.

Education Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I do not want to oppose any of the amendments that the Minister has tabled but I want to sound a cautionary note and put it on the record following our extensive discussion of the principles underlining the Government’s proposals in Clause 13. We had an extensive debate in Grand Committee and part of it was around the question that the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, put acutely: whether the Government had made the case that teachers are in a unique position in relation to allegations of abuse, such that the restriction on reporting was justified. He said that,

“if Clause 13 goes through unamended, it will repose in the teaching profession a privilege unique in English law”.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 158.]

I want to preface my remarks with great concern for any person in any profession against whom allegations of child abuse are made and are not true. I completely understand the concerns about blighting a career and suspending a person in an anxious time while investigations take place. I have a son who is a teacher at a primary school and many sisters and some brothers-in-law who are teachers, so I am appraised of and concerned about that side of the argument. I also understand why the teaching unions make it. However, I am also concerned about safeguarding children and that is the difficult territory that we are in here.

The Government offered, in response to our debate in Grand Committee, to do some research to see what the figures were. That research has now been published and was referred to in the press at the weekend. When noble Lords look at the figures, they will see that of the cases examined—more than 12,000 where allegations were referred to local authority designated officers—under a quarter were in relation to teachers. If you add in the smaller, but none the less substantial, numbers of non-teaching school support staff, it is still well under a half of all the allegations. It is more telling that for teachers—this was the headline in the press—nearly half of the allegations, which came to 2,800 cases, were classified as unsubstantiated.

This does not mean that there was no truth in the allegation but that the threshold of evidence for prosecution could not be reached. This is difficult territory because most of those allegations will depend only on the word of the pupil against that of the teacher. There will not be witnesses present in most of those allegations. “Unsubstantiated” means that there was insufficient evidence to proceed; it is not a judgment about whether the allegations were true. Even more telling than that is that only 2 per cent of the allegations against teachers and FE lecturers were classified as malicious. The guidance issued by the Government in August makes great play of, and refers extensively to, malicious allegations, and yet we now have from the research a finding that only 2 per cent of allegations were malicious.

I am not going to oppose the amendments. I understand why the Government have acceded to the pressure from the unions, although we decided at the time, because of the problems that arise and the concerns about safeguarding, not to accede to that pressure because it opens up the other argument about where to draw the line. As I say, there were smaller but substantial numbers of non-teaching staff—some 1,700—against whom allegations were also made. I simply sound a cautionary note to the Minister. I hope that we do not find further down the line that a serial abuser—there have been serial abusers in schools—gets away with abuse over a long period because none of his—they are generally men—crimes could be reported because the evidence in relation to each one never reached the threshold for prosecution. I hope that in passing this legislation we are not responsible for the preventable abuse of any child. I say this without wanting to castigate the Government, but it is very difficult territory and I am not sure we are in the right place. I understand why the Government have done this but we will have to watch the situation very carefully.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, my name is attached to all the government amendments bar one. As the Minister said, these amendments arise out of the debate in Grand Committee and I welcome them all. The only amendment about which I have reservations —because I do not understand it—is the first one, which would insert “or may be” in line 12 on page 20. It would then say that:

“This section applies where a person who is or may be employed or engaged as a teacher”.

Perhaps the Minister could explain the purport of that insertion when he responds.

The only thing I cannot resist saying is that sometimes we make life difficult for ourselves—or, more truthfully, for those who have to understand this legislation. There are two references in Amendment 49 to “a matter”. It states that,

“the person who is the subject of the allegation includes a matter in a publication”.

Such arcane language is surely to be avoided if at all possible. Why we cannot say “includes information in a publication” I do not know, except that there is reference in an earlier subsection to “matter”.

Amendments 48 and 51 concern a more important issue. They represent the two most important amendments I put forward in Grand Committee, which the Government decided not to accept. I have reworded the second of these amendments, Amendment 51, but the first is more or less verbatim the amendment that was argued in Committee. I remind the House that in Committee on 6 July—in cols. GC 158 to 178—not a single Member of the Committee objected to any of the amendments put forward, largely for the reasons that we have just heard. In my view, and I think in that of all who have spoken so far in relation to Clause 13, this is utterly wrong in principle. As has already been said, it will be the first time in English law that free speech has been curtailed in this way and where a statement that is true can be the subject of a criminal prosecution. It is not an issue just of press freedom but of individual freedom. It will curtail the freedom of speech no less of worried parents or guardians. The full panoply of criminal law can be arraigned against a parent who suffers the greatest anxiety in relation to a child, where the child maintains that he or she is being abused. The parent is prevented by law from publicising the allegation of the child, however true, and for what? To protect teachers.

There is no one in this House more admiring of teachers than I am. I find myself in a very strange position on this clause. I wish it were not teachers at whom I seem to be aiming my gun. Freedom of speech and protection of children come before the pain and embarrassment which undoubtedly occur for some teachers with regard to false allegations. I have to say—I do not like saying it—that my Government are bending over so far to placate the teaching profession, and perhaps make up a little to that profession for other actions that they have opposed, that they are committing us to a law which our successors will think was a blot on the great and fundamental freedom of speech that is indispensable, particularly today.

I was a governor for 10 years of one comprehensive school and of another comprehensive school as a parent governor. My wife is a state school teacher. The prejudice that I have is for the teaching profession but I do not speak from ignorance. I should quickly say what I said last time: it is almost a declaration of interest. I was unfortunately at a school where a predatory pederast was allowed for 12 years to do his doleful work. He eventually resigned or was dismissed—one does not know which—in the middle of a term. He was never seen again and absolutely nothing was made of it although he had blighted the lives of dozens of children. The reason that nothing was heard of it is the reason why nothing is heard of these cases in today’s educational world. It is no good the Minister saying that there are regulations for this and obligations to report on that. For schools that suffer some of the worst abuses—fortunately they are few—the truth is that the cost to the school’s reputation and standing of the truth being publicised will be devastating. Often, as in my own case, the governors hushed up the whole grisly affair, as governors today will, if they can, hush up grisly affairs of a comparable nature. That is why I have put forward these amendments and persist in them.

