Armed Forces: East of Suez

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what proportion of the United Kingdom’s Armed Forces will be deployed east of Suez, in the light of the Foreign Secretary’s speech in New Delhi on 18 January.

[Viscount Younger of Leckie (Con)]

My Lords, a significant proportion of the UK’s Armed Forces are deployed in the Gulf. As the Prime Minister said last December, Gulf security is our security. This figure fluctuates according to operational demand. However, with the advent of major exercise programmes, British defence staff in Dubai, the regional land training hub in Oman and the UK naval facility in Bahrain, we will have the permanence and presence to deepen our partnerships in the region.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it is 50 years since the then Government announced that we would withdraw from east of Suez. They published a White Paper and there was substantial debate in the Houses of Parliament. The Foreign Secretary, first in Bahrain and then in Delhi, has spoken of deploying an aircraft carrier group to the Indian Ocean and of Diego Garcia being a major UK and US base. I am told that to maintain an aircraft carrier group in the Indian Ocean would take almost half the surface vessels available in the fleet. Presumably, there would be a significant air and land element on Diego Garcia. Will the Government bring this major shift in policy to Parliament, or does the MoD think that the Foreign Secretary was speaking a little out of turn and a little unbriefed?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, there is no question but that the UK and US military facility in Diego Garcia contributes significantly towards regional and global security. The UK footprint may not be major in size, but it represents a significant contribution to our bilateral defence and security relationship with the US. At the moment the Royal Navy has 41 personnel permanently deployed in Diego Garcia, with a capacity to surge that for contingent operations in the wider region from 2021. That could include a carrier strike task group, should the situation change.

Education: Maintained and Independent Schools

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests: I am chair of a musical education charity, Voces Cantabiles Music, and my wife is a director of a multi-academy trust in Bradford.

I became involved in this issue partly because I had to answer for charities and I worked with charities when in the coalition Government, but I also followed the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, in tabling an amendment to the charities Bill in 2015. The noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, has asked me to give his apologies today as he is unfortunately not able to be with us as he has to leave for a foreign visit this afternoon.

Since then, the situation has moved on. The Prime Minister made an astonishingly strong speech last September:

“Through their charitable status, private schools collectively reduce their tax bills by millions every year. And I want to … enact a tougher test on the amount of public benefit required”.


She noted that,

“these schools have become more and more divorced from normal life”,

with a rapidly rising percentage of pupils with rich parents from overseas countries.

Paragraph 7 of last September’s consultation document, referring to independent schools, states:

“We should expect these schools to assist the state-funded sector more directly … by building capacity in the sector”.


A later paragraph states that,

“these requirements will be built into existing agreements, so that … the ability to … maintain the key benefits associated with independent schools’ charitable status, is explicitly linked to doing more”.

If a Labour Government had said that, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph would have been all over it, but I note that this was a Conservative Prime Minister, and I agree with her. The Independent Schools Council has depicted this as a threat: I would call it much more a reminder. If a school is a charity, it should be fulfilling charitable purposes. A great many of our best independent schools were founded as charities and have moved some way from their original objectives at their foundation.

Independent schools have responsibilities, apart from being charities, to the well-being of this country—their corporate social responsibility, if you like—and to their communities. The best independent/state school partnership I have seen, in York, is partly because the independent schools in York are Quaker and have a very strong sense of their social responsibility and of their responsibility to their community in particular.

I am conscious that there is a great deal of variation across England. The situation of independent schools in London and south-east is very different from that in Yorkshire and the north of England. I am also conscious that the partnerships I have seen and heard of depend very much on individual leadership. A good person pushing something does extraordinarily well and then when he or she retires things very often fall away. It is a patchy record, but I welcome the Government’s encouragement of more active engagement. I hope the Minister takes that fully on board.

