Schools: Careers Advisers

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, I agree with my noble friend. That is why we have rapidly been increasing the number of apprenticeships for under-18s and over-18s. The best support that one can give to children to prepare for a career is a decent education. That is why our focus is on what goes on in schools before they are 16 because careers advice, however good it is, cannot compensate if there is a basic deficiency in the education that has been provided.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, in agreeing with the Minister’s last remark—

[Noble Lords]

Time.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, this suggests that teaching is not entirely about qualifications; it is also a gift of God. However, that was not what I intended to ask. I wanted to ask the mover of the amendment what is meant by “non-specified work.” I am concerned —so are the Government, and indeed we should all be concerned—about, for example, those who do not have a tendency to be very successful in academic qualifications and who need to get fulfilment in life from their work, or from other skills. Why should not someone be taught to use a lathe by someone who is brilliant at using a lathe, rather than by someone who has an academic education? Or perhaps I have got it wrong.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, this is an amendment about professionalism, and I think everyone who has spoken supports the importance of professionalism. I commend the Government for what they have done in this area already, as well as the previous Government, as important things were done then.

However, I have reservations about a universal requirement for a particular kind of qualification. If we take the example of health, I would not mind being nursed by a nurse who was not a graduate, although actually these days, that does not seem to be on. I do not want to push that analogy at all, but to point up the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry: there may be exceptions. There may be individual cases that, if we were too rigorous, would be excluded. However, the question—which I believe has just been raised —is of proportionality, and whether it can become disproportionate in, for example, free schools.

There is a real danger there, and I have already expressed worries about inspection and exemption from inspection in these areas, which is why I think the questions raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, are fundamental. I approve of the use of the word “normally” here, and I wish it was in more legislation, but “normally” must then be monitored. I hope there are clear answers to the questions that she has asked.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I have said before in this House that the most important thing for a student is the quality of the teacher—not the qualifications, necessarily, but the quality. There can be the best buildings, the best resources, but unless there is quality teaching, then that child will not be able to make the progress that they deserve. If you have poor teaching and a poor teacher, that child loses the year, and the year can never be repeated. It is lost for good.

Since I have come to this House, the one thing that has struck me in education debates is that in every speech and contribution I have heard, the child is at the centre. I have felt quite emotional, to be honest, about the care that has come to me from the comments that people have made. We had a debate on special educational needs, and I was absolutely stunned by the remarkable contributions from everybody in this House.

However, one thing said constantly in that debate was that it needs to be about training, and about understanding the child. You cannot just put anybody in and expect them to be able to teach, understand, and relate to the child. It has to be a whole package. That is not to say that everybody must be a qualified teacher. There are examples of people who have a natural gift for teaching but are not qualified. How do we make that system work? Well, we have a system presently that allows that to happen.

I speak from practical experience. At the tail end of the summer term, I had a situation in my school where a teacher left. Working in that classroom was a teaching assistant; an advanced, higher-level teaching assistant, who was—to use an expression—“stunning”. The pupils thought the world of him. Being a conscientious, thoughtful person, I checked with my local authority, which said, “Yes, as long as he has a higher-level qualification and you’re happy with him, he can take the class”, which he did for three weeks. He was fantastic. The children progressed. I have to say, I would rather have had him than—no, perhaps I should not say that. He progressed and did incredibly well. He was also supported by the school and other teachers, who were able to compensate for any areas in which he needed to develop. As a result of that, he has decided that he will not just be a higher-level teaching assistant; he will go on to be a teacher.

There are occasions when you can put people who do not have the formal qualifications in the classroom, and they can do a remarkable job. My noble friend Lady Benjamin constantly reminds me that pupils from the Caribbean often need a very different type of teacher, and that maybe the qualities that we currently have in our teaching profession are not always able to deal with those situations. That is dealt with, again, by encouraging teaching assistants who are working with teachers in the school environment.

When the Minister replies I hope he will deal with the questions that have been asked by my noble friend Lady Walmsley. I also hope he will reflect on how we might combine both desires.

I do not have a problem with free schools. I remember the first free school, which was Scotland Road Free School in Liverpool in the 1960s. What I have a problem with is saying that you can have non-qualified teachers in an educational establishment. If free schools are to be successful, they cannot be seen to be on the margins. Parents will soon think, “Oh, these are inferior places. They haven’t got any qualified support in those schools”. They will not send their children to them once the initial idea has started.

I will make one further point. There are whole areas of teaching that, in a complex society and a modern world, people who work with children need to know about—safeguarding, for example. Are we saying that these adults who will teach in free schools will not have any training in safeguarding, or in the problems of special educational needs? The list goes on. We need to be absolutely sure that we get this right.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister that, following my remarks, these clauses are to be inserted.

It is worth reminding noble Lords of the unedifying accounts in the newspapers a short time ago, when we saw complaints from parents, teachers and schools. A printing mistake by the AQA board led to some schools receiving GCSE maths papers, taken by 32,000 pupils, which included questions from a previous version of the examination. The OCR maths AS-level paper, with nearly 7,000 candidates, featured an impossible question worth a whole 11 per cent of the marks. OCR’s Latin paper mixed up a passage by Cicero and attributed it to Tacitus, and two characters were mixed up. Edexcel’s AS-level biology paper offered a selection of wrong answers to a multiple choice question, but the correct answer was not included. The OCR guide issued to staff marking the AS-level information communication and technology paper contained four errors—staff were required to mark down students who gave the correct answer. AQA’s AS-level business studies examination, taken by 41,000 students, asked about a fictitious company’s factory profits, but the adjoining profile information failed to show the profits, making the question completely unanswerable. Of course, there were other examples in earlier years. The noble Lord, Lord Sutherland of Houndwood, who is in his place, carried out, as I am sure he will mention, a review that suggested that QCA was responsible for massive failures resulting in tens of thousands of children getting their SATs results late.

That is why I support these extra powers for Ofqual boards. I believe the penalties that are outlined seem a fair and useful way ahead, with the appropriate safeguards of notice and appeal that the Bill sets out. I hope that noble Lords will support them and they will lead to a diminution in the angst and difficulty caused earlier this year to pupils, parents and teachers after the examinations.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I warmly welcome the government amendment, and not only for the reason it means that one’s words do not always disappear into the ether for ever, although it is nice to see a bit of thought being given to them. Examining boards do an extremely difficult and complex job. Over the years, we have built for them a system that requires too much, and too much complexity. We are now rolling back from this, and that is the right direction. However, examination boards which, for the most part, have done this very well, do fail from time to time. They fail in ways that are serious and, as we have heard, are deeply upsetting to schools and candidates. It is therefore right that Ofqual should have the capacity to assert some discipline over them.

As has been suggested, I have seen in great detail—more than I ever want to see again—the complexity of the procurement process for a national set of examinations. If Ofqual were committed to its only sanction being to reset the process in motion, we would have the wrong system. Under this amendment, Ofqual will have different alternatives. I say to my noble friend Lady Sharp that this should have been in the original powers of Ofqual rather than being put through at this stage. I welcome the amendments and hope that the House will support them.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth]

My Lords, I support this amendment. In doing so, I refer noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests, as I have a number of clients who work in this area.

We are world leaders in this country in the use of technology in education. That is why more than 70 education Ministers from around the world come to the largest conference of education Ministers that happens annually anywhere in the world, held in London, alongside the BETT fair. It is hugely important that we sustain that position, as others are catching up, and are catching up very fast.

I welcome some of the comments made recently by the Secretary of State, Michael Gove, around technology, in particular what he said about iTunes U and the Khan Academy and how they are, in his words, transforming what is going on in the classroom. That is welcome because over the past year or so, those working in the field of technology in education have been worried that the Government have taken their eye off the ball and want to see some leadership. What this amendment is calling for in respect of a plan from the Secretary of State will give, not a formal direction but a lead, to schools about how they use the money that has now devolved to them in this area.

As we have heard, ICT is hugely important. We managed to justify the £300 million the Treasury needed to part with on the country’s behalf for programmes such as the Home Access Programme that I was responsible for in government by using data from, for example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies. That showed that access to a computer at home increases performance in science GCSEs by two grades. PISA did some analysis on the use of technology which shows that over time it has increased maths scores in countries around the world. As a result of the Home Access Programme and the evaluation that the department quietly published a few months ago, we have seen the impact in terms of extended learning at home. By having access to technology at home, people are spending longer on their homework and find doing their homework more engaging. I would point noble Lords who are interested in this towards the example of the Essa Academy in Bolton, which has now got every child an iPod Touch and is rolling out more iPads. The learning that is going on in that academy has led to its results over the two years it has been in place for five GCSEs at A* to C rise from around 40 per cent to 100 per cent, and if you include English and Maths, from 28 per cent to 56 per cent. So some significant gains have been delivered in part thanks to technology. The academy certainly attributes technology to its success.

It is important that the Government should continue to extend their activities around the training of teachers and leaders because we know that if they are not in place, any investment in technology does not get you anywhere. You absolutely have to have them in place. The development of resources, home access and how best practice and next practice are spread are also important. Currently, we have a vacuum. Very early on, Michael Gove decided to abolish Becta, the agenda that provided a lead in this area in securing significant savings. That is his prerogative and fine if he wants to do it. But it meant that there was a hiatus in which people felt that there was no leadership in the area, although we may be beginning to see it now. At the same time, the role of local authorities has diminished and their funding to provide a lead on this locally has also fallen. Authorities have largely let all their IT specialists go, which means that they have now all become self-employed IT consultants. A profusion of people are knocking on headteachers’ doors offering advice, but often with vested interests around particular technology solutions. It is difficult for heads to get through the confusion that follows, and certainly to secure the procurement savings that Becta was able to deliver.