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[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

I apologise for interrupting my noble friend but he will be aware that the convention of the House is that 15 minutes is normally considered the maximum speaking time, and he has now been speaking for 19 minutes. I wonder whether he would be kind enough to wrap up his comments.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I apologise to the House for overrunning the conventional time. I suppose it is because I take such a profoundly serious view of these curtailments of free speech that I have overrun the 15 minutes. However, I will wrap up my remarks quickly. Not one of the statistics to which I referred relates to the subject matter of Clause 13, which is pre-charge publicity—not allegations but pre-charge publicity. As regards allegations, 28 per cent led to disciplinary proceedings, more than 50 per cent had some substance and 18 per cent involved suspensions.

I am grateful to my noble friend for the concessions he has made. He may have had to battle for some of the concessions that he has wrung out of his colleagues. However, he does not accept my Amendment 48, which deals with the raising of the cap on freedom of speech in the case of a teacher who resigns or is dismissed, or Amendment 51, which allows a parent whose child has come home complaining of an assault to at least e-mail the other parents in the class to ask them whether they have had any experience of Mr Jones doing what he ought not to do, or e-mailing the staff, for example. To prohibit that seems to me utterly wrong. I speak to these two amendments in that spirit.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I have some amendments in this group. Like my noble friend Lord Phillips of Sudbury, I welcome the Government’s amendments. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Phillips on his success in persuading the Government to improve this clause as far as they have. However, I join him in urging the Minister to consider whether he could go a little further. There is devastating logic in what my noble friend says. I am also aware of cases where the abusing teacher has been asked to go away quietly so that no more will be said about the matter. Speaking of logic, I have two amendments in this group which seek to follow government policy and prevent an unintended consequence of this section of the Bill.

Noble Lords may remember that in Committee, speaking to Clause 42 stand part, my noble friend Lady Brinton said on behalf of both of us:

“I would also like to ensure that, where there has been abuse, the subsequent inspection overtly inspects what action has been taken, and openly reports whether the failures that allowed the abuse to occur have been put right. … Parents expect it, and children deserve it”.—[Official Report, 12/9/11; col. GC 117.]

I hope that the Minister will agree with that because it was the 22nd recommendation of the report of Sir Roger Singleton of June 2009, which was agreed to by the then DCSF under the previous Government. Significantly, the DfE under this Government also confirmed adherence to that positive response given in June 2009. Indeed, I know that our honourable friend Mr Tim Loughton has been considering how he can implement this and other recommendations of the Singleton report. There was some news of that only this morning.

Of course, I am aware that Clause 13 only prevents a publication identifying a teacher who is the subject of an allegation. However, the difficulty sometimes arises where writing anything at all about an event might lead to readers having a very good idea of who it might have been. For example, if something occurred on a field trip and there had only been one field trip that year, then it would be possible to identify the alleged perpetrator. So my amendments seek to ensure that we do not fetter the ability of a regulator or a responsible Ofsted inspector to do their jobs properly and to write in their reports about what happened and how the school has, or has not, put measures in place to prevent a repetition. This is what Sir Roger Singleton recommended should happen and that wish has since been endorsed by the previous Government and the current one.

So I hope that the Minister will now see that, in tabling Amendments 50A and 50B, I am trying to avoid that unintended consequence. I believe that Clause 13 as currently written could prevent a regulator or inspector from producing an adequate school inspection report following a case of abuse; a report which stated what action the school has taken. Has my noble friend had time to consider these small, but, I hope, helpful amendments, since they seek to implement what I believe to be the intentions of the Government as well as of the previous Government; intentions which were so well set out by Sir Roger Singleton’s recommendations?

I support what my noble friend and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, have said about the research that has been circulated to us from York Consulting. I looked at that myself, quite independently of my noble friend and the noble Baroness, and it occurred to me too that there was not a single fact in there that supports the need for this legislation; not one fact that talked about hyped-up, unwarranted publication of the name of a teacher prior to charge. There were lots of statistics about the increase in the number of allegations, lots of statistics about how many of those were eventually found to be unwarranted, but not a thing about publicity. So I still have great reservations about this legislation, despite the fact that in Amendments 50A and 50B I am trying to improve it, because I just do not feel that the Government have yet disclosed to us the pressing need for it, despite what the teaching unions would perhaps like to see. I really would say to the teaching unions—and I have said to the teaching unions—give me the evidence. Where is the evidence about these large amounts of terrible publicity that have brought the Government to decide that they need this legislation? I simply have not seen it yet.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, we had a very good debate about this issue in Committee, and, although the hour is late, we have just had another such debate this evening. I recognise the point that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, made at the beginning: this is not a completely straightforward issue. There are difficult interests to balance. I understand the force of the arguments that have been made about the importance of safeguarding children. I am extremely clear that a huge amount of progress has been made over the years in making children safer in school, thanks to steps taken by the last Government, and no doubt Governments before that. To respond to the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, we have no desire to do anything to unwind or undermine any of that. I listened with care to the point she made about Childline. My understanding is that the Bill would not prevent children talking to Childline, and Childline talking to parents. However, I understand the force of what she was saying, and I will check that that is the case. Clearly one would not want a measure inadvertently to have the effect which she raised.

At the heart of this, and the reason why the Government are doing this, is the evidence that has been provided to us on this issue. I think that that evidence is not contested: I know that there is a difference of opinion about the strength of the evidence of the number of cases of pre-charge publicity in the press, but there is an acceptance that we have a problem, that there is a growing number of allegations made against teachers, that teachers are fearful of this trend, and that they are fearful of the effect that it has on their ability to exercise their position of authority in the classroom. We think that they have a particular position—

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am sorry to interrupt my noble friend the Minister, but he is wrong about these statistics. The JCHR misread the NASUWT statistics. I said in Grand Committee that,

“for the past three years there has been a decline”,

in the number of allegations—and this is on the statistics in the JCHR report. In 2008, there were not 181, as there had been the previous year,

“but 148; in 2009, 115; and, last year, 107. Yet the Minister in the other place said that the number of allegations had increased, which is simply wrong”.—[Official Report, 6/7/11; col. GC 172.]