There is resistance on both sides. We have seen that, and I have heard from people in independent schools about unfortunately or unintentionally giving the impression of being patronising. I have heard from left-wing teachers in state schools that they do not want anything to do with the independent sector, et cetera, but in a number of places, partnership now works extremely well. The one I know best is Westminster Grey Coat—a foundation of two state schools and three independent schools—in which the director of the foundation says very strongly that they have mutual benefit and learn from each other all the way across. I was at Emanuel School the other week for the foundation’s sixth-form essay prize, in which the boys from Westminster City School, a state school, won more prizes than any other school. It was very impressive and pleasing. That is precisely the sort of thing one should be citing.

Social awareness and social integration within our divided national community are part of what this is all about. There is no single model. Different forms of co-operation will fit different communities and different circumstances. The best model is certainly not to sponsor academies or to offer free places, although in some areas where sixth forms are in short supply, experimenting with providing free places for sixth-formers might be part of the way forward. Jointly funded bursaries are not a priority either, although, again, in rural areas for able students one might perhaps experiment. Fundraising for bursaries at independent schools is part of the way forward. Those that have endowments are, in a number of cases—Eton College being the most striking one—funding a number of scholarships of this sort and perhaps more should be done in this way.

There is excellent best practice from, for example, Rugby, Eton, York and Wimbledon: specialised teaching; extra subjects and topics, such as “masterclasses” in York, which I have sat in on; shared music, drama and sport; shared school governorships, as in the model of Rugby and others; and sharing of teaching best practice. This could develop further, with shared careers advice, shared attachments to local employers for work experience, and so on. But, as the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, said, there is resistance from parents and governors in what one might call the second division of private schools—I will not name the schools where I have heard this. They say that they have paid good money to buy educational advantage and they do not see why others should share it for free. It is a sentiment that I have heard particularly in Yorkshire, which would probably not surprise noble Lords.

There is a schools partnership across Bradford, but when I was talking to head teachers at state schools there, they said, “That’s fine; if a private or grammar school wants to come and join us it is welcome—but it had better ask first”. In fact, independent schools in the north of England are not as well plugged into this network as one would like. I regret that we do not have as much evidence as possible on what is going on— I look forward to the ISC survey coming out.

I was upset, I have to say, when talking to the head teachers of a number of state schools, to hear them saying things such as, “If I had the spare capacity or the spare money for this, I would love it, but I am more concerned about how I prevent my school going bankrupt in the next three years and how I avoid losing half a dozen teachers because of the squeeze on our budget”. Of course, there are similar pressures on a number of independent schools, particularly those outside the south-east, and boarding schools.

I conclude from this that we are in a changing situation—the structure and situation of independent schools are themselves changing—but we nevertheless want to encourage partnerships of this sort as much as possible. I am glad to see that the Government are doing this and that charitable status—charitable schools—is a part of this. But it is not the only part, because we expect all schools to share the responsibility for what happens in their communities and in our society as a whole.

Social Mobility Committee Report

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, it has been an excellent debate and I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Fraser, in his maiden speech. I came to the debate, having read this excellent report alongside the State of the Nation report from the Social Mobility Commission, from a concern about the “left behind” and a set of questions about why so many of the left behind whom I have canvassed over the years in Bradford and Leeds voted to leave the European Union as a sort of, “Sod off to the lot of you; we get nothing out of globalisation and nothing out of the state. We are fed up with the world as it is”.

I have to say that I share very strongly the views of the noble Lord, Lord Bird, that I am not sure social mobility is what we now need to talk about. My father-in-law is a classic example of the old social mobility. He was the youngest child of a mill-working family who got a scholarship to Bradford Grammar, became a schoolteacher, then an Army officer and then a university teacher. That was the old social mobility—one or two people out of each working class community got out and up.

That is not what we want any longer. What we want is to teach life skills to everyone, including the left behind. We need to recognise that these are not the undeserving poor—a phrase that, as the right reverend Prelate rightly said, is creeping back into our discourse these days. They are part of our national community and our citizens, and we have to make sure that life chances for all in a national community which consists in its turn of strong local communities is what we are about. There will be some social mobility. We have to tell the people at the top, incidentally, that they also belong to the national community and have obligations to the national community, starting with paying tax. That is the different discourse that we need to talk about.