A plan is also necessary not just to fill that vacuum, but to point us towards the potential new ways of working which technology has delivered efficiently in so many different industries. In a challenging fiscal environment, if we can deliver more efficiencies in education, I am sure that that is to be welcomed. Assessment takes up a significant part of any school’s budget, and all sorts of innovations in this area can be secured through technology. As I mentioned, in procurement we are seeing the expansion of digital educational publishing. That can be encouraged or not, depending on whether we see some leadership. My noble friend Lord Puttnam talked about resources that are freely available through the TSL Education site, and there are other sources too. A rapid explosion is taking place that is rooted in this country. We are exporting our education around the world, but we really need to take advantage of it here.

There are all sorts of things that can be done in terms of school system improvement on the supply side, and that is what the Government feel comfortable with because that is what they control, but we can also stimulate much more self-sustaining school improvement through a demand-side set of reforms. It is not just about choice and the decision about which school your child will go to, made once or twice in their school career, it is also about giving parents a voice. You do that by giving them information and data that keep them in touch in real time with what is going on in the school. That can only be done on a viable basis using technology, and if that technology is fairly distributed with inclusion across the range of homes.

In respect of new ways of working, we are at the tipping point on this in schools. We can move away from IT suites and trolleys of laptops and towards people bringing in personal devices that their parents are already buying them. A recent Ofcom study showed that 100 per cent of teenagers, who they defined as 12 to 15 year-olds, had access to a computer somewhere, although as the noble Lord, Lord Willis, told us, many do not have access at home. We are also seeing a rapid rise in the ownership of smartphones, while 10 per cent have tablets, and those figures are changing all the time. There will come a point when we embrace these personal devices, even if it means mobile phones with rules about how they are used. That is because in children’s hands, they are very powerful computers which can aid learning. In turn, it means that schools will spend less on IT, less on recharging devices overnight, less on paper and less on textbooks. They can deliver an educational case around the use of data for performance and differentiation of learning, delivering more learning at home, delivering the softer skills of collaboration and communication that employers need, and the pupil engagement between home and school that we know is so important.

I strongly endorse what my noble friend Lord Puttnam said in respect of the economic case. If noble Lords are interested in how it might work, I recommend that they look at Apps for Good that CDI Europe has been delivering in schools and which young people find hugely engaging. That engages them in the world of work as well as in the world of technology. I also endorse what my noble friend said about coding and the need for more programming being learnt earlier on in school. I tried that, against a lot of push from officials. I even had to write it into the galley proofs before they were sent to the printers and they were not looking. I tried to get ICT as a basic skill at the primary level so that we could make sure that children were plug-in-and-play ready when they started secondary school. They should be able to use technology across the curriculum. Unfortunately, while the Rose review did deliver on what that might look like, it was pulled during the wash-up between Administrations. We never managed to get that shift of IT learning into the primary sector, which I think would have been extremely valuable. There are challenges in this. It will need an evolving pedagogy. It will need someone, ideally the Government, to offer guidance around the interoperability of devices in classrooms, along with procurement advice and possibly the curriculum changes that I have talked about. But the prize is a great one.

The noble Lord, Lord Willis, mentioned the death of Steve Jobs. I ask noble Lords to think about what a Steve Jobs school would have looked like. For the staff, certainly it would have been one with a hero head model, someone solidly leading the school and delivering not what the children wanted, but what they needed. There would probably be a fairly flat staffing structure, but to the world outside it would not be the Steve Jobs school, it would be an Apple school: beautifully designed and one in which people just wanted to learn. It probably would not even have school rules, just as the iPad does not have any instructions, because it would be so engaging. That is what technology can give us: really engaging education that sucks learners in and makes them want to find out more and educate themselves more rather than just the flat, didactic one-way learning that is the tradition which some would like to see revived. I think it belongs in the Dark Ages.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I also declare an interest in that I work with a Malaysian company, YTL, in a plan to take ICT provision into every Malaysian school. That background gives me a little insight into what is happening here. Their Ministers and senior civil servants wanted to come here to see what we were doing. I can assure the noble Lord that his officials were very helpful in showing what Britain can and does do in this area. I cannot match their eloquence, but I stress one point that I think has not been stressed sufficiently. This is not simply enabling people to look something up in Wikipedia or whatever and get a few quotes for their essays. This transforms schools completely.

I took these Malaysian visitors—Secretaries of State and so on—to schools here in Britain to see what was happening. It transformed whole schools, not simply the teaching patterns, but all the relationships—with the parents, with the governing body, between the pupils and between the pupils and the teachers. It changed discipline. It took a failing school to one now where there are five applicants for every place. There were other factors, but the headmistress—am I allowed to say that these days?—or the lady who is in charge of the school, the principal, told us that ICT, properly used, was one of the key ingredients. So I think it is important that the Government have a policy that becomes a strategy.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, this is indeed a complex issue, as illustrated in the previous speeches. It was debated extensively in Committee and many issues have been raised again today. I was not planning to intervene here, but I am prompted to do so by the number of teachers who have contacted me and whom I have spoken to about searching. I wonder whether the Government realise and understand just how concerned teachers are about this and how distasteful they find it to have to do this in school. It is not only an issue of the rights, mentioned many times already today, of children, schools and teachers; I think it is a matter of common sense. There is a risk that searching a child in a school could destroy trust between teachers and pupils and have a detrimental effect on the ethos of a school. Many teachers have said exactly that.

I have one small anecdote: I was speaking today to the Children’s Commissioner, who said that she had also had many representations from teachers about this issue. She told a story about a 12 year-old boy who was on a newspaper round with a friend of his. The newspapers have to be cut out of a plastic band when they are given out for distribution to the boys and girls. One of the boys had put the knife used to cut the band into his pocket by mistake and ended up in school with it. He was searched because someone said that he had a knife and he was excluded from the school. There is a great danger that without excellent guidance, that kind of thing will go on.

Of course, there should be training and a careful exploration of the issues within the school. But it is important to have strong, clear rules about what is brought into school and strong enforcement of those rules, involving parents and the community. That should be emphasised in guidance—in fact, it should be the first lines of any guidance on prevention. Many good schools already do that. They are tough about bringing things into schools because that is in the school rules. I hope that the Minister will consider the amendments because this is a very serious issue for teachers and schools, and liable to be very destructive unless handled carefully.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I wish to comment briefly on Amendments 8 and 10, and to give my warm support to Amendment 8. We had an important debate on that amendment in Committee and the Minister pointed out the difficulties with primary schools. The difficulties have been met in a reasonable way, I believe, and I hope that in the spirit of good compromise all round we might move with the amendment and see it eventually in the Bill.

On Amendment 10 and following the remarks of my colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, guidance is immensely important—at least as important as what is in the Bill. I hope that the discussions that she seeks can be taken forward, and I hope that guidance, especially from the Secretary of State going down to schools, can be liberally sprinkled with the word “normally”. This is a very important word. It is not a weakening but indicates what the standard is and what good practice is meant to be. It indicates strongly that if the guidance is not accepted in any set of school rules or school practice, there has to be a very good reason that can be stated either when the inspection system requires it or alternatively, sadly, when it comes to exclusions or even court cases. I stress that the difficulty we had in Committee was over legislating for every item that might be searched for or for every individual case in which a search might be made.

It is difficult to specify each case. At one time who would have dreamt that we were supposed to use plastic cutlery on airlines? Yet that has come to be. We would rather have general guidance indicating good practice and good sense with the use of the word “normally” and therefore a requirement to give a reason for a change in what has been regarded as good practice until now. I ask the Minister to look closely at Amendment 10.

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[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I speak to Amendments 17, 19, 21 and 29, and also support Amendment 15 and Amendments 24 to 28 that the noble Lord, Lord Low, and my noble friend Lord Touhig have spoken to. In particular, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, that Amendments 24 to 28 have, in quite large measure, been addressed by the guidance that we received from the Minister yesterday. I am pleased that, certainly at the stage of the review panel, which is the final stage in the process of reviewing an appeal, the Government have seen fit to make provision for most of the things demanded in Amendments 24 to 28: for a special needs expert to give their views, for the parents to have a right to that, for the parents to be told about that, and so on. That is all welcome.

However, the Government guidance does not address Amendment 15, which is similar in intent to our Amendment 17. They both seek to ask—the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, just alluded to it—whether we can make sure that relevant information, particularly about a child’s special educational needs and especially unidentified needs, has been brought into the process not at the final stage of the review panel but at the very earliest stage of the head teacher’s decision and particularly at the point at which the responsible body—that is, the governors of the school—has been asked by parents to review that decision.

Amendments 17 and 19, in particular, concern the exclusion of pupils who have unidentified special needs. There is a principle of natural justice underlying the amendments: that where a child is at risk of exclusion, the decision-maker should have the full facts about any special educational needs—not at the final stage, as I say, but at the earliest possible stage. This is particularly important where needs have not been identified, so these amendments would ensure that children with special educational needs but whose needs have not been adequately addressed by their schools are not permanently excluded. In Amendment 17, that is by ensuring that when “the responsible body”—that is, the governing body—is making the initial decision on whether to affirm the head teacher's decision, it must,

“consider a report … from the special … needs co-ordinator”,

or expert. In Amendment 19, it is by ensuring that when the review panel is considering the case at the final stage, it has a report.

I accept that, alongside Amendments 24 to 28, Amendment 19 has largely been covered by the Government, which is great. Yet in relation to Amendments 15 and 17, while the Minister’s letter accompanying that guidance says that the responsible body as well as the review panel should take account of any relevant information in relation to pupils’ special educational needs when reviewing the decision to exclude there is, first, no requirement for the head teacher to take cognisance of that information when taking the initial decision to exclude and, at the level of the governing body in deciding whether to review that decision there is, secondly, no right for the parent to have a special needs expert. The guidance refers simply to the governing body having information on the child's special educational needs already held by the school. It does not precisely cover the circumstances where such needs have not been identified because it simply refers to the school making available to the governing body information that it already has, not seeking a wider assessment of the special educational needs that the child may have.