With great respect, I suggest to the Minister that he does not follow down that fallacious track.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, getting an accurate picture of the extent of the problem is difficult. I accept the point made by my noble friend Lord Phillips that, through the research that the department has carried out by going online and looking at local press reporting as best it can, so far the number of cases that it has come up with is a multiple of five, but not many multiples of five. I think that the number circulated after the recent survey carried out for the department was 15. I accept that that is not a large number. However, the principle and the concern that underlie it are what we seek to address.

I will now address the amendments that my noble friend tabled rather than the general principle. The first area where he thinks that the clause gets the balance wrong is in relation to communication within the school community. His Amendment 51 seeks to ensure that pupils or parents will not breach reporting restrictions by communicating with other parents and other members of school staff. An example of where this might happen is if the parent wishes to communicate with other parents about an allegation that their child has made against a teacher. I should clarify that parents would not breach reporting restrictions by holding private conversations whether in person or online. The reporting restrictions would apply only to communication to the public at large or any section of the public.

My noble friend argued that a parent might wish to communicate with a section of the public in this way in order to seek corroboration of an allegation against a teacher before raising it with the school. We think that the effect of his amendment would be wider than that and would exempt from reporting restrictions communications by any pupil or any person acting on behalf of the pupil to any section of the school community and so reduce the protection the clause gives teachers against malicious or unfounded gossip. For example, it would allow pupils or parents to use a forum on the school network to publish an allegation against a teacher widely within the school community. I agree with my noble friend that parents should be free to follow up allegations made by their children, but I do think—I know he was dismissive of this point—that they should do that through appropriate channels by raising the issue with the school or the relevant authorities rather than by launching their own inquiries or campaigns. He knows, because I have discussed it with him before, that I am aware of a number of cases where e-mail campaigns against teachers are led by parents to whip up a campaign against them. We would not want that to be allowed to happen.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

The Minister is surely aware that if anybody whipped up, as he put it, a campaign that was untrue, they would be subject to very heavy libel or slander damages.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am aware of that, and we have discussed that point before. I know that is the case, and I defer to my noble friend who is a very distinguished lawyer, who I think used to do libel. To expect a teacher who finds himself the subject of a malicious campaign to take a libel case on his own account, financially, emotionally or in any other way, is not a practical course of action.

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Tabled by

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

48: Clause 13, page 21, line 16, at end insert “, or
(c) the person who is the subject of the allegation resigns or is dismissed from the relevant employment or engagement.”

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, in the light of what the Minister said—if I can put it this way without seeming to be patronising—he made the very best of a lousy hand. Given the time of night and the payroll vote visibly present on the Front Bench, prudence gets the better of passion, and I fear that, for tonight, free speech and the protection of children will have to be left on the sidelines, so I do not move the amendment.

Amendment 48 not moved.

Education Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Black of Brentwood]

My Lords, I wish to deal with an important point in this regard. My noble friend rightly says that the court has the power to lift a restriction on an application, but the legislation directs the court to have specific regard to the,

“welfare of the person who is the subject of the allegation”.

That is a very dangerous measure. My noble friend Lord Phillips will be moving amendments on this matter in the next group, but it is not as straightforward as just going to the court, as the court could already have a predetermined view.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I was going to keep my powder dry until the next group of amendments. However, I have a problem with Amendment 75A in that it seems to me to involve a one-way inquiry. If it were a case of the Secretary of State having to report to the Houses of Parliament on reporting restrictions, whether they be good or bad, effective or ineffective, I would be wholly behind it. However, it is a one-way ratchet; the Secretary of State can report only on whether to extend the restrictions.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I would be only too happy if the Minister were to say exactly that.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

Thank you.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I shall try to pull together some of the strands from this extremely good and thought-provoking debate. I fully accept that these are not simple issues. I recognise that the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, approaches this matter from a slightly different point of view from the generality of the Committee, with her concern for the children involved, whereas generally there was acceptance of the principle that one needs to protect teachers in schools. However, the debate concerns whether one should extend that further. I recognise noble Lords’ concerns, some of which were raised by my noble friend Lord Black, which we shall discuss in more detail when we consider amendments in the next group in the name of my noble friend Lord Phillips.

I accept that the reporting restrictions introduced by the clause interfere with rights to freedom of expression. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, made this point. I think all noble Lords agree that any such interference would need to be carefully targeted, proportionate and justified. Teachers already have legal remedies if they are the victims of libel and defamation, as we all do, but those remedies are available only once the damage is done. My noble friend Lord Black raised that point.

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Moved by

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

73HA: Clause 13, page 20, line 14, at end insert “unless that person has put the allegation directly or indirectly into the public domain”

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I asked for the degrouping because this is already a long group of amendments, which is the nitty-gritty and I hope to cover them. That the clause should stand part is a separate debate, which touches on many of the things that noble Lords have said with regard to previous groups and I shall make no further reference to that now.

I put forward this group of amendments very much in a probing spirit. They are not perfect. This is a highly complex clause and I shall seek to explain the point of the amendments in turn. But I am mindful of the fact that, if Clause 13 goes through unamended, it will repose in the teaching profession a privilege unique in English law. As others have said, if this should apply to teachers, why not to many other groups? It is an argument which seems to me to be quite unanswerable. With great respect, I do not think that my noble friend Lord Hill answered it.

We have this debate on a very pregnant day. The other place has debated the latest extraordinary events in relation to phone tapping. Partly because of that, and because the public are so agitated about the conduct of certain sections of the press, it becomes doubly incumbent on us to keep a cool head. I suspect that we, more than any other group in the land, understand the absolute indispensability of a free and fearless press to the preservation of democracy, the rule of law and open justice. Furthermore, if we are frank, we will acknowledge that it was just such reporting, particularly, I have to say, on the part of the Telegraph, which exposed the expenses scandal in both Houses of Parliament. For that, we need to be a little humble.