A number of other reports have been mentioned in this debate which are highly relevant—the State of the North and Growing Up North reports and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation studies. We will be debating some of these—on 12 January we have a Question on the State of the North report—and I hope this House will continue actively to follow the debate. In terms of sessional committees, I am aware that there are two proposals to look at the content of citizenship as such, and I think it right that we ought to look at some other aspects of life chances because these are all fundamental issues.

There are four key points in the whole transition area. I have been most concerned with two to five year-olds. Children in north Bradford arrive at school already a long way behind their fellows from the middle classes in literacy, social skills, numeracy—the lot. If you have lost out by the time you are five, you start structurally behind. Then there is the transition from primary to secondary school. I visited a summer school being run in north Bradford this summer by local Liberal Democrats, dealing with 10 to 11 year-olds from vulnerable families who do not get regularly fed at home. They had not learned to read or count properly in their primary schools and there is a lot of evidence that that is the point at which aspiration and ambition begin to drop off—as they go to secondary school—if we are not careful.

Then there is the transition from school to work which this excellent report is about. We must not forget—maybe this is a subject for another sessional committee—the very difficult transition from a first career to a second. People in their 40s and 50s will lose their jobs because of technical change but will be expected to go on working until they are 70 in our new world. They will need the opportunity for part-time education and retraining—all the things they are now dropping. The number of people in part-time education has dropped quite radically in the last three or four years. I had some interesting figures from the Open University the other day and it is something to which we absolutely need to pay more attention.

My concern here is with intermediate skills in particular. I noted paragraph 73 of the report, which says:

“The most recent UK labour market survey found that ‘Jobs with intermediate skills demands tend to have high shares of skills shortages. These include skilled trades’ roles in manufacturing, construction, wholesale and retail, and hotels and restaurants. This partly reflects longstanding shortages of skilled construction trades workers such as plumbers, electricians and carpenters, and skilled chefs within the hotel and catering industries’”.

That is a scandal, and we have come to rely on immigrants to fill the gap. I tried to interest Migration Watch in looking at the linkage because I am conscious that the pull factor in immigration, particularly from eastern Europe, is precisely in the intermediate skill areas—above all in construction and building.

The apprenticeship scheme I know best is the Bradford social housing association Incommunities, which now trains 10 apprentices a year. Last year it had only 400 applications; the previous year it had 500 applications. That is 40 applicants per place, compared to Oxford and Cambridge, which have six to eight applicants a place. That is absurd. The figures on the overall apprenticeship scheme in the report suggest that in 2014-15 there were 1.5 million applications for just under 200,000 apprenticeships. That is an 8:1 ratio, which is higher than the ratio of applications to most Russell group universities.

It shows that the demand is there from people who want to have apprenticeships, but the supply is not there. We know from the extent to which companies are recruiting directly from abroad that the demand is there. It is not quite such an hourglass. Agencies do recruit from Slovakia and Poland for builders, long-distance truck drivers and for nurses, chefs, and others. There are some interesting questions about why companies find it cheaper and easier to recruit from abroad than to train their own. Incidentally, I was told this morning that in British universities 20% of technicians are from abroad—above all from eastern Europe. That also suggests that universities should be looking at how much they train the people they require for their intermediate skills—perhaps paying more attention themselves.

My anecdotal impression from across Yorkshire is that companies have been finding it much easier to recruit people already trained abroad than to put the effort into training and motivating people from this country. I am sorry that Migration Watch has not taken this up because it does not fit its anti-European narrative. This applies to the public sector as well as the private sector. I am very grateful that, when I was ill in June, Portuguese nurses in St Thomas’ looked after me very well and Polish physios in St George’s did my rehabilitation afterwards. But there were not many British-trained nurses there. The Government’s new scheme for training nurses has lifted the cap, which left us structurally short of trained nurses, and has imposed loans instead, which has apparently led to a reduction in young British people applying for nursing.