Surely it is better to have this expert view early in the process so that an exclusion may be prevented rather than only at the final stage, when a review panel is deciding whether to endorse the decision. That is particularly so given that the review panel does not, according to the Government's proposals, have the power to reinstate the pupil. I very much support Amendment 15 but if the noble Lord, Lord Low, decides not to press that amendment then I give notice that I would like to take the opinion of the House on Amendment 17, which would similarly bring the special needs expert person into the process earlier on to prevent the exclusions.

Amendment 21 would empower the exclusion review panels to require the schools to reinstate a pupil if they are satisfied that that is the right thing to do. We had a long debate about this in Grand Committee, when there was a very strong view across the Committee that this was a principle of natural justice—that if a decision made against someone is later found to have been flawed, that decision should not stand. Yet that principle is not upheld under the clause and the right to insist on the reinstatement of an unfairly excluded child is withdrawn.

In Grand Committee the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, among others, expressed similar concerns. It is rather surprising that the only amendment in relation to the power to reinstate has come from me and my noble friends, because I thought that the consensus of opinion in Committee was in support of that. I accept that heads may be in a difficult position if a panel were to reinstate, but we also had a sensitive discussion in Grand Committee about what should prevail in those circumstances. I think we agreed that given the impact on the child of having a decision by the review panel to reinstate, that is a far better outcome for the child, even if after discussion the child goes to another placement because of all the issues that have preceded that decision. It gives the child some rights in relation to flawed decisions which, at the moment, are not contained in the Bill.

Amendment 29, briefly, would require,

“a school to retain an excluded pupil”,

on its school roll,

“and to fund the pupil’s education until the pupil is no longer of compulsory … age”.

Our intention here was that the schools should retain financial responsibility but, more importantly, the responsibility for progressing that child and for their final outcomes in whatever alternative provision they went into. The intention was twofold: first, to give schools the opportunity to have a second thought before making the final decision on exclusion, knowing that they would retain responsibility for a child, as a kind of check and balance in that system and, secondly, to make sure that the school has some responsibility for the final outcomes for the child—even if the child goes elsewhere.

The Minister has sent me a letter and the department has issued a press notice on the pilots that the Secretary of State has announced, which are not the same as those proposed in our amendment but go some way to exploring the potential for schools to have responsibility for arranging an alternative decision. It is not the same as giving schools the responsibility of keeping a child on the roll. However, it involves the schools having the finance that goes with arranging alternative provision and the responsibility for ensuring the equality of that provision and for staying in touch, albeit more informally, with what happens to that child. I welcome that provision and I look forward to hearing the outcome of those pilots.

Although there is some movement in relation to Amendments 19 and 29 in the guidance, if the noble Lord, Lord Low, does not press his amendment to a vote, I would like to take the view of the House on Amendment 17.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I welcome the movement that there has been on the principles of Amendments 19 and 29 because they are sensible principles. The moves of the Government go some way to reassuring me there but I want to comment on Amendment 21, which is clearly a crux amendment in terms of overturning the powers that are specifically included under subsection (1) of the proposed new clause in Clause 4(2)—the power of a,

“head teacher of a maintained school”,

to exclude permanently.

I want to retain that power and I do not wish to give the review panel the powers to overturn it. The reason I give for that is that it would produce a virtually impossible situation for both the school and the pupil. The case would be a cause célèbre by the time it came to this stage and it would not do either any good. There is sufficient safeguard in the Bill for the school to be very careful before it moves to such an extreme conclusion. The safeguards come in subsection (4)(c) of the proposed new clause in Clause 4(2), where it is hinted—indeed, it is said explicitly at one point—that the review panel may consider the procedures of the responsible body as flawed,

“in the light of the principles applicable on application for judicial review”.

That seems a very serious warning to a responsible body, be it a head teacher or a governing body, before making such a final judgment.

I would hope that that would be sufficient to deter bodies from, not frivolously, but perhaps injudiciously or in some weakening sense, causing an individual to be excluded unnecessarily. The suggestion that the school would be considered responsible for the financial provision for the future education of that individual is a fair warning to the school. Even if the higher motive did not prevail, the lower one might well do so in the school taking responsibility for what could be a very expensive course of education. I beg to differ on Amendment 21.

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.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, again, I rise briefly to support the noble Lord’s amendment. Like my noble friend, when I originally read the amendment, I thought that it was self-evident. However, the more I have looked at it and listened to the debate this afternoon, the more it seems to me that, once all the other elements have been stripped out of the legislation and the provisions, we increasingly rely on Ofsted as the final fallback to guarantee standards.

The noble Lord, Lord Low, is right to say that if we are not careful SEN provision will be swept under the carpet and will not be seen as a major factor in provision within schools. Looking at this issue in the context of some of the other amendments that we will debate this afternoon, with the new emphasis on PRUs and alternative academy provision, if we are not careful there will, whether the Government had intended it or not, be a move to take a lot of pupils with specialist needs out of mainstream education into other provision, and the expertise that goes with it will be lost.

Therefore, the noble Lord’s amendment is helpful. It would be reassuring to have it in the Bill, and it would reassure people who see mainstream schools as having an essential responsibility to provide SEN provision and to make sure that it is high quality and high class. It would also reassure people about the intent in the other sections of the Bill.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I sympathise very much with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Low, but I also sympathise with the tensions expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. There are difficulties here. This is pretty much a sledgehammer amendment and I am not sure that I would want to go that far. However, I invite the Minister to say that he will take away the spirit of the amendment, as well as the comments, and look at how we can best improve the quality of SEN teaching. It is a very tall order to ask any school to be outstanding in all areas that might have to be dealt with under the general heading of SEN, and we might find a more subtle way of inviting them to apply for an outstanding rating in areas where they show expertise.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, what the noble Lord has just said may well be the right approach. However, in the mean time, the important question was that asked by the noble Lord, Lord Elton, regarding number, where there has certainly been an increase. Obviously, as these matters are spread—as they should be, in my view—throughout the education system generally, it is very important that we know that adequate teachers and teaching assistants are trained to see that these children receive the very best education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, Whitehall is a long way from Walsall, and the Secretary of State for Education, who sits on one of the peaks in Whitehall, is even further from the parent in the small primary school in Walsall. I think that it is a step too far to assume that the route for dealing with problems of this kind must inevitably flow through the Secretary of State’s office. I support the amendment.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much support the amendment of my noble friend Lord Low. Indeed, it is strongly reinforced by other experts in the field. It is clearly unacceptable for there not to be any method of redress for parents of children who are not having their needs met. Children taken into care have been given a lot of attention and it very much looks as though they will be a high priority for school placements and so on. That is right and proper because they are firmly the responsibility of the state. However, that does not mean that there should not be an equal method of appeal for those who fall into a lesser category of concern.

I am very impressed by the Local Government Ombudsman, as the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, has clearly been. I am certainly not going to complain because it is part of a government department, but it is equally important that it has local knowledge and can understand local situations.

Therefore, I hope that we shall hear that the Minister has a very definite concern about what he has heard and that he will be taking away the whole matter and coming back with something more positive on Report.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, I have two problems with this amendment, although I recognise the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness. When I read through the amendment, I asked myself how I would feel if I were the director of children’s services in a local authority. The director of children’s services in many authorities was the former director of education—the person responsible for all schools that were not academies or free schools. The director of children’s services still has the same responsibilities for all community schools and all schools that remain in the local authority’s purview.

If I were the director of children’s services, I would find it difficult to have someone coming in as a schools commissioner and suddenly having a role with the schools that I would regard as my responsibility. The noble Baroness is concerned about the academies and free schools that are not within the local authority’s purview, but she has overlooked the fact that schools can do intelligent and sensible things about collaboration and co-operation without someone from outside telling them what to do.

I recently visited the London Borough of Hackney, which now has more academies than community schools. The principals of the academies have come together informally to deal with special educational needs and with admissions. People who run schools are intelligent and powerful people. They do not need someone from outside coming and telling them to do these clever things. Most arrangements for collaborations between schools that we have applauded and encouraged in our discussions in Committee are not necessarily confined to one authority. Many schools have developed collaborations with schools that are independent and with schools outside their own authority, particularly in the big cities where boundaries are permeable and children go to school across them.

For all these reasons, I would find this very difficult. Once again, we are assuming that we have to be cleverer than the senior people who run our schools and who are making intelligent decisions.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, on a point of order I wonder whether we could have the timing clocks switched on. I am tempted to add wickedly that I am constructing a league table of length of contributions and I have yet to decide whether it will be published anonymously or not.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees]

My Lords, there is a technical problem. Unfortunately, the clocks were not switched on at the beginning of this amendment and there is no way of winding them back, even though we all know that we started at 11.57 am. If the noble Lord could do some mental arithmetic, it would satisfy his curiosity.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Ritchie of Brompton]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment in this group, Amendment 108A. As has been said, the passage of the Academies Act last year allowed us considerable debate on the merits of the academy system introduced by the previous Government and accelerated by the current one. Academies have become an established part of the education system and I do not want to revisit that debate. Through this probing amendment I wish to raise local government concerns over the ability of the education system to react to local circumstances. Here, I must yet again declare an interest as the chair of the LGA children and young people’s board.

Amendment 108A would alter Schedule 11 to allow it to continue to recognise the Government’s ambition of seeing schools transferred to academy status, but would retain the necessary local flexibility in the school system to allow for local needs to be taken into account and avoid the creation of a potentially burdensome process for establishing new schools.

Schedule 11 creates a requirement for a local authority seeking to establish a new school first to look at setting up an academy. Councils do not object to that first part of the schedule. However, its subsequent provisions establish a process by which the local authority must report to the DfE on the process of establishing that new academy. Further provisions place restrictions on the establishment of new schools, requiring a council to seek permission from the DfE before considering alternative models of provision and giving powers to the department to order a council to withdraw a notice issued to invite proposals for establishing a new school.

The DfE has projected that while overall pupil numbers in state-funded schools have been in decline, they will increase from this year onwards. Indeed, by 2014, pupil numbers in maintained primary schools will be more than 8 per cent higher than in 2010. Despite the current contraction in demand for secondary school places, the increase in demand for primary school places over the next three to four years is likely to create a sudden boom in the demand for pupil places such that the education system has not had to react to since demand began to decline in 2004.