I should declare my interests. For a decade, I was a proprietor of a newspaper and a trustee of the Scott Trust, which owns the Guardian, the Observer and a fleet of local papers. For 20 years, I was a governor of state comprehensive schools, one of them as a parent governor. My wife is a former teacher and is presently a governor of a state comprehensive school. I come to this subject with huge respect and sympathy for the teaching profession. I understand exactly what it is on about. I also understand a little about the difficulties of dealing with situations where juveniles are witnesses and complainants. Especially in the early part of my long legal career, I dealt with some of those cases and I understand the quite peculiar difficulties of them.

Diving straight into my amendments, many noble Lords will not understand that truth will be no defence against the criminal charge of identifying a teacher, even if he had in fact committed serious criminal offences against one or many pupils. The clause is clear that until and unless a teacher has been charged, which will often follow a long time after an arrest, no individual and no media outlet can say or do anything which would identify that teacher unless the parent, pupil or media have been to court and obtained consent to lift the restrictions. I am bound to say that in my experience the hurdles of going to court and making an application to lift restrictions are simply beyond the scope of a normal pupil or parent, quite apart from the expense of employing a lawyer to undertake that task.

The first amendment in this group to which I shall draw attention relates to new Section 141F(12). It defines what a publication is in respect of which a criminal charge can be brought against anyone identifying a teacher. It gives exceptions to publication, saying that an indictment shall not be a publication so as to bring on the prosecution for identification and so on. I have added, in Amendment 73HJ,

“a publication by or on behalf of a registered pupil at a relevant school made to a person or persons affected by the allegation or who otherwise has or have a bona fide interest in receiving the same”.

If I am the parent of little Johnny who comes back and says that Mr Smith has been doing this or that and I go to the headmaster and say that this is what little Johnny said, and then nothing happens—let us not kid ourselves, often nothing will happen—surely I must be free to go to other parents in little Johnny’s class and possibly to a wider group than that. If I were to do so, I would then be liable to criminal prosecution under the provisions of this section and that must be utterly daft because it would then be a publication to a section of the public. That phrase “a section of the public” has a rather legal meaning and I think I am right in saying that my writing round to, say, 50 other parents in the school would fall foul of that. So that is the first amendment I draw attention to.

What needs to be understood is that in some cases no charge will ever be brought, even though there has been a blatant case of assault or sexual interference. The most common reason for that is likely to be lack of sufficient evidence to satisfy the criminal test of beyond reasonable doubt. The younger the pupil, the more vulnerable they are, and the less confident, composed and convincing witnesses they tend to make. The CPS, in deciding whether or not to bring a prosecution, with all the substantial distress that that can bring to the child or young person, or to the witness and their family, will consider that a major factor and, as it thinks that the witness will not stand up, it may simply not prosecute. No charge may ever be brought. There can also be the problem that the evidence is not corroborated.

There is also a complication, which I need to spell out. If a charge is never laid, no publicity can ever be made, even if the case is a bad one, unless someone goes to court and gets the restrictions lifted. Another complication is that although allegations are supposed to be recorded, then reported and acted upon—your Lordships have heard about that several times—the temptation on the part of a head to deal with matters informally and quietly can be very strong, especially where the school is going through a rough patch and where further publicity could be devastating for it. In any event, teachers are human and, knowing the consequences to a valued colleague when certain, perhaps lower level, allegations are proceeded with, and if there is a bond between the teacher and the head, the rules are not always strictly followed. Does anyone think that they were in the Catholic schools, where, a few years ago, revelations came far too late to help the many boys who had been abused? The prep school that I had the misfortune to attend was presided over by a predatory, aggressive homosexual who abused boys on a daily and nightly basis for 12 years. Nothing ever came to light, nothing was published and no charge was brought.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I am not answering. I cannot respond to the speaker. We want to hear from the noble Lord, Lord Phillips.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for his, as usual, careful and considerate reply. There are a lot of very difficult technical issues involved in that group of amendments. I welcome his invitation to talk about them outside this Committee Room, and I will certainly do that.

I want to refer to only one of his answers particularly, because I am wholly, as opposed to partly, unsatisfied by what he said as regards Amendment 73HJ. The Minister’s claim was that one could get a parent who wanted to start a vindictive campaign against a teacher. I think that is at the far end of speculative possibility, not least because a parent who did that would be in direct danger of libel proceedings by the teacher concerned. One might argue that teachers do not do that, but I have acted for a few people who have done that and have prospered from doing something to recover their reputations. Anyway, we shall talk about that when the time comes.

The only other thing I would say is that I am most grateful to the other Members of the Committee for their extremely wise and informative contributions to this mini debate and I note that not a single person opposed the amendments. No doubt the noble Lord, Lord Hill of Oareford, will sleep on that. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 73HA withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, when I tabled the amendments to Clause 13, I thought that I would leave it at that. However, as I delved more deeply into the background to the clause, had conversations particularly with the National Association of Schoolmasters and Union of Women Teachers, and read carefully the 13th report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which was published on the 13 June, I became more and more concerned about the blatant lack of any satisfactory evidential base to support what is, on any reckoning, a very major change in the law of this land. It is the first time in our history that such privilege has been given to a protected group. I want, therefore, to test with the House a little further the whole notion of Clause 13 being removed from the Bill.

Many noble Lords have already said that it poses all sorts of technical and other problems. I noted that, in her opening on the previous group of amendments, the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, expressed some concern about the whole position and about the whole of Clause 13. The noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, was clearly concerned. My noble friend Lord Black and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, were among a number of noble Lords who directly challenged the need for Clause 13 and several others who have hinted at it. So I hope that noble Lords will bear with me if I plod, as I have to, through the specifics of the factual base which the Government say justifies this novel provision, which, let us not forget, strikes at the heart of freedom of the press, law and order, and open justice.

My first point is that the JCHR report to which I have just referred put questions to the Secretary of State for Education. The 13th question was:

“In each of the last three years, how many examples is the Government aware of in which allegations against teachers have been made public before charge?”.