The report talks about the underlying bias in the English education system—the cultural preference for arts and finance as against engineering and crafts. That is not new. When I first became a university lecturer in Manchester, I remember the dean of my faculty telling me how he was trying to close down our evening degree because it was only really for teachers and was not what an international university should be doing. Since I had spent five years at an American university which had several Nobel Prize winners on its staff and a department of home economics and a school of hotel administration, that seemed a little odd to me—but it is there in too many of our universities. Happily, some few of our new universities bridge the gap between the academic and the vocational.

As several noble Lords said, we neglect our FE colleges and we are squeezing the funding for them further. The noble Baroness, Lady Wolf, is quoted in the report as suggesting that we may be facing a “downward spiral” in the ability of the further education sector, which would be disastrous for all these people who need to train, and for the secondary schools, some of which, certainly in my part of West Yorkshire, rely on their partnership with FE colleges to offer the spread of courses in the sixth form that they want to offer.

Some of this is down not just to the Government but to corporate responsibility. We have to say to companies that it is their responsibility to train our own—to train young people. I am horrified by the cynicism that I have heard in West Yorkshire about the new apprenticeship scheme: that it will be used by large companies to rebadge their existing management training rather than bringing in new youngsters and giving them new skills. I hope that that is not the case, but the cynicism is out there, and I hope that the Government are aware of it—that it will be about quantity and rebadging and there will not be much that is new or that improves skills or, crucially, brings in new young people from the left-behind and equips them with the skills that they need.

The report is very valuable. The Government have provided, as all noble Lords have said, an extremely inadequate answer. They are a Government for whom reinventing grammar schools is a greater priority than funding secondary schools, particularly in their sixth form, or thinking about the future of FE colleagues. This does not provide the right incentives. What we need is a partnership between schools, FE colleges and companies, large and small. That, I hope, would provide an answer to our problem of the structural skills shortages that leave so many of our youngsters behind.

Independent Schools: Free Places

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

This proposal is about encouraging independent schools to help the state sector, and the money will therefore be flowing towards the state sector, not away from it. As the noble Baroness knows, we have protected the core schools budget, but we will be talking about the national funding formula shortly.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall conversations with the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, and myself about encouraging independent schools to demonstrate their public benefit by sharing their facilities for sport, drama, art, music and so on with their local state schools. I understand that a survey is being undertaken to see what the best practice is in the sector. Is his department following that survey, and will he repeat in public his private promise that, when it has been completed, we will have a debate in this Chamber on its results?

[Lord Nash]

We are certainly following these issues, but I cannot promise a debate because it is not in my power to do so. We have encouraged the independent sector to show its good practice and we have helped it to set up an interesting website called Schools Together, which now has more than 1,200 examples of co-operation between the state and the independent sector. Clearly, a lot is happening in this area.

Education: Polish A-level

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord that our relations with Poland are extremely important. We are determined to ensure that a wide suite of languages is available for students so that they have the freedom to choose whichever language they wish to study.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lexden, spoke of the deep historic ties between Britain and Poland. I recall that the Poles produced the largest non-British contingent of pilots in the Battle of Britain, and several squadrons in the RAF and at least two armoured divisions in the Second World War. Britain seems almost entirely to have forgotten about that. I understand that the Prime Minister was unaware of it when he visited Warsaw last time. Could we not do something to symbolise the contribution that Poland made to the British victory in the Second World War, for example by encouraging a visible Polish presence at the next Remembrance Sunday commemorations?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Lord makes a very good point about the deep debt we owe all the pilots in the Second World War, particularly the Polish pilots who fought so ably, especially in the Battle of Britain. I will take back the point that he makes.

Education: English Baccalaureate

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted that the noble Lord supports our belief in the importance of those subjects.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, the Minister will be aware that those concerned with music education are worried about the impact of the EBacc on music education in schools. That is partly because schools faced with hard choices on budget priorities are less concerned about recruiting music teachers. Is he willing to speak to people from the music education industry about those concerns?