The primary concern of a council and its community when managing this demand and seeking to establish a new school should be the needs of local parents, and of course of children. Furthermore, councils must be able to balance place provision to ensure that the needs of the entire local area are met. We need to ensure that the Bill does not reduce the ability of local parents, education providers and councils to respond quickly and effectively to new demand and that local choice and diversity of provision are maintained.

Unfortunately, the later provisions in Schedule 11 could restrict the ability of local communities to decide what type of school is established, not only by the creation of burdensome and bureaucratic reporting requirements but ultimately by placing decision-making in the hands of departmental officials in Whitehall rather than locally elected representatives in town halls. Councils understand their residents and local areas well. If local parents do not want schools to be established as academies, there needs to be an option to reflect local parental demand and to establish other types of schools. Councils should not be required to get permission from Whitehall before responding to and implementing the wishes of local residents.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I hope to speak to briefly on this question in view of my earlier remarks. This is a crucial clause, which has to do with the direction of government policy and a struggle that might develop between national policy and local authorities. The Academies Bill has gone through. I supported that, and I support the direction of travel in this Bill, not least because it clarifies very considerably what the Academies Bill amounted to. There are two or three points of difficulty that I want to mention, to which I hope the Minister might respond.

First, if every school becomes an academy, which is a possibility, then, as we have consistently pointed out, there may be cracks in the system. There has to be some oversight should these cracks appear. This is not regulating schools; it is trying to find a coherent policy that serves the needs of the whole community, should every school become independent of local authority control. As I said, the direction of travel is right, not least because we have had many decades of local authority supervision of schools and we do not have a system that any of us is content with. That is the reality, and it is one good reason why we should support the Bill, another being the excellence of the academy policy of the previous Government and the way in which many schools want to sign up to it. We have to give this a fair wind.

I have read the Explanatory Notes very carefully, and paragraph 180 contains a series of bullet points on which it is possible for local authorities to take a view on founding a further school. The most significant of these is a loophole. It is the last bullet point in paragraph 180, and it reads:

“Local authority proposals for a new community or foundation school”,

are possible,

“where following publication of a section 7 notice no proposals are approved by the local authority, no Academy arrangements are entered into, or no proposals are received”.

There is therefore, as I read this, room for the local authority to take steps to make provision for what otherwise might be absent.

I have two further points. First, the proposals for a series of schools becoming in effect independent over the years lack a proper sense of scrutiny of what might happen over the next five, 10 or 15 years in some of these schools. I shall speak to this point when we come on to exemptions from inspection and I shall not expand on it now. Secondly, 20 years ago a Secretary of State came up with a great new whizz and said to me, “Stewart, I plan to make all schools directly answerable to the Secretary of State. What do you think?”. I gulped and pointed out to him that this might mean that in Parliament he would be answering questions about the state of the lavatories at Walford primary school because there would be no other place to go to raise the questions. I hope any sensible Government would want to avoid that kind of situation.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, my Amendment 111A is different in content from the other amendments in the group, but like them it concerns the vigilance that we need to exercise over academies. Small-scale, local and innovative new schools and academies are good ideas in education. However, when groups of people get together to innovate in education, we will not want them to act in ignorance of good practice and the immense importance of the built environment. My amendment would give them exactly that access to good practice.

I have been in academies—which, as we all know, were formerly instigated to turn around fading schools—and the influence of the building and its design have been paramount. The latest RIBA report, Good Design: It All Adds Up, gives several examples of the educational effectiveness and economy of good school buildings. One of the most anti-educational elements in a school is insecurity—the lack of physical safety, the prevalence of bullying, petty theft, a culture of skiving off, persuading other members of a peer group to do the same, and vandalism.

I have seen buildings that have completely reversed this trend. It sounds like common sense but in fact the proponents of skilled design to improve security had to argue their case, such as everywhere being easy to see, personal lockers and toilets with only the cubicles private. The effects showed in the figures: much higher attendance, truancy dropping well below the London average, much higher attainment and even, at some schools, a reduction of crime in the immediate area. The only correlative was the new school building.

Of course it is not only security that makes a difference, although in failing schools it has been a huge factor. Ease and enjoyment of learning and pride in school are strongly influenced by the layout of classrooms, libraries, larger meeting places such as assembly halls, smaller informal ones, and other physical factors such as ventilation and light, which allow good teachers to give of their best. It all looks obvious when you see it in a school building, but far too few people realise what expertise goes into the right design and how much well-being is created by it.

I am sure that the Minister understands this point, as do his colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and I hope that he will grasp the opportunity for our children in the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the noble Lord for his interesting contribution. Is it the Government’s intention that in future all schools should become academies? I think the answer—although the Minister did not put it in these blunt terms—is yes. It was interesting that in his response to the very wide debate that we have had and the comments from around the Room he did not seem to mention parents and communities.

The Government have decided centrally that in future all schools should be academies and that local democracy does not figure in this brave new world that we are creating. That is sad because it means that all the local choice that the Government have been talking about will not exist in practice in the future. The Government are sending out a signal that high-performing maintained schools, of which there are many around the country, are being classified as second class: that they are not the current or future game in town. That is sad, because if you ask most parents around the country they would really like choice. Of course they all want high-quality, high-performing schools, but they want choice— and I do not see where choice figures in Schedule 11.

Under the current arrangements, without Schedule 11 we already have the opportunity for schools to transfer to academies and for new schools to become academies. The figures have already been quoted about how many existing and new schools are becoming academies—the process is already happening out there—and Schedule 11 adds nothing except to give the Secretary of State undue powers to instruct that this will always be the case.

I would have liked to have heard more from the Minister on the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Ritchie, about the expansion of the school role and communities being able to respond rapidly to and having some control over what happens in the locality.

I listened carefully to the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, and I was slightly disappointed with what he said. He seemed to be suggesting that we should not worry because there is a loophole. I would have thought that local communities want more than a loophole; they want the right to determine what should happen in their area.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

May I just clarify? That is the way in which the note is written. It seems to me that there is a power there that local authorities can use. There is an extra step—I concede that—but there is a power that they can use to create a school that meets the needs of the community if there is no alternative proposal that would meet them.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

If that is what we have to rely on, it is to be regretted. It should be much more of a forceful and enforceable right. I do not think I have anything more to say. In some sense this is an ideological difference between us. However, it is not about academies or no academies but about central and local control. We are very much on the side of parents, local communities and local democratically elected representatives. I do not think that the Government have fully acknowledged that. I am sure we will return to this subject, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I take a more radical view than my noble friend, although if her amendment was accepted a lot of my worries would be dealt with. The Government are making a great mistake in going down this route. It is not that I like Ofsted—I do not like the old-style Ofsted; a lot needs to be improved about it. But going in this direction is going to cause considerable problems down the road.

Schools that are rated outstanding often do not stay outstanding. Quite a high proportion of them drift downwards. This is entirely natural, with changes in the staff and in tempo and other changes that mean that a school loses its grip on the excellence that it once had. Perhaps it was lucky to get a grade 1 in the first place and has just slipped back to its natural place in grade 2. Unless you have some contact with the school, you absolutely do not know that that is happening.

One of the main grouses that I have with Ofsted at the moment is that it is very late to pick up changes. Ofsted will pile into a school and put it in special measures when, if it had caught it a couple of years earlier, it would have meant a minor change of course. I can think of an excellent secondary school in Manchester that was dumped into special measures when it got a head who was being experimental and trying all sorts of things and forgetting to look after the basic management of the school. It was a very easy thing for an experienced head to pick up; if someone had just come in, as my noble friend Lady Perry suggests, and had a look at the school, they would have sensed that immediately.

I do not share the confidence of my colleagues on the Liberal Democrat Benches that these things get picked up by parents, since parents are by and large terribly loyal to their schools. They do not talk to outside people or to Ofsted. There may be a flow of information round the local circuit, but it does not get out of that; no one complains. Often, there will be a flow of propaganda from the school that what it is doing is right and that the course it is taking is the best one. Even if it is experimental and there are some worries about it at the moment, it will all work out. Parents are inclined to accept that and an outside expert eye can make all the difference. At the moment, Ofsted is deficient in that it does not look at schools often enough and this causes much greater problems than there ought to be. If we get to a position where Ofsted does not see schools at all, we will start to have serious problems going unchecked, to the point where the rot is so bad that the fruit falls off the tree and the educational lives of a great many pupils are seriously damaged.

Beyond that, we are considering opening up the curriculum so that a great deal of what a secondary school, in particular, does will be down to that school. So we will start not to know what a school is doing and whether it is doing well unless someone tells us what is going on. How will we know that PSHE in a school is being done properly, or what is being done, or what is being taught? We will rely entirely on what the school chooses to tell us. If it is a good school doing the right thing, fine—that will be all right—but how will we know if that is the case?

The proposals in this clause, as they are now, will fail schools, fail children and fail parents and the information they should have. We should seriously look to do something about this.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, the clause is very radical in its consequences. Amendments 113D, 114 and 114A are all firefighting amendments and I support them as such, particularly with regard to the importance of safeguarding. However, I agree with my colleague and friend, the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, that, if we move away from requiring inspection of a whole range of schools, danger lies down the road and that we may be in a different position when debating this issue in five or 10 years’ time.

I was involved when Ofsted was established—I am sorry to be historical but this is relevant—and one of the earliest things I did was to go to a meeting with private school head teachers. I was wise to go to girls’ schools where they were mostly lady head teachers, who were much more reasonable. I challenged them and said, “If the state system can put up with this, what about you”? Much to their credit, they began to create an inspection system of their own and compared notes with Ofsted all the way down the line and found it beneficial.

On another bit of relevant history, five years ago during debates on the Education and Inspections Bill, a major issue about faith schools arose. Indeed, after re-reading Hansard and as I look around, it is like being back there—the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, the noble Baronesses, Lady Walmsley, Lady Sharpe, Lady Perry and Lady Howarth, were all there when we debated it at some length. They may recall—I certainly do, as I tabled one or two crucial amendments—that there was an immense degree of what I can only call aggression. Except for the issue of assisted dying, I have not seen the House of Lords quite as split right down the middle as on the question of the future of faith schools.

We have had a sensation of that in this Committee but we have held back, I am happy to say. However, that could be recreated because the exemptions proposed include a number of faith schools that cause severe worries for Members of the House. This may reopen the whole issue of whether there should be any at all, let alone, as the question was, any new ones. I see, for example, Amendment 114 as a step towards this. There could be other ways in which one might take a step towards obviating the possibility of a certain kind of curriculum, the way in which it is taught and a lack of attention to community cohesion—which I believe were the words on which the amendments at that time focused.

The crucial issue was that there would be a backstop, and Ofsted would inspect all schools on the basis of their capacity to create cohesion in the community. That provided a net within which many of the worries of Members of the House were resolved sufficiently for them not to move down the much more radical secular path. I put it to the Minister that a number of us would be minded to introduce further amendment at the next stage if Clause 39 stands in its current form without these issues being dealt with.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I will ask a brief but important question in relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker. I should have stood up and asked her, but I have been told off before for standing up too soon, so I thought that I would wait.

I was unable to be present for the Statement yesterday about buildings, and I am sure that this might have been raised then. The question is whether or not a building should be a limiting factor in an Ofsted inspection’s outcome. Many schools now have huge problems with their standards, and I speak as a trustee of a college where the premises are totally inappropriate for the work that we are trying to do. This means that we can never get a good Ofsted inspection, despite the fact that the teaching is good and the pupils like going there. There would be nowhere else for these disabled young people to go if it did not exist. In the present economic climate, is this limiting factor appropriate when we know that it is not going to change? This school would have been redeveloped under the previous programme, which, of course, was abandoned.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, the amendments tabled by my noble friends Lord Quirk and Lord Ouseley belong closely together because you do not have to visit many primary schools with children of disadvantaged backgrounds to discover that one of their chief difficulties is lack of linguistic capacity when moving from reception into primary school. That is why I support the amendments, as I do the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady Flather. In view of what I said earlier, I shall not repeat myself, but there is a definition of community cohesion, quoted by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, from the Home Office, available at column 39 of volume 686 of Hansard.

[Baroness Hooper]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendments 117 and 121, and I wish to associate myself with the remarks made by the noble Lord, Lord Quirk, with regard to Amendment 117. Both these amendments were intended to remind us of and to draw our attention to the importance of the teaching and learning of modern languages for communication skills, for understanding other people’s cultures, as an added value for employment purposes and to enable pupils to have a better understanding of their own language. I wish to make that rapid interjection to support these amendments.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Peston]

My Lords, I start by declaring an interest, or in my case a lack of interest, in that I am an atheist. I regard all religions and religious doctrines as simply nonsensical—tout court nonsensical. Over the past few years I totally opposed the Government, who I supported, in their total misuse of public money in order to increase the vast number of religious schools in this country. It is a source of pride to me that I never once voted with my own Government on that extension and waste of public money, and I stick to that view.

Referring to my noble friend’s remarks just now, only once in my 25 years in your Lordships’ House, I ended up in the Chamber by mistake and I could not get out because the doors were locked, so I was present during the act of spiritual worship or whatever it is called. I have to say that I regarded it as one of the weirdest experiences I have ever had, in a life that has included a great many broad experiences. I could not believe what I was observing, and I say that in terms.

Having said that, I am as committed as anyone in the Room to freedom of thought, belief and expression. I have never spent any time trying to persuade anyone who was religious that they should not be. Quite to the contrary, I would regard it as a disaster in our country if our young people were not brought up to read the King James version of the Bible, one of the greatest works of literature in our history. I discovered the other day on Google that there are several other versions of the Bible, and they are so bad that they must have been written by people with the prose equivalent of cloth ears. I gather that they are more correct translations of the Hebrew, but compared with the King James version, I would not allow any child to read them.

I have no difficulty whatsoever in our children knowing about religion, but I insist that this has nothing to do with religious education. I want people to know that there are many religions. Indeed, speaking as an atheist, I think that the more religions they know about, in my view, the less likely they will be to believe that any of them can be true, because how can you have so many if they are all true? Not long ago, the Chief Rabbi made the terrible mistake of saying, “Of course, we have different religions, but we all worship the same God”. The Orthodox Jewish rabbis said, “No, we don't”, and the Chief Rabbi—mistakenly, in my opinion—withdrew his remark.

Therefore, the question is not one of religion; it has nothing to do with whether you are a believer. I reiterate my point that I am not seeking to persuade those of you who are believers that you should not be—that is your choice—but the act of assembly in school, which is vital to the unity and whole atmosphere of the school, should be conducted on a totally non-religious basis.

I would go further. My view is that the assembly should be conducted largely by the pupils, not by the head teacher or other teachers. To give an example, if it were my choice, every day I would have one of the pupils talking about some great figure in the world, their courage and what they achieved, such as Aung San Suu Kyi or the woman who is being threatened with being stoned to death by the Iranians for sticking up for what she thought was right. Pupils in schools could choose those great figures, and that is exactly the atmosphere that I would want to develop—plus the bit about someone telling the school that the first 11 lost at cricket yet again, and so on, which was certainly my experience of school assembly.

As my noble friend Lady Massey brought to our attention, the whole point of the gathering is that people meet together for the sake of producing a decent spirit in the school in which religion should have no part to play, other than that people should be aware of other people’s multiplicity of opinions and views. I would have no objection if, one day, one of the pupils who spoke decided that their address would be to say why they were a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim, but they would be saying it only as a contribution to general discussion not as a formal religious matter.

Times have changed. We need to know that the world is full of different people. When I went to school, I did not know that there were any blacks around at all. There were no blacks to be seen in any of the schools where I was. I was happy, when my children went to the local comprehensive, that they knew that there was a vast range of different people in the world. I am certain that they benefited enormously from that.

I am not certain that I like the detail of any of the amendments, and I say to my noble friend that I hope that we can come back at Report with something that we can divide on so that we can at least test the opinion of the House.

The important thing is the gathering at the beginning of the school day which unites the school and does not divide it.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords—

[Lord Griffiths of Burry Port]

My Lords, I confess myself to be a little confused that the exigencies of the arrangements of this Room have led to my sitting on the government side, but I will do my very best to use this to illustrate the point that, in a perfect world, people can sit anywhere and have decently held points of view without being called nonsensical for them.

I also want to say to the noble Baroness, Lady Flather, that I will make it my resolution to work as hard as I possibly can to show the other face of Methodism for as long as we know each other. In response to my noble friend Lord Touhig—I must say that he is my noble friend, although he is sitting opposite me—I just want to mention that, although the first line of the hymn that he sang at the Baptist Sunday school anniversary is “Jesus wants me for a sunbeam”, I happen to know that its last line is,

“You in your small corner, and I in mine”,

which is pretty much what this debate seems to be turning out to be like.

This is a terribly important debate and the points of view that I have been hearing are necessary and are to be engaged with, but I just feel uncertain that they sit comfortably within the scope of this Bill. I feel that this proposal would take a stance against the historic position. Let us remind ourselves that the 1944 Act, which brought this collective worship idea into being, was really an attempt to bring together the provision of schools by a variety of bodies, most of which were Christian. It is still the case that the Church of England has a significant stake in secondary education and a predominant stake in primary education. Therefore, we are talking really about history and culture—this is who we are and this is our identity—and I do not at all want to discount other religions or other points of view.

I listened to what was said by the noble Lord, although apparently I am not being listened to myself, but I just feel that the demonising of collective acts of worship is not consistent with my experience of actually performing them. In the hundreds of different kinds of school where I have led assemblies all over the world, I can promise you—perhaps I should not promise, as there are bishops here—that, in any school where I have been a governor or led a school assembly, I have never met antagonism, objection or dissent about what is being offered.

In the East End of London, one of the two schools for which I have responsibility attracts 60 per cent of its pupils from a Bengali population. People send their girls to the school because it has a religious basis and they want the structures that go with that; there is no proselytising and, if there were, the people doing it would be on the carpet. In the boys’ school where I lead collective acts of worship, I am conscious of the range of religions and I suppose that there are people of no religion. That does not worry me in the slightest. We can conjure up an idea, we can play with a thought and we can ground that thought in the traditional religious position, indicate that there are other ways of looking at it and then call for a silence—which is what I do—during which people can think their own thoughts according to their own inner light. There are ways of doing these things without us getting into this silly antagonistic position.

In response to my noble friend Lady Massey, who was my mentor in bringing me into the House of Lords—she wanted a religious person to see if it was all right, but now that we are sitting on opposite sides I am not so sure about that—I just feel honestly that we are making more of this than needs to be made. It is not a problem in the experience of the schools that I know about, and I know about lots and lots of schools. Let us have the debate another day. If a consensus emerges from a debate dedicated to this subject, then let us see what we have to do about that, but piggy-backing the subject on this Bill seems to me to be inappropriate.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am very pleased that I gave way to the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths. It was a humane contribution to a discussion that was otherwise beginning to polarise. I do not have interests to declare of the kind that others have declared. I am not a card-carrying member of any secular society or indeed of any church or religion. I suppose that my interest, if I have one, is that I was once a professor of philosophy of religion. In that context, I learnt that there are all sorts of philosophies, and on the whole the one that I liked best was that of David Hume, who taught me a bit of pragmatism. For example, I have discovered pragmatically that if you want a seat that allows you to take part at Question Time and you are a Cross-Bencher, you have little choice but to attend worship in the main Chamber. It is between me and my conscience what I am thinking when all that is going on, although I am not quite as clear in my mind as perhaps some of my noble friends are.

In this context, the reality—and this has been happening for a number of years—is that in many schools assembly is withering on the vine. In other schools, the assembly is very important because they have either a statutory or at least a common religious character that is accepted in the community. There, the assembly fits very well into the day’s activities and, by and large, the parents respect it.