The Committee will appreciate that that is the very heart of Clause 13. Publicity after charge is unaffected by the Bill. It is still a highly complex subject, even after charge, but unless there is clear and voluminous evidence that criminal allegations against teachers have been made public before charge, I submit that there is no ground for Clause 13. What was the reply of the Secretary of State to this pregnant question? It was:

“The Department does not routinely collect this data”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

At Second Reading, I quoted figures for the past 10 years from the department which showed that more than 1,700 allegations against teachers were made. If 85 per cent of them were not upheld, the figures do not support the argument that the noble Lord is making.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

With great respect to the noble Baroness, I cannot agree. Perhaps that is because I am a hoary old lawyer and she, happily, is not. A 15 per cent conviction rate in respect of all the allegations made is a very high outcome. I will happily discuss this with the noble Baroness outside the Room. The ATL figures seem to me to be hopeless as a basis for bringing in this important reform.

The JCHR seems to be lacking in awareness of the balance of injustice and harm between pupils, particularly young ones, and their teachers when it comes to criminal allegations. We are in danger—and in the other place they are even more in danger—of expecting too much of the law. It is not the finely tuned truth machine that ideally we would like it to be. It never can be, given the machinations of mankind, despite the best efforts of our excellent judiciary. We do not talk about rough justice for nothing. That is why in criminal law we have a test of proof beyond reasonable doubt, rather than the lesser, civil test which is based on a balance of probabilities. The bias towards the accused is necessary to protect the innocent from conviction, which we as a society believe is much more important than convicting every guilty person.

We are not talking here about conviction or acquittal but about the freedom of the press to report, within the bounds of defamation, where criminal allegations are made, pre-charge, against teachers. We have to balance their vulnerability to unfair reporting against the undue sheltering of teachers, the interests of actual and potential victims and the interests of the public.

I turn finally and briefly to paragraph 112 of the June report of the JCHR, which states that,

“defamation proceedings offer no protection”,

to a teacher,

“where a report states that an allegation has been made”,

provided that it,

“does not assert that the allegation is true”.

The noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred to this in his earlier reply.

As one who has done a considerable amount of defamation work and overcome that defence put up by newspapers, I can only think that the committee is wrong when it says that libel proceedings offer no protection. The Reynolds case in 2001 and the Jameel case six years later prevent newspapers sheltering behind the defence of qualified privilege—or reportage, as it is called, in relation to a matter of public interest unless they comply with sensible tests. In the Jameel case, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Nicholls of Birkenhead, said that newspapers would not have a defence unless the report was responsible, fair, on a matter of public interest and in compliance with certain other tests, which would include the obligation to evaluate fairly and sensibly the basis of an allegation. They cannot simply recycle a verbal report of an allegation or something given to them by letter without checking. They have also to check with the person aggrieved, the teacher. They have to give the gist of both sides of the story and, importantly, they have to look at the whole tenor and pitch of the article. I hope that that is enough to show that teachers who are the subject of sensational, biased, unfair reports pre-charge have protection. One or more of the unions might make it their business to pick up a couple of test cases, which they could take and use to make their point. Believe me, that would reverberate around Fleet Street very quickly, as my noble friend Lord Black will confirm.

Teachers might also take up the invitation of the Press Complaints Commission—again the noble Lord, Lord Hill, referred to this—to report grievances in relation to pre-publication publicity. He rightly said that there had been none. But, as the JCHR report says, the notion that no complaints are made because it is a useless thing to do is simply not right. First, it costs nothing to make a report to the Press Complaints Commission. Secondly, it has very real powers over its newspaper members. It can and does make them publish retractions and apologies. So I do not agree with what it and my noble friend have asserted.

To summarise, I sincerely believe that the case for this most important of limitations on press freedom, albeit put forward with sincere concern for a most highly valued section of our community, is unsafe. Surely, the onus is on those who would restrict press freedom, especially to a single group and in a way never ventured before, to prove beyond reasonable doubt that such a change is unarguably essential. But, as I have endeavoured to show, the Government’s lack of direct relevant evidence as to the present extent of pre-charge publicity affecting teachers is all but total. It is that publicity, and that alone, which Clause 13 addresses. Not only is the need for the clause wholly unproven but it could and will unfairly disadvantage pupils and, in the worst cases, prevent teacher abuse ever seeing the light of day if a charge for whatever reason, and there are many, is never brought or if a school fails to bring disciplinary procedures against a teacher, and there are many reasons why that might be the case. Nor will truth be a defence, as I have indicated. For those main reasons, I propose that Clause 13 should not stand part of this Bill.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I did not think that there would be anything for me to say on the clause stand part debate but I want to make one broad comment. When I opened the consideration of the first group of amendments, I introduced the criterion that one of the bases on which we should make a judgment about this matter is the basis of the evidence. In summing up that debate, I pointed out that the Government have not produced what the Minister said was important; namely, an evaluation of the impact of the current measures on reporting of pre-charge allegations against teachers. The whole Committee has to be very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, who has researched this and has produced some figures today, which look remarkably small in terms of the incidence of pre-charge reporting of allegations against teachers.

Today, I will go no further than to say to the Minister that, at the very least, he has to come back to every Member of the Committee before Report with as definitive information and statistics as he can gather on the current incidence of the reporting of cases against teachers before charges are made and some evaluation of the quality of that evidence. One point that I should make to the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, is that I think that his figures are very compelling. I cannot make a judgment today on whether they are the total number of cases or not. It may not be possible to get that information, but the Committee, in deliberating further on Report, must have the best information that the Government can put forward on that matter and an evaluation of how robust that information is so that we can make a judgment.

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[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I will also be brief as we have already rehearsed many of the arguments this afternoon, so I will not detain the Committee for long. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, referred to assembling the information that we have. We will, of course, do that although some of it is slightly harder to come by, given its nature.

We have moved a long way in the course of the afternoon—this often happens in your Lordships' House—from the views that have been expressed to us all by the unions and by teachers. Some of their figures as regards the scale of false allegations are so high that I do not believe them in the sense that this is the sort of story that people relate to other people and so it spreads. Like me, the noble Baroness will have seen survey research which shows that 50 per cent of teachers claim to know someone who has been the subject of false allegations. That seems to me a suspiciously high and precise figure. One should not suggest that there is not a problem that needs to be addressed or that a consequence of this measure is that child protection and safeguarding will be weakened.