[Lord Nash]

I would be delighted to do that.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

Briefly, I support this amendment. The Government recently expressed some horror at the number of prisoners we now have in our prisons. It made me reflect on how many inquiries have pointed to problems within our families. When one does not provide good boundaries within families and a secure upbringing for children, and when schools are quite chaotic, it does not surprise me that there is so much offending among young people or that we have overcrowded jails. It seems to me fairly apparent that if one does not set boundaries early in life, society is left setting boundaries later in life, at great expense to itself. Therefore, it is imperative to get all the right support for children early on. This is an important area. I look forward to the Minister’s reassurance that the early years foundation stage will be delivered in these schools.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when I first joined the House of Lords, we did not receive any briefings on anything. That situation has been transformed in the 15 years I have been here so that now, on a Bill such as this, we are deluged with briefings, which are often extremely useful.

On behalf of the Minister and the department, I apologise for unreturned phone calls. I offer, if it is helpful, a meeting with the Minister and officials to discuss this question further. On the specific issue, I reassure the noble Baroness that all schools providing for under-threes’ education are required under the Childcare Act to register with Ofsted and to deliver the early years foundation stage. This includes independent schools and therefore also includes academies. Section 40 sets out the duty to deliver the early years foundation stage. That is the key element. This already applies to academies in the same way as it does to other schools.

Reference has already been made to the review to be carried out by Dame Clare Tickell, chief executive of Action for Children, which will report to my honourable friend Sarah Teather in spring 2011. The review will be open and will look at the foundations that should be in place to protect young children’s welfare and support their development and learning. It will also consider throughout how to reduce burdens on providers as the experience of the past three years is that the requirements of the early years foundation stage have increased the workload on many of those who work with young children, and so taken time away from children. We do not intend a fundamental change but we do intend to review the way in which the Act works in practice. I hope that that is sufficient assurance. I again apologise if phone calls have not been returned. With those assurances, I hope that my noble friend will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

[Baroness Walmsley]

I thank the Minister for his reply and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Drefelin, for her support. The noble Lord says that academies will have to deliver the early years foundation stage. However, it does not say that in the Bill. The difficulty has arisen because of uncertainty about the independent status—or not—of academies. According to independent schools, the definition of “independent” is a school that is inspected by the Independent Schools Inspectorate. However, that does not apply to the schools that we are discussing. Nevertheless, the Minister could not have been clearer on that matter. I suspect that the Early Childhood Forum will very much welcome a meeting with officials to set its mind totally at rest. It will probably be satisfied with the clarity of the Minister’s reply, but I think that it will take advantage of the invitation anyway. I wait to hear what it says to me when that meeting has taken place. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I remind the House that we are on Report and we need to be careful not to repeat in too much detail arguments which have already been made in Committee. We are intended to deal with new points and those that require further elucidation, not to go over points that we discussed in Committee.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

I rise to speak to Amendment 17A in my name and those of my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Garden. I entirely share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, in relation to not being too prescriptive. We also very much share her view that school governors should represent the community that the school serves. In that respect, it is very important that parents, in particular, are represented. She said that only one parent was elected. However, in academies, the parent governor is currently appointed, not elected, and that is an important point.

I declare an interest. I am both a governor of a small primary school in Guildford and a member of the corporation—effectively a governor—of Guildford College, so I am actively a governor of schools at the moment.

Amendment 17A is different from the amendment put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, in three respects. First, rather than prescribe a percentage, we are suggesting specific numbers—a minimum of three and a maximum of seven parents, although obviously the figure will vary according to the size of the governing body, which itself will vary according to the size of the school. There has to be considerable flexibility here. Secondly, we are anxious to see representation from staff, including support staff, as well as from parents. Lastly, we also want to see representation from the local community, and what better way to do that than to have a representative from the local authority? In all three senses, we feel it is important that there should be representation of the community that is served by the school. Therefore, we thoroughly endorse the sentiments put forward by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, although we have put a slightly different slant on it.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty]

This amendment should be fairly straightforward. In a sense, I am on the same page as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was at the very beginning of proceedings today. It appears slightly odd that we should propose amendments that require schools to obey the law, but life is more complicated than one would think. The point of my amendment is to clarify that, for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and the Equality Act, academies are regarded as public authorities. This is important in both contexts. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, got an assurance in fairly unequivocal terms on the Human Rights Act, and I should like an equivalent assurance, at least, on the Equality Act. I am proposing this in the hope that the Minister will be disposed, if not to accept the amendment, at least to give me a statement that meets the points of the amendment.

