Education Bill

Debate between Lord Sutherland of Houndwood and Baroness Garden of Frognal

Monday 11th July 2011 Grand Committee

[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.