I support the great British media but arguments have been adduced in relation to the crusading role of the media in child safeguarding issues. I can think of many cases where that is true but I can also think of many where the crusading purpose has been directed at increasing newspaper sales and producing salacious articles. We must be careful not to go too far in taking the moral high ground and taking our eyes off some of the practical issues which teachers and head teachers tell us that they face and fear. We should see this provision as part of a broader range of measures to try to make teachers feel that they have the backing of us all in their difficult job of maintaining order and discipline so that children can learn. One must not lose sight of that point.

My noble friend Lord Phillips quoted powerfully from the exchange between the JCHR and the Secretary of State. Paragraph 1.48 of the JCHR report states:

“However, we are satisfied that the evidence and justifications relied on by the Government are sufficient to justify the imposition of such reporting restrictions as a necessary and proportionate means of achieving the legitimate aim of protecting the reputation and rights of teachers and supporting teachers in their role as the professionals responsible for classroom discipline”.

It is worth recalling that the JCHR concluded that the evidence—not as complete as my noble friend would like—led it to that conclusion.

In the course of this afternoon, there have been forceful arguments in favour of extending the clause from the Benches opposite and from some of my noble friends. There has also been opposition to its current breadth. I am aware of the concerns. I would be happy to speak to my noble friend about the earlier issue and try to provide further reassurance. As I have said, we will bring forward the review of the impact of these provisions and we will continue to monitor closely the issues that have been raised.

I argue that these provisions would not enable a teacher to get off scot-free from wrongdoing. Safeguarding duties remain in place. The clause states simply that anonymity should remain in place until someone is charged. I have a difference of opinion with my noble friends Lord Phillips and Lord Black about the effectiveness as a practical act of recourse of the PCC or of a libel action. I understand the arguments of both noble Lords—one with great experience as a lawyer, the other with great experience of working with the press. In previous situations, people have always said, “There’s always the PCC”, or, “You can always bring a libel action”. I am afraid that I do not believe that the PCC is an effective protector of people, and I do not believe that bringing a libel action would be a practical course of action for a teacher who has had all kinds of awful things going on and their reputation traduced.

Those are the arguments in favour of the clause. I have listened to the points raised by noble Lords on all sides this afternoon. I will try to provide some more statistical information, which I hope will help the Committee. I will also reflect on the points that have been made. On that basis, I beg to move that Clause 13 stand part of the Bill.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

As before, I am grateful to the Minister. I ask him to reflect on the statistics, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, invited him to do. It is essential that the unions provide us with concrete examples of pre-charge newspaper reports of a salacious nature, because so far they have not produced one. The only reports they have produced have been four-line factual reports. They must produce pre-charge reports.

Finally, the noble Lord, Lord Hill, berated me—no, not that. He would not do that.

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

That would be libel.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

No, it would be slander. He very reasonably said, “Look at the end of the JCHR report where it exonerates the Government”. Indeed it does, but how it does is beyond my tiny brain to understand. I suspect that the committee was confused.

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston]

As a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I feel that I ought to respond to that point. I am very sympathetic to the points that have been made, particularly by my noble friend Lord Black of Brentwood. It is my experience in the time that I have been on the committee that its conclusions are made very carefully, after a lot of very careful deliberation. I do not have any experience of the committee concluding in that way without being absolutely confident in its views. It is worth reinforcing that point.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, and I would have been more cautious in my remarks had I known she was here. I think they are blinded by the numbers of allegations thrown around. Those tables are unscientific to an extraordinary extent. Let us remember that all we are interested in is pre-charge newspaper publicity. If the noble Baroness reads her long report, she will find no satisfactory evidence of that. If it is there, let us please have it. On that basis, I shut up.

Clause 13 agreed.

Education Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

I have no informed view on the mechanism that the noble Lord, Lord Laming, proposes to address this issue or to maintain pressure on it, because I do not have the knowledge. However, I assure your Lordships of the importance and size of that problem, and the much more distressing problem that came to my notice in the 1970s in the case of Maria Colwell. That was the first case to my knowledge where there had been a hideously unnecessary death of a child because of lack of information about her—poor thing—running home during the day in a nightdress and nothing else, and no one doing anything about it. She finished up dead. The only way to make sure that communications exist is to have a network within which they can exist. I am not advising the Minister of what he should do about the amendment or how that network should be not merely preserved but made perfect; I am saying that it is a compassionate duty on society to see that this endless repetition of the same syndrome, with desperately sad stories taking place as a result, is addressed. If this amendment is an opportunity to address it, let us seize it with both hands.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, perhaps I may ask a rather boring lawyer’s question about the amendment. I think I am right in saying that in Committee it is possible for the mover of an amendment to say something a second time. I am totally persuaded of the desirability of co-operation, and one has a wonderful example in the amendment of the wealth and depth of experience of Members of your Lordships’ House. If they combine together, as they have done, it is like a mighty rolling wave, and I do not envy the Minister having to answer it. However, I have a hoary question on which perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Laming, might help me. His Amendment 100 places on all providers of education,

“a duty to co-operate with local authorities”,

and goes on to say,

“to promote the well-being of children and young people”.

In the case of a school, is that duty confined to the children and young people in that school, or is it more general? On the face of it, it looks to be more general.

My second boring old question that the Minister might like to answer is: have there been any cases under the existing law—I see that he is proposing to change the 2004 Act—where a school has been sued or taken to task judicially for a failure to co-operate? If there is no such case and the duty is not justiciable, some of us in this Room might be disappointed.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, again, I shall be brief. I have absolutely no hesitation in supporting both amendments and congratulating my noble friend Lord Laming and the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker, on the way they have presented the case. One is particularly thinking above everyone else of those with special needs, not least of the age of 19 or 21—whatever the ages are—up to which care is quite rightly to be continued and provision made. It takes me back to my 20-odd years as a chairman of a juvenile court in London. At that time, there was a darn sight more co-operation. All of us—the social workers, probation officers, midwives and magistrates—were trying to find the right solution for the problems that ended up in the courts, and many of them were to do with a lack of schooling. Children were not going to school but the reason for that was not followed up. All that ended with the Children and Young Persons Act 1969. It was a case of, “Magistrates, you make the decision and we the professionals will deal with it”. That would have been okay if it had really proved to be the answer but—this is why I come back to the point—we need co-operation. Returning to the phrase used by my noble friend Lord Laming, “If only we’d known that at the time”, so much more could have been done.

This issue also takes us straight back to the principles underlying this coalition Government. I refer to the form of localism in which everyone co-operates to do their best, particularly for the least able within our community. I therefore congratulate noble Lords and ask that this duty be reinstated.

Education Bill

Lord Phillips of Sudbury Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, the main purpose of the Bill is to give legislative effect to proposals set out in our White Paper, The Importance of Teaching, published last November. To that extent, it has been well trailed and contains few surprises. In a number of respects, it builds on reforms introduced by the previous Government. In all respects, I hope that it will enable us to strengthen the autonomy of schools and colleges, to back heads and teachers as they go about their jobs, to move away from top-down prescription, to strengthen the ways in which we hold schools and Ministers to account, and to build on our efforts to tackle disadvantage and extend opportunity more widely. While I am sure that there will be proposals on which we will hold different views, I hope and expect that there will be broad agreement to the principles on which the Bill is built.

Why are we so keen to strengthen autonomy and accountability and to put our trust in schools and colleges? It is because the evidence from the best-performing educational systems around the world suggests that this combination is most effective at driving improvement. Greater autonomy, backing teachers and increased accountability are the threads that run through the Bill. I will say a little more about each.

“Autonomy” is a rather lifeless word to describe something that I believe that we are all keen to encourage: a situation where inspiring heads and outstanding teachers are free to use their judgment and experience for the good of children. There can sometimes be a temptation for legislators to prescribe everything that we think is desirable in order to guard against things going wrong. The difficulty with that impulse, which I understand, is that the effect over time can be to silt up the system and make professionals feel constrained in exercising their judgment on the ground.

In 2009, the Merits of Statutory Instruments Committee produced a report on the cumulative impact of statutory instruments on schools. It recommended that the former Department for Children, Schools and Families should shift its primary focus from the regulation of processes through statutory instruments towards establishing accountability for the delivery of the most important outcomes. In line with that, the Bill removes some unnecessary legislative duties from schools, such as: to produce a school profile; to co-operate through children’s trusts; to have regard to the area’s children and young people’s plan; and to take part in a behaviour and attendance partnership. We want schools to be able to co-operate in ways that are right for them, not to be asked to conform to a one-size-fits-all approach determined in Whitehall.

We are fortunate to have a strong and vibrant sixth-form college and further education sector. Again, we feel we should be able to trust that sector’s leadership and staff to meet the needs of young people and employers in their local community, yet they tell us that they too often feel weighed down by a complex statutory framework that holds them back from doing what they do best. That is why we are removing those duties and stripping away some of the powers that legislate for best practice or inhibit the sector’s ability to enhance the choice and experience of learners and employers.

The Association of Colleges has said that:

“AoC is pleased that Ministers have placed on a statutory footing the clear commitment they have already shown to freeing Further Education and Sixth Form Colleges from many regulatory burdens … Colleges don’t need a statutory duty to tell them they should take account of the views of students and local employers on the courses they offer or that they should have regard to promoting the well-being of the local economy and community”.

We know that governors play a critical role in the strategic leadership of schools. Current regulations prescribe proportions and categories of governors in minute detail. Therefore, we are keen that governing bodies should have more freedom, if they want it, to recruit governors primarily on the basis of skills and experience. During the passage of the Bill through the other place, there were strong representations, particularly from Liberal Democrat colleagues, that, in addition to the head teacher and parent governors, it is important for maintained school governing bodies to have a governor appointed by the local authority who has the skills required by the governing body, and a governor elected by staff. We listened to those views and will bring forward amendments to the Bill in Committee to reflect that position. There will also be amendments to correct defects in and omissions from legislation.

As noble Lords know, a key part of our drive to increase school autonomy is the academies and free school programme. The academies programme, pioneered by the party opposite, has been shown to raise standards for all children and for the disadvantaged most of all. Building on that, there are now over 700 academies open, and a third of secondary schools are already academies or are in the process of converting to academy status. The traditional emphasis on underperforming schools continues and is, indeed, accelerating. This Bill extends that programme further with new categories of academies for 16 to 19 year-olds and to provide alternative provision for the most vulnerable.

We also want local authorities to have a critical role in the education system as local champions of social justice. As the challenges and circumstances in each area are different, we want to avoid statutory duties which require a one-size-fits-all approach from authorities, such as: requiring every pupil to be able to access every diploma; requiring every school to be provided with a school improvement partner; and requiring the same type of admissions forum. It is our belief that it should be for local areas to determine these matters, reflecting what works best in their community, and the Bill provides this freedom to local authorities.

In talking about concepts such as autonomy and the structural reform needed to help deliver it, we must not lose sight of the need to attract and retain the best graduates into teaching. Outside the Bill, we will shortly be announcing further proposals on teacher training, but I would like to mention two measures in the Bill which relate directly to teacher retention and which reflect concerns put directly to us by head teachers and teachers: behaviour and discipline, and anonymity from false allegations. We know that poor behaviour, or fear of it, puts many of our best graduates off teaching. A 2009 survey showed that in primary schools an average of 30 minutes of available teaching time per teacher per day was lost due to pupil indiscipline. In secondary schools, the figure for lost teaching time increased to 50 minutes per teacher per day.

This House is rightly concerned about children’s rights. But I believe that it will also accept the need to balance the right of individual children against the rights of all children to learn in an orderly environment. In the most recent year for which we have data, there were more than 360,000 fixed-term exclusions—almost 18,000 for physical violence against an adult and almost 80,000 for threatening or verbally abusing an adult.