I reiterate an additional point that the noble Lord, Lord Griffiths, drew out. If you were to replace assembly completely by fiat and say that assemblies must not take place, that would be a rational position that I would understand, although I would not share it. However, if you do that, you need properly to sort out the alternative. The one thing that assembly does is to engage the emotions of young people, which, sadly, is what we have failed to do with much of the curriculum. There are a variety of alternative ways of engaging the emotions of young people and, for some, religious worship in the community is one. Therefore, I would be very reluctant to get my tanks lined up and say, “Shoot it out of the Bill now”. If, as a matter of evolution, assembly is withering on the vine—which, I believe, is the reality—alternatives will, in an evolutionary way, begin to emerge, and that would seem a wholly satisfactory way of changing the situation in our schools. However, without further discussion and without a further clear picture of the alternative, I would not want to support the amendment.

[Baroness Whitaker]

My Lords, I think that my noble friend Lord Griffiths, who is temporarily sitting on the other side, is very disarming but I disagree with him about the relevance of these amendments. I am sure that many people in this Room and outside share the view that a moral and spiritual dimension to school life is essential. I personally think that it is essential for school students to join in a morally and spiritually uplifting act every day. The problem is that, if it is a Christian act, quite a lot of children are not Christian and some are not of that particular sect of Christianity. Those children are deprived. When I went to school, the children who were withdrawn sat outside, as has been said, and I do not think that that is what school is about.

Of course, I have absolutely no objection to children learning about Christianity. It is one of our glorious traditions which I do not happen to share but, like my noble friend, I am very glad to have known the King James Bible and, for that matter, the Bible of Tyndale. I would have no objection at all to my children experiencing a Christian religious ceremony or a collective act referring to the Christian approach. What I really think we should move away from, for all the reasons which have been given and which I shall not repeat, is a sectarian approach to morality and spirituality. We really cannot allow our children in this wide, diverse world to think that only one way to truth is the right way, that only one morality is right and that only one spirituality has any validity. Therefore, I am extremely happy to support the spirit behind all these amendments.

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My question to the Minister is: if you take away the last Government’s mechanism for solving the three problems what are you going to put in place? The problems are: first, the complexity of the system, even more so now that every school has responsibility for its own admissions arrangements; secondly, the behaviour of the schools, given that it has been proven that schools will endeavour to take the children that are easiest to teach; and, thirdly, the need to protect those schools whose chances of increasing or improving standards can be detrimentally affected by the admissions arrangements of a neighbouring school.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the idea that schools should have discretion in relation to admissions policy but it should be a clear, publicly stated admissions policy. Out of that, however, come two difficulties, one of which is the possibility of anarchy. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, indicated how that was the case. As a young, innocent parent who came to joust within the Inner London Education Authority, longer ago than I care to remember, there was an element of anarchy in the system. As a parent, if you were not savvy or did not know x, y and z, you could not crack it. There is an issue of anarchy here. If every school has its own admissions policy and there is no co-ordination, parents will find themselves in an anarchic situation but will not quite know it. The knowing and the well attached will do well. The second danger is fairness and unfairness. The point has been made and we need someone to take responsibility for saying whether or not cumulatively these admissions policies add up either to anarchy or unfairness. There may be better ways of doing it. The best way is having many excellent schools, but we are where we are.

I draw quick comparisons with universities. There was a risk of anarchy in admissions systems a number of years ago as a number of universities expanded in the 1960s and thereafter. That anarchy was dealt with in part through creating UCAS, the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. For example, there was an agreement that you could not apply to both Oxford and Cambridge, and that if you wanted to apply to one of them, you had to apply earlier. Rules were worked out so that people knew where they were.

On the question of fairness, and here I put a direct question to the Government, in universities there is a sudden interest in fairness and access and OFFA may well have its powers increased to deal with a set of financial regulations about how universities are funded. It is interesting that in one educational context regulation and the imposition of fairness and unfairness is taking place, and yet in schools the same question of fairness is going in the other direction. We need consistency here.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I look forward to what my noble friend has to say because I share some of the concerns of other Members of the Committee. I think it is important that we should continue to move schools admissions towards fairness. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has pointed out, this is not the history of schools. They have always been interested in finding ways of covert selection. The history of the last 10 years or so has been a gradual winding back from that. We even have Cardinal Vaughan Memorial School, that great Catholic school in west London, removing some of the most objectionable means of social selection which were in its admissions criteria. There are other examples of progress throughout the UK.

The Anglican church has been very helpful in what it has done to make schools fairer. However, it is a process that goes against the natural inclination of schools and governors. Once parents capture a school, they tend to want to keep it captured. I find it hard to understand how the proposals in the Bill will improve fairness. At this point, I shall sit down and listen to my noble friend.

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[Lord Touhig]

I am very grateful to my noble friend for clarifying that point, because it is important that we fully understand her views on this. I am glad that I gave her the opportunity to explain in more detail what she believes and understands. I accept her final point. I have been the governor of a faith school and there are instances where people move around in order to try to get their child into a faith school.

I am troubled and confused about Amendment 138. It states:

“No Academy may select more than 50% of its pupils on criteria based on religious characteristics”.

It goes on to say that those who attend will be required,

“to take a full part in the school’s religious life”.

It seems to state that half the school population should not be of any particular faith but that all the school population must take part in the school’s religious life. To my mind, that is wrong. I strongly support the view that parents should have the right to withdraw their child or children from the religious life of a school if they so wish. At the moment, Catholic schools that convert to academy status retain their existing admissions arrangements. The amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, would mean that 50 per cent of the pupils would not be admitted on the basis of faith. This makes no sense whatsoever and is really discriminatory. My noble friend Lady Massey made the point about public funding for faith schools. The Catholic church, like others, pays a great deal of money towards supporting its own schools in any event. We should bear that in mind.

Amendment 140, moved by my noble friend Lady Massey, states,

“admission arrangements for the school should make no provision for selection on the basis of religion or belief”.

I am sure that it is not my noble friend’s intention, but that would put at risk every Catholic school and faith school in the country. What is the point of having a Catholic school, or a faith school of any kind, if there is to be no provision based on faith, belief or religion in deciding the admissions policy? I am sure it is not her intention—I am sure it would never be the intention of my party—to close every faith school in the country, but that is the risk of this amendment.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I remind the Committee that the issue of parents who try to move into areas near schools is not confined to faith schools. I remember the distant days of people of the most surprising political background being able to afford houses near Holland Park because it was not a bog standard comprehensive. That has gone on for quite some time in a variety of communities; it is not confined to faith schools.

I support Amendment 138. The direction of travel is the right one, to open up the community, and it seems compatible that those liberal churchmen and women whom I know would want this. There may be a practical problem. If this is seen as a restriction in terms of faith background, I am not sure that Muslim schools would be able to fill all their places. We would have to be a bit careful about that formulation. On the second part of Amendment 138, if we have faith schools, that seems to me to be part of the deal. If my parents had decided to send me to a sports academy—God forbid—part of their understanding would have been that I would spend hours in the gym and on wet, cold, miserable sports fields. Although I might never have forgiven them, that would have been part of going to that kind of school. The same applies to technical schools and other sorts of schools. I think it not unreasonable that a faith school with a particular ethos and direction should say to parents, “You understand that this is how we do things here”. Then you inspect them independently and see whether they do it in a fair and reasonable way.

[Lord Baker of Dorking]

My Lords, I support what the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, has said, and I support Amendments 138 and 140. I think that the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in her characteristically charming way, may have gone a little far in wanting to end all faith schools in our country. The view I have taken consistently in my political life is that one should live with the existing faith schools and make them more inclusive, but I have always resisted the creation of new faith schools. When I had responsibility for these matters, I did not approve an exclusive faith school, and I think it was a mistake on the part of the Labour Government in 1997 to open up that possibility again.

Why do I say that? During the war, I went to an Anglican primary school in Southport. I loved it. It was a Victorian building and I had, as the basis of such education as I have had, a Victorian education. The school was right next door to the church. However, religion was not thrust down our throats. We went to church twice a year, at Christmas and at Easter. Of course we started each day with a hymn and a prayer, but everyone did that in those days. It was really a community school and embodied for me the great attractions of Anglicanism. Belief was a comfort rather than a passion and there was a welcome absence of fervour. It was, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lichfield said, a community school which included everybody. My closest friend was a Jewish boy who was the son of a refugee. When I went to see his family, his mother explained the Jewish faith to me. I believe strongly that in schools, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists should all sit alongside each other, play alongside each other, eat alongside each other and go home on the same bus together, because that way lies tolerance, understanding and forbearance. If one moves away from that, one creates intolerance and all the troubles of a divided society.

It was interesting to hear the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, speak, because he recalled the debates we had four years ago when the policy of the Labour party, I am glad to say, was that in all new faith schools, 25 per cent of the pupils should come from outside the faith. It was a view expounded by the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, in the House of Lords, and I shared it. It was not shared by the leaders of my party, but they were mistaken in that. They are not always mistaken, but they were mistaken then. I campaigned with the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, to support the view. Unfortunately, the Labour party was rattled by a quite unscrupulous campaign by the Catholic church—I see the noble Lord is nodding so he must have been part of it—in which it tried to pretend that this would undermine all Catholic schools in the country for ever. But it was only for new Catholic schools, and the Catholic church had founded only two new schools in England since the war. The Catholic church thought that with all these Poles coming into the country, there would be lots more Catholic children in future, although I think that that particular ambition has been dashed. It was a quite unscrupulous campaign and the Labour Party gave in and surrendered.

The amendments were drawn up. I had seen the amendments ready to be tabled saying that new faith schools should ensure that 25 per cent of their intake was from outside the faith. During those debates, the present Archbishop enunciated the policy of the Anglican church, which has been developed by the right reverend Prelate today, and said that for new Anglican church schools, 25 per cent of the intake should be from outside the faith or of no faith. That has now been extended to 50 per cent, and I do not disagree with that at all. It is the best way to go forward.

If, during the next five to 10 years, we see the establishment of faith schools, particularly of the new faiths in our country, we are going to have very exclusive schools that I think will create divisions in society, particularly in our towns and cities. I favour very much the idea of all new schools at least being inclusive and extending that slowly to all schools. In fact, that is the reality. Very few Catholic schools today have 100 per cent Catholic pupils, so they are part of the policy. Why do you not announce it? There must be a direction somewhere from on high that you do not. The Anglican community of faith schools is very inclusive today—by nature, it always is. As the right reverend Prelate said, some of these schools are 100 per cent Muslim but they still have the rigour of teaching that comes from a belief. That is very important.

I know that I am not going to persuade the Minister to agree with us because I think that they are going to approve some new faith schools. I must say that that would be a profound mistake.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Lingfield]

My Lords, I rather support the amendment because, as my noble friend Lady Perry said, a large number of schools, not just in the state sector but in the independent sector, are considering innovation as regards examinations. A number of very grand independent schools can consider these and not worry about any point scoring that comes out in league tables throughout the country. However, many other schools cannot afford to take these initiatives in a way that they might wish to. This is a good idea. I am not certain what the minutiae of it could be, but I very much hope that the Minister will take away the point made by my noble friends Lord Lucas and Lady Perry and look at it carefully.

While we are on the subject of Ofqual, noble Lords will remember that huge difficulties were mentioned in the newspapers during the previous round of examinations which did not show some of the awarding bodies in a very good light. I understand that there were nine incidents overall. I am sure that the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that Ofqual can impose two types of sanction on the awarding bodies—first, a rap over the knuckles, which may not be very effective; and, secondly, the nuclear option of striking them off the list, which may not be in any way suitable and could cause great difficulties. Therefore, will the Minister and his colleagues consider a third option that could involve a series of fines for various circumstances that would add seriously to the sanctions available to Ofqual? Perhaps some of the difficulties that arose last year and caused distress to pupils and schools will not arise in the future?

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I support the remarks that have just been made. Ofqual is in its early stages; it has set off on what is essentially a new path with new powers given on the Floor of this House, among other places. It is important that Ofqual has the powers and flexibility to maintain a reputation that will be essential if standards are to be properly observed in this country.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, very briefly, this is my maiden contribution to this consideration in Committee of the Bill. I am a former Minister, and perhaps I should formally declare that I am a fellow of City and Guilds, although I have no operational responsibilities there.

I also warm to this idea. There was a time—if noble Lords wish to look it up; as I recall, it was Section 24 of the Further and Higher Education Act 1992—when it was in the hands of the Minister of the day, who happened to be me, to exercise a kind of nuclear option whereby everything that was not authorised could be extinguished. That is an extreme version and one that every year we fought off enacting. I am very glad that we did. The world is a much more protean place now. I happen recently to have had correspondence with the Minister’s colleagues in the department about some very sensible input by the French inspector general of education, which I had not expected to be made in quite the tones that it was. It certainly was not insular.

We should allow Ofqual, as a new institution, the maximum slack to pursue its interests and duties. There are concerns about the quality of the examination system, although I suspect—given the sheer industrial volume of what is processed through the system, including the number of entries and scripts—it is perhaps not surprising that mistakes are made from time to time. However, at least let us not ask Ofqual to confine its activities to a narrow schedule in presenting the achievements of schools and the options that it can take. My message to the Minister would be to keep as much flexibility as we reasonably can.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I am also one of those who think it pretty important that the curriculum is seen to be independent of Government. I am thinking about the future of what is planned. It is said that the QCDA may well not have been the most successful of bodies, but it did a pretty adequate job nevertheless. We do not have any clear idea where it is going, but one is told and one hopes that some of the bodies will be transferred to other organisations. If the advisory body that will be giving advice to the Government as and when required—this is important—it should be much more available on an independent basis to the emerging range of academies. There will be a need for good independent advice. I am inclined to support all these amendments, but will bear in mind what the Minister says in his reply about plans that will be seen to be more satisfactory to the Committee.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I am happy to reassure my noble friend Lord Peston that philosophy occasionally plays a part in schools. I could take him to a couple of primary schools not six miles from here where it is argued by the head teachers that it improves behaviour in the playground. However, that is a separate matter.

On the amendments before us, it is important that we get this matter right one way or the other. I do not accept the connection to 1935, and nor does my noble colleague who proposed the amendment, but if you look at the argument and the tussle going on in Scotland at the moment over the history curriculum then you will pause and have thoughts about where decisions are finally made and on what basis. There is an issue here.

Two things are clear. First, in the end the Secretary of State has the responsibility to make the decision. That is the current decision and I rest content with that. Secondly, though, the Secretary of State, however clever, will need advice. That advice is of great interest to Members here and elsewhere. I would not propose going backwards and effectively reconstituting the QCDA. We have been there and done that, and there were problems; let us think new thoughts. My own inclination as a time-served academic is that when the Secretary of State publishes changes to the curriculum, he or she publishes, as a good academic would, a series of footnotes and references to the advice sought, who gave it, to whom it was given, what the advice was and whether it was well evidenced. That would give me much greater confidence than setting up a board.

There is no final expert opinion on what should be in a curriculum. The risk for the QCDA and any successor would be an assumption that there was a right answer. There is not; there are nuances and leanings in different directions. In the end, that should be a matter for the Secretary of State to take a view on, but we need to know what the advice was so that we can protest if necessary.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I agree that philosophy is very helpful to young children. It helps them understand who they are and how they fit into this great big world. I hope the Minister can assure us that when we take advice about what should be in the curriculum, there will be representation of our diverse society in the approach that it takes. I believe that will go a long way to helping people from diverse backgrounds understand who they are and how they fit into our society.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Whitaker]

I support Amendment 98, in particular new subsections (6) and (7). We live in a nation of many cultures and several faiths. I declare an interest as a vice president of the British Humanist Association. These many cultures and several faiths are a huge asset for our culture, understanding of the world, trade, regeneration and enterprise—lots of things—but to realise these assets we need to be at ease with our fellow citizens, to understand their culture and their faith, especially when we do not share it. If we do not have this opportunity in school, we risk losing out culturally and economically but, almost more importantly, we risk increasing bigotry and prejudice.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

I have been mentioned. I have not resiled from the position I took on Monday and I continue to have concerns about the overcrowding of the required curriculum, as I am bound to say in talking about these amendments. None the less, I accept that PSHE is a very important part of education for many young people and that it will continue in schools, and rightly so. However, it seems that we are trying to impose the shape of education through legislation, whereas the shape of education is a matter of balance and balance is never formulated in a set of clauses in a Bill. The real issue is how well this is done and whether a balance of attitude is preserved. This applies to PSHE and to the teaching of religion and about other faiths in faith schools.

I have reservations. First, I do not think that we do PSHE very well. We have already had mention of the fact that teenage pregnancy numbers may be falling but we are still the worst in Europe. STD admissions are rising among young people. Whatever we are doing, and we have done a lot more of it the last two years, we are not doing it well. I am not sure that legislating in this way will change that. Secondly, it is very much a delicate balance. Thirdly, one of the ways in which you try to deal with delicate balances in schools is by having an adequate inspection system. I am not saying that the one we have is good enough yet, but if there were an adequate inspection system one of the things it would ask is, “Is the balance of sex education in this school, in this community and in this culture right?”. That is what you would expect from a good school inspection. It looks as if, in this Bill, many schools will be exempted from that kind of inspection and that is where I see the gap. I would be reassured about all this being written down in an Act if there were some way of ensuring that it were well done in schools. It is a delicate issue. How this is taught varies from one school and one community to the next and that can only be properly assessed by trained and qualified inspectors.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, I entirely agree what with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, just said. I would have said it myself if I could have said it as well. It is crucial that children learn these things at school. It is daffy to prescribe that individual items should be learnt. One should look at the outcome. The only sensible way of looking at the outcome is inspection. This Bill is setting out to destroy that aspect of inspection rather than building on it, so I am entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, in my concerns. The only other thing I would like to say is that this is a great subject to be debating in this room, under a picture of a PSHE lesson.

Education Bill

Lord Sutherland of Houndwood Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I rise to speak to Amendment 78, which is in my name, and to support Amendment 76, to which I have attached my name. As the noble Lord, Lord Knight of Weymouth, said, Amendment 78 would simply replace a board. Perhaps we can retain the current board as a special advisory group for the Department for Education.

The amendments are partly in response to a meeting recently of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Skills. The new chair of that group, in post for one year, concluded the meeting by saying two things. First, he said that when he visited Finland and had a meeting with politicians from across the political spectrum, he was very impressed by the strong consensus on education policy. Secondly, he said that the more he learnt about this issue the more it seemed to him that if politics could stay out of education, the better it would be for education. By tabling my amendment, I hope to probe the Government about how one might encourage that position of distancing politics from education.

The noble Lord, Lord Knight, referred to the rather disappointing results in recruiting teachers. It seems to me that this is a golden opportunity to get hold of bright young graduates who might have gone into the City at other times, but who might now choose to go into social care and education. It is sad that we are not getting the cream of the crop. If the noble Lord’s concerns are correct, and this is to some degree to do with interference from the Government, perhaps this is a good illustration of how it is sometimes better for politicians to leave the professionals and experts to do the job. There is an important role for politicians in ensuring that the right experts are appointed and that the criticisms from people sitting in their armchairs are answered.

I refer to the Youth Justice Board, which was an arm’s-length organisation. When there was a spate of thefts of mobile phones and muggings because of that, the Government responded by strengthening the laws around mobile phone theft. Unfortunately, one young man, Joseph Scholes, who had just begun at a children’s home, was out for the day with a group of young people. I understand that he was involved in the periphery of a mobile phone theft. Because of the response to the understandable and popular concern about mobile phone theft, when he was found guilty of being involved in this activity, he was placed in the secure estate, in a young offender institution, even though he was a very vulnerable young man. Unfortunately he hanged himself. The judge recognised that it was not appropriate for him to be placed in the YOI but that he should have been in a more sensitive environment.

