Education Bill

Debate between Lord Sutherland of Houndwood and Lord Elton

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I am not sure that this wagon really needs much more impetus but would like to put in a couple of words. First, on the coat-tails of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham: we both of us looked at prisons—he in much greater and closer detail, I with a much wider scope and rather more briefly. I did three years as Minister for Prisons, among other things. He was Her Majesty’s Inspector of Prisons. We got a binocular view of children when they go wrong, who we saw in vast numbers. It became very clear to both of us that the causes of this come early in life.

I also taught for a time in a slum clearance comprehensive school where I saw dramatically illustrated the effect of lack of love on children in deprived families—not only in deprived ones, as it happens in many families. It is evident that children who do not get enough love early in life do not grow into the people that they ought to be. There can be remedies in a sort of pauline way, but it is a handicap for the rest of most people’s lives. These earliest years are the most crucial.

We then come to mechanisms, which I think are dealt with later. We also come to resources. As many of your Lordships have pointed out, this is going to be expensive as well as complicated. I would like to strengthen the arm of my noble friend Lord Hill for the debates that lie ahead of him—not in Parliament but in Whitehall—and warn him that unless Ministers, and more particularly Ministers’ advisers, can see absolutely, irrefutably demonstrated a cause and effect between a policy and its saving, they are not going to rally to anything which is not already popularly accepted. I found this, first, in running the intermediate treatment fund and then when funding a charity to keep children out of crime. It was at the moment they asked “How much is this going to save?” that we had to say, “It is subjectively perfectly obvious: where this is being done the crime rate has gone down; where it has not been done it has gone up”—and we had many instances of that. However, they can always say, “Ah, but there are other factors that you have not taken into account”.

My noble friend Lord Hill will also meet a local difficulty on which I have great sympathy with him. I can best illustrate it from my experience at the Department of Health and Social Security, as it then was, when I was responsible for the welfare of children other than their health, which meant children in local authority secure accommodation. At that time I had seen a wonderful scheme called the Norfolk Trail, where children who were deprived of love were taken into an organisation and given the close, loving supervision of one adult between four, I think it was, throughout a period of several days and several months. The local justices’ juvenile Bench decided that it would divide into two groups the children who came before them and were convicted of custodial offences: like for like, half would go on to the Norfolk Trail and half would go into custody. At the end of the first year it was evident that there was a considerable reduction in reoffending among those who went into the trail as opposed to those who went into custody.

I took this policy to the Department of Health and said that we should pursue it, and I was asked about the savings. It was pointed out that by the time the savings matured these children would have grown to an age when they were the responsibility of the Home Office and therefore there was no political incentive within the machine for implementing the policy there.

It must be got across to my noble friend and others in government that we must look at this issue entirely holistically and philanthropically, not only in the ordinary world but also in the political world, because the savings in getting it right will be enormous. However, they will also come long after the next two general elections. One has to be disinterested about that because, if we have the welfare of children and this country at heart, the early years have to be put at the top of the agenda.

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, I warm to the spirit of both amendments—who would not? That being said, I want to distinguish between the two. The first amendment is intended to plug a gap that may well develop because of the degree of independence that many more schools will have and the significant risk, therefore, of regarding themselves as islands and apart from other schools and whatever else there is in the community. In those circumstances, it is reasonable to look for where the responsibility will lie for providing what a school reasonably cannot always do, especially before the children come to the school. There is a real issue about where the responsibility lies for this very important prolegomenon to school education.

The second amendment contains three proposed paragraphs about which I have reservations. The amendment relates to what should be inspected and I ask whether we know what we want the Ofsted inspectors to look for in schools. In schools with good middle-class backgrounds, you can do all this; you can see it happening and write your report, and it will be to the benefit of the school. However, in a number of primary schools that I have some association with, which are in very deprived areas of this city and beyond, the head teachers and teachers tell me regularly that one of the main problems is working with parents. That is an intention, a motive and something that they see the need for, but actually doing it is another matter.

For example, one head teacher told me that he had tried everything to get the parents inside the school doors. Inadvertently he succeeded by changing the school diet for a healthy diet at lunchtime; he told the children not to bring Kit-Kats, fizzy pop and so on, and the parents came down to the school in droves to protest. That was the only occasion when he got a significant turnout of parents. In that sort of context, the process of inspection would produce short statements against a series of regulated intentions that were not favourable to the school and would not be helpful to it. If we are going to inspect, we need to do so in a different way.

My primary support therefore is for the first amendment, which tackles the question of where the responsibility lies for taking the school outside its borders.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Sutherland of Houndwood]

My Lords, may I remind the Minister that it takes two to tango? Some parents will co-operate—indeed, they may have to be deterred from co-operating—but there are others who, sadly, show no inclination to do so. I hope that in his remarks in subsequent sittings, he will address the question of what, if anything, legislation can do in that area. The co-operation of parents is absent in many cases, difficult to achieve but fundamentally important.

[Lord Elton]

I urge my noble friend to bear it in mind, and particularly to have it borne in the minds of those drafting the document he promises for telling parents what they can expect in the way of help, that the parents of children we are most urgently wanting to help will have a reading age not much above that of the children. The document must be drafted with an expert eye on the comprehension of the reader.