To get more talented people into the classroom and give disadvantaged children the inspiration that they need to succeed, I believe that we have to support teachers and head teachers in maintaining high standards of behaviour in schools. That is why the Bill builds on the powers introduced in the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act on searching pupils and students. Teachers need the authority to search for items that have been brought into school with the intention of causing an offence, harm or injury. We also propose to give teachers the power to search for and to confiscate items banned under the school rules.

We also know, through evidence from children, that cyberbullying is a real problem, with nearly one in five 12 to 17 year-olds saying that they have been victims of it. Schools should be able to prevent mobile phones being brought into schools for cyberbullying and the Bill provides teachers with the power to confiscate them and, where there is good reason to do so, delete inappropriate material before they hand them back. I recognise that concerns have been expressed about the use of some of these powers, including the power in exceptional circumstances for opposite-sex searches where an item may cause serious harm if the search is not carried out urgently. These are permissive powers and we believe that there are sufficient safeguards in the legislation, as well as these powers only being available to staff whom the head teacher has specifically designated to conduct searches. The Bill also provides schools with the power to issue same-day detentions to children who misbehave.

Overall, these changes have been welcomed by the main head-teacher unions. The Association of School and College Leaders says that the discipline measures in the Bill are necessary and proportionate, and that head teachers and teachers can and should be trusted to use these permissive powers sensibly and in the interests of all pupils and staff in their schools. We also want to give schools the final say on whether a pupil is excluded in order to avoid those cases, which I acknowledge are rare, where a school is directed to reinstate a pupil who it believes, after proper consideration, should not be.

Finally, we want to give teachers better protection from false allegations made by pupils, which could be used to undermine their authority and have a devastating affect on their lives. The Bill therefore provides for reporting restrictions where a pupil, or someone on their behalf, alleges a teacher has committed an offence. These restrictions would be lifted once the teacher is charged. Alongside the work that the department is doing to strengthen guidance on dealing with allegations so that unnecessary delays are removed and that suspending staff is not seen as the default option, these measures will, we hope, provide better support teachers.

Hand in hand with increased freedoms for schools, we want stronger accountability directly to pupils and parents. The Bill therefore makes it easier for parents to see how well their school is doing by reducing the criteria for Ofsted inspections to four areas; namely, teaching, leadership, achievement, and behaviour and safety. We want also to free outstanding schools and colleges from inspection so that more time and resources can be devoted to those who need help most.

Alongside the Bill, we are reforming the performance information made available to parents, including measures on the progress children make at school and not just their raw attainment. That should remove some of the perverse incentives on schools, which led to a focus on a narrow group of children who might boost rankings in performance tables. New destination measures for schools and colleges will allow parents and young people to see for themselves how well institutions do at academic and vocational courses and how well they equip their students for life afterwards.

We must also be outward-looking, comparing our education system with the best in the world. That is why we are strengthening the role of the independent regulator, Ofqual, and requiring it to look not just backwards in time to make sure our qualifications maintain standards, but outwards to ensure that they compare well with qualifications overseas. The Bill will also require schools that are sampled to take part in international surveys of educational standards to participate.

However, it is not only school-level accountability that we are keen to strengthen in the education system. Local and central government needs to be more accountable. We have a shared goal with local authorities to tackle underperformance and in most cases we are able to work together to achieve that. But in some instances local authorities have not gripped underperformance, so we propose to take a new power in the Bill to increase the focus on tackling weak schools.

The Bill also restores ministerial accountability to Parliament by abolishing four major statutory arm’s-length bodies—the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, the General Teaching Council for England, the Training and Development Agency for Schools and the Young People’s Learning Agency. Many of their activities will cease, as teachers and school and college leaders decide for themselves how best to meet the needs of their pupils and students, rather than receiving pages and pages of guidance. Where roles continue, they will be brought back within the department and Ministers will be accountable to Parliament, which is where accountability should sit.

The final theme that I want to cover is fairness. For far too long, children from disadvantaged backgrounds have not fulfilled their potential. That is why this Government, in difficult economic circumstances, have managed to find additional resources and target them on those most in need. Starting in the early years, the Bill provides for the extension of the entitlement for free childcare to all two year-olds from the most disadvantaged families. The previous Government did much work in this area and I pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, who oversaw a significant growth in early-years education, which this Bill continues. We will move from 20,000 to 130,000 two year-olds benefitting each year over this Parliament.

Outside the Bill, noble Lords will know that we are introducing the pupil premium—£2.5 billion a year by the end of the Parliament—to support children on free school meals, looked-after children and children from service families.

We are committed to continuing the last Government’s drive to raise the participation age. Overall, we can fund more than 360,000 apprenticeships across all ages in the coming academic year, while making changes to the underlying legislation in this Bill so that they are deliverable in practice. In particular, there will be sufficient funding for 135,500 apprenticeship starts in the academic year 2011-12 for 16 to 18 year-olds.

We are taking a new approach in the Bill by requiring schools to secure careers advice—which must be impartial and independent—for their pupils. That is supported by a range of measures, working with the careers sector, to improve the quality and professionalism of services in this area.

So far as higher education is concerned, the Bill takes forward two elements of the new student finance arrangements. They will be more progressive, with the lowest-earning 25 per cent of graduates paying less over their lifetime than they do at present. It will also mean that fees for part-time courses are capped so that new loans can meet them.

We are extremely fortunate in our country to have so many great schools and colleges, led by a superb generation of heads and supported by an extremely talented and committed cohort of teachers. Despite the dedication of these professionals and the fact that our children seem to work harder than ever at exams, other nations still appear to be overtaking us. Our 15 year-olds are a full two years behind their Shanghai-Chinese peers in maths and a year behind teenagers in Korea or Finland in reading. Evidence from these best-performing countries shows that giving greater freedom to professionals and schools, with stronger accountability, provides the best route to improving our education system. That, in essence, is what lies at the heart of the Education Bill. I beg to move.

[Lord Phillips of Sudbury]

My Lords, am I too late—

[Noble Lords]

Yes.