Perhaps it is not a particularly good example, but it seems to me that the Youth Justice Board has a similar history to that described by the noble Lord, Lord Knight, which was that the Government despaired of being able to do the right thing in youth justice in 1998 or so. They were disappointed in the outcomes. We have had the highest level of children in custody in western Europe. The Youth Justice Board was set up with good positive outcomes. In the past three years the number of children in custody has reduced by 30 per cent. One sees positive outcomes. I am sorry to go on for so long and shall try to wind up as soon as possible. However, in Hackney, for example, politicians decided to give great authority to two very senior social workers. They challenged a culture in Hackney that had let down a lot of young people and children. After three years, they reduced by 30 per cent the number of children coming into care and saved the council a huge sum in doing so. They did this by putting in charge people who had a lifetime’s experience working in this area and by backing their work.

I think we will see best outcomes for our children if we give as much responsibility to people who have actually done the work, who are experienced professionals, and if we can keep politicians—who nevertheless have an important role—as far away as possible from such decisions. The TDA is a good example of a body which worked as a buffer between politicians and education and had good outcomes. I am looking for reassurance from the Minister that this will not have the adverse consequences that I fear.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I will be brief and, I hope, to the point; I want to record my support for the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. The TTA, followed by the TDA, were like a breath of fresh air in teacher recruitment. We have had a problem for many years and what they did—the figures bear this out—suggest that this amendment probes well and accurately.

A number of years ago, I took a group of Malaysian senior politicians and administrators to visit these organisations. It was embarrassing to see how much they appreciated what was being achieved in the agency—they were facing some of the same problems.

I have one question for the Minister. If this goes, would the Government be prepared to put down measures against which we can assess the impact of this policy? In other words, if the numbers of teachers drop, or the quality, will Ministers put their hands up and say, “We got this wrong”? But if there is a rise, fine—perhaps we will put our hands up and say, “Yes, we got it wrong”.

This will be a constant refrain from me, I am afraid. We need targets from the Government that change policies.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I have quite a lot of sympathy with the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Knight. As others have said, the TDA has achieved a great deal. We changed its name from the TDA to the TTA about three or four years ago because it was to deal not just with teacher training but with continuing professional development. That is extremely important.

I worry about the degree to which the Department for Education can undertake all the tasks that it is taking unto itself. This is set up as an agency, to some extent at arm’s length from the Government; it has a very particular function to fulfil, and has fulfilled it very well. One of the areas where we as a coalition want to see expansion of recruitment is through Teach First. It has been doing a lot to bring in many extremely good young graduates into teaching. But it cannot do everything, and it does not propose to. We still need something like the TDA, and I worry that the department is being landed with so many tasks that it will not be able to take on this one as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I want to comment briefly and probably will be told off by the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, in his summing up, but I do not know why we are debating this at all. If I was sitting on one of my boards I would be saying that this is an executive matter and not a governance or policy matter. If I look at the amendment and think about the number of disciplinary procedures that I have had to write, and the number of development programmes in which I have had to be involved, I can see all the difficulties and loopholes that this would lead to in terms of the present HR legislation and the difficulties that people would face trying to implement it. Not having seen the famous e-mail, I do not know whether it answers these questions. However, I would respectfully say to my colleagues that these sorts of issues are much better not dealt with in legislation.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, lest my noble friend think that she is on her own, I am with her.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal]

My Lords, I apologise for the lack of the e-mail going round the entire Committee. Perhaps I may indicate that it refers to a consultation that we began in May on a set of proposals designed to make it easier for schools to tackle performance issues. Those proposals have been on the website since May. Obviously we should have drawn noble Lords’ attention to the website, for those who have access to it, before the debate, but the e-mail will be circulated to Members of the Committee.

The evidence on the importance of teachers is clear. We entirely agree with my noble friend that the current arrangements for tackling poor teacher performance do not work as well as they might. They do not help teachers or the children in their care. The performance management arrangements and capability procedures were developed separately. They are complex, prescriptive and overlap, which we believe contributes to making some head teachers and governing bodies reluctant to take action, as we have heard from noble Lords today.

Our proposals have much in common with my noble friend’s amendment. They include: a duty on schools to give teachers a written appraisal of their performance against their objectives, which is a feature of the current regulations; a requirement that, as now, schools should identify teachers’ development needs and how they will be addressed; guidance that addresses the issue of support and monitoring for underperforming teachers—a school’s first response to underperformance should be to provide support to help teachers to improve, but where a teacher’s performance remains poor and does not improve after support has been provided, schools must take action quickly, effectively and fairly; and a model performance management policy incorporating capability procedures, where necessary, and an appeal stage, which is much simpler than the two policies it is designed to replace and is consistent with the ACAS Code of Practice—Disciplinary and Grievance Procedures.

Our approach has been to retain only the essentials, removing as much prescription as possible. In this approach we differ somewhat from my noble friend. We think that school leaders are currently too constrained by the arrangements and that they have too little freedom to exercise their professional judgment when tackling performance issues. I think that this summary shows how much our proposals are aligned with those of my noble friend Lord Lucas. We agree that teacher performance is vital and that schools need to take effective action to tackle underperformance where it occurs. However, I hope that my noble friend will agree that it would be more appropriate to address this issue by amending the current regulations and guidance than through primary legislation. I think that the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, was linked in with that.

The noble Lord asked two questions, the first of which was whether a teacher should be supported to find another post. That would be a matter for individual schools. Secondly, he asked whether reviews by pupils should be part of the system. There is nothing specific in the proposals to suggest that pupils should have a part. Once again, that would be up to schools to decide what evidence was appropriate when evaluating teacher performance. I hope that he and other noble Lords will look at the proposals on which we are currently consulting and give detailed comments on them. The consultation will continue until August. My noble friend the Minister, officials and I would be delighted to meet him and other noble Lords to talk over any suggestions or concerns. I hope in light of that, my noble friend will feel free to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I would like to make very brief comments as I intend to say more about the curriculum when we come to Amendments 86 and 88. This amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, is very non-prescriptive. That should recommend it to the Government. I absolutely agree with her about the importance of balance and particularly about the importance of the arts. Only the other day, I heard of a school that had had its academic results transformed through its participation in the In Harmony music programme. Such participation supports other kinds of learning.

The Secretary of State is very keen on the education system in Singapore. I have been looking at the curriculum in Singapore. The Committee might be interested to know that right at the heart of the curriculum design in Singapore are core values and life skills. Therefore, the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, about life skills are demonstrated in the highly effective education system in Singapore. I think the noble Baroness would be reassured if she read, as I have, the remit of the expert group advising the Secretary of State on the curriculum review because it allows it to come to conclusions about the national curriculum which perhaps she and I would welcome. I hope it does that.

When we are looking at the curriculum, we have to bear it in mind that the national curriculum does not take up 100 per cent of children’s time in schools. It is up to the school to design the school curriculum, and part of it is prescribed and part of it is not. This leads me to say something about teacher training. Unless we have highly trained teachers who understand pedagogy and the reasons why they do what they do and have deep subject knowledge, they are not going to be in a position to design a school curriculum which provides children with everything that they will need in their future lives and careers. The professionalism of teachers is an issue that we need to bear in mind when we are talking about the curriculum. We must not forget that it is not just the national curriculum. It is up to schools, teachers and heads to design the rest of the curriculum that they deliver to their children. It must be appropriate to the needs of their children. They cannot do that without good quality training.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I thoroughly support the idea of balance in schools and education, but there is a difference between a balanced education and an attempt to produce a balanced curriculum. I agree with the idea of a national curriculum. It was a very important innovation and has had very positive results over the years. However, this is tempered by my experience of sitting in and watching my good friend Ron Dearing, as he was then, trying to chair a meeting of the national curriculum advisory group. It was basically a Mecca for every lobbyist in the business. In addition to the topics we have listed here, which come after literacy, numeracy, understanding of science and exposure to languages and before the ones that are not mentioned: parental education, financial education—many of us would think that important—and emergency life skills, which we are going to see proposed as part of an essential curriculum. This is a road to indigestion and madness. It will not work in that form. A national curriculum, yes, and it has to be a core curriculum but if core subjects are inevitably boring—I say this with all respect to my colleague and noble friend Lord Knight—we might as well give up now. If teachers cannot teach core subjects in a useful, good and stimulating way, we have really failed the children in our schools.

What do I suggest? I suggest a fairly minimal prescription both in terms of core and time. There is no need to spend 100 per cent of the time on what some have said to be core subjects. This allows room for the professionalism of teachers and all that that implies, which we have re-emphasised time and again this afternoon. Time and again we have said that we respect teachers, so they must be given room to develop the teaching of their subject. If it were my national curriculum, I would have the writings of David Hume and Fyodor Dostoevsky required for everyone over the age of 16, but I think some noble Lords would want to draw the line. If you taught those well, you could do most of this.

I suggest that we go for a balanced education with a minimum core. The worry is that they do not produce a balanced education. Judgment is increasingly a matter for the department and for Ofsted. They should make assessments on the quality of the education in terms of balance, expertise and how stimulating it is. I fear that I cannot support this amendment.

[Lord Moynihan]

My Lords, having sat through the previous three sessions of this Committee waiting for this amendment to be called, I will try to be as swift as I can and address my comments to the aspect of it that relates to sport.

A leader in the Times a few months ago stated that it was time to make the case that sport is a vital part of education. Only 7 per cent of the population are privately educated but the highly successful British team which the British Olympic Association, which I chair, took to Beijing comprised more privately educated sports men and women than state educated ones. The question is unavoidable and distressing as to why there are fewer state educated sports men and women playing for Team GB. The Times further questioned how social mobility could decline in a sphere that naturally lent itself to meritocratic achievement. It is an indictment of the state of sport in the curriculum. While the level of investment for the Treasury and the Lottery has been targeted at school sport, the result has been one which, by any international standard of evaluation, would be deemed a failure.