Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Wednesday 14th September 2011 Grand Committee

[The Lord Bishop of Hereford]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her generous comments about the inclusive nature and history of our Church of England schools, and for affirming the importance of our continuing to offer choice. While I have some sympathy with what she is saying with regard to some of the risks that might be involved with some of the newer faith schools that might be planned, the difficulty that her amendment presents for the Church of England is that it would take out the requirement for consultation with our diocesan boards of education. They may or may not be the trustees but they are nevertheless the religious authority for our Church of England schools. In trying to address the issue that the noble Baroness has raised, it is of the utmost importance that we do not sideline the Church of England boards of education. They play a role across all the dioceses.

In my own diocese of Hereford, which covers Herefordshire and south Shropshire, we have 84 church schools. The boards of education are involved in appointing the head teachers, supporting the schools and in policy-making in conjunction with the schools, trustees and governors. They have a key role as far as the local authorities are concerned in that they can relate to the diocesan boards of education. That does not mean that they do not relate to individual schools but that, corporately, they can relate to the boards as a whole. That is a real plus and a virtue. Therefore, while I am sympathetic to the issue that the noble Baroness is trying to address with this amendment, I caution that, as worded, it would have an unintended consequence. We should not allow that to happen and should ensure that our diocesan boards of education continue to have the recognition and, indeed, the requirement that they are consulted in the way that exists at present. If I may say so, we are back to the “as is” issue that has been mentioned in Committee on a number of occasions.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, unusually, I disagree with my noble friend Lady Murphy, and I do so for three reasons. First, we are talking about consultation, not a power of veto. Secondly, it seems to me only good manners to talk to the sponsoring body, and good manners are not yet wholly absent from public life. Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, I have no doubt that consulting the body in question would enable a smoother transition to the new status because one wants the co-operation of those who have helped to appoint the head teacher and of the original sponsors in order to make the school successful in the future.

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I have been reading a lot recently about ambiguity in legislation and the problem of its interpretation. I find this section of the Bill potentially extremely ambiguous. Indeed, whoever drafted this section was perfectly well aware of that because the sentence which we are asked to omit includes the words,

“the appropriate religious body”.

If you then read on further to subsection (5), there is no doubt that, in the case of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, the appropriate religious body is well defined—it can be done. It must suddenly have dawned on whoever drafted this provision that in the case of almost all the other religious schools, there is no appropriate religious body. If we take a Jewish school, a number of multifarious bodies might claim to be the significant body for Jews—certainly, it would not be the Chief Rabbi who has only a bit of the orthodox Jewish community as there are lots of other bits. I would not be at all surprised in the case of Muslims or Islam, whichever way you look at it, that, again, there would be a great many bodies which would all claim to be the appropriate religious body.

Therefore, this bit of the legislation is just plain wrong. It needs to be taken away by the Minister and redrafted no matter what happens with the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Murphy. I am clear that whoever drafted it knew this at the time that this was written. I do not think that the Minister can get away from this at all.

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[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

Will the Minister clarify a point for me on this? The amendments have been presented, quite appropriately, as a matter of protecting the conditions of work of staff. That I understand, and naturally I support it very warmly, but I am also concerned about protecting the conditions of learning for pupils in these schools. Will exemption from inspection attach to some of these schools with a fairly high proportion of reserved teaching places? If that exemption could apply, what protection will there be for children who with a thorough inspection of the system could learn whether the teachers appointed in this way had the appropriate qualities and skills?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

We touched on this before when we had the debate, which seems a very long time ago, about the arrangements for Ofsted and exemption from inspections. I know that the noble Lord has strong views on that point which we will, no doubt, return to later. The short answer to his question is that I think he knows the answer to his question. It was a rhetorical question about whether it is possible that some of those schools could be exempt from inspection because if they have an outstanding Ofsted clarification the answer to that question is probably yes. We will discuss that further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wakeham]

My Lords, I am here simply to add my support to the noble Lord, Lord Layard, who was a very distinguished member of the Select Committee which produced our report on apprenticeships. However, as I have sat here all afternoon, I could not help reflecting that it is probably nearly 40 years since I first sat on a parliamentary committee dealing with a Bill. I do not do much of that these days. Things have not changed very much, but I have had a very pleasurable afternoon listening to the way things seem to be going.

I do not have much to say about this, but one thing worries me about the report. I agree with a great deal of what the noble Lord, Lord Young of Norwood Green, said—certainly at the beginning of his speech. At the end I thought he was a little off key, but most of it was pretty good stuff. What staggered me about this exercise was how many of our kids leave school and get an apprenticeship but simply do not have the literacy or numeracy skills to enable them to take on an apprenticeship. You cannot leave that to officials. Someone in the Government must have responsibility for encouraging a move in the right direction.

Secondly, I thought that there was a failure by many schools to tell people about apprenticeships. Children who are likely to go down that educational route need to start thinking about it around the age of 14. In my experience on the Select Committee, one thing stuck in my mind. We visited an old people’s home where girls were training to look after the old people. For many years as they grew up, those girls knew that they wanted to do this. They got there but no one had told them that unless you have a basic knowledge of arithmetic you simply are not capable of dispensing medicines to the old people. That failure of schools and of 16 to 18 year-old apprenticeships is at the core of many of our problems. The noble Lord spent longer talking about it than I am going to, although it is still very important. I am here just to give him support.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 144B and I urge the Minister not to be misled into drawing any mistaken conclusions from the moderate language used. We say,

“make all reasonable efforts to ensure”.

That is moderate language. We have already heard the figures. The Government are dependent on employers coming to the table, and it is not happening. One reasonable effort might be to approve Amendment 145, which would reduce the burden on employers who want to go down this route.