Notwithstanding what was said about governing bodies just before the break—and the Minister and others will know that I am not entirely well disposed towards this Bill in principle—I and, I think, most people in this House, would accept that the majority of governing bodies and managements of academy schools that come through this process will operate within the mainstream of educational approach and activity. Nevertheless, it is possible and, at the edges, probable, that the process of establishing academies—and even more so free schools, which will eventually be subject to the same provisions—can lead to governing bodies that are outside of the mainstream. I put that as delicately as possible. There are particular subsets of parents who have particular views on education; particular faith groups will have views on matters of gender and sexuality that are not the normal approach that would be guaranteed if the organisation were subject to the Equality Act and the Human Rights Act. We have to bear in mind that, whatever safeguards we build in, such minorities could qualify to establish a school under that process. Alternatively, it could be that the management of the school is proved to be so lax that, whatever the ethos of the governing body, it is not properly observed. I should therefore like it clarified that the requirements under the Equality Act and Human Rights Act that apply to public authorities will apply to academies, despite their slightly ambiguous position. If the Minister can give me that assurance, we can move on to the next amendment.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are happy to confirm, as I thought that we had in Committee, that the Government accept that academies are public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act 1998. We welcome the noble Lord’s intention of ensuring that; we will, as we said in Committee, ensure that academies are included in Schedule 19 to the Equality Act 2010. As the noble Lord will know, academies as independent educational institutions will be required to comply with all the duties in the Act that apply to schools more generally with respect to non-discrimination, reasonable adjustments for disabilities and the like, including gender issues. Academies are not currently included in Schedule 19, but the schedule will be updated before the duties come into force in 2011 and academies will be included in time for that commencement. Therefore, by the time those duties are implemented, it will be clear that an academy is a public authority for the purposes of the Equality Act.

With that clear reassurance, I hope the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

I do not want to impose a huge bureaucracy on this process, but I think that people have to talk to one another at all stages. That includes not only the governing body but the Secretary of State. I therefore hope that, as a result of this debate, the Minister will consider coming forward with an amendment that covers both aspects and takes into account the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. If he comes forward with a more conclusive and clear amendment that enshrines in the process the principles of consultation, although it would not please me entirely, it would make me feel a lot happier.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the noble Lord is in the 15th minute of a speech on Report, which is a little long.

[Lord Whitty]

I accept that it is a little long, although I did warn the House, but it is actually only the 12th minute and this is an education Bill. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I agree with the thrust of what the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, has said. He referred back—as did the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath—to our debate on the necessary expensive services to children with special educational needs and the need for a strategic commissioning of such services. There could be an important role for local authorities in that area in future. Like the noble Lord, I would encourage the Minister to set up some kind of forum with the local authority so that there is an ongoing communication with it. Each local authority will have a councillor responsible for the welfare of children within its area; why could there not be informal meetings in which new academies are introduced to such people? This would enable the doors of communication to be kept open?

As my noble friend Lady Howarth made clear, if we want children to succeed at school, we need to make sure that their welfare is catered for. It is important that social services work in partnership with schools. I am sorry to repeat it one more time, but head teachers keep on telling me about the value of social workers when they are connected with a school; or, if they do not have a social worker, how much they would like one attached to their school. It is important to keep these matters in mind and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, for making this debate possible.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, the debate in Committee underlined the importance which many noble Lords attach to the role of local authorities. There are some very important questions here and we do not pretend to have all of the answers. Both parties within the coalition are committed to the principle of localism, with decisions and accountability returned from London to local communities. We are clear that we no longer want to hear the Secretary of State for Education—as happened under the previous Secretary of State—announcing on the “Today” programme that he had just dismissed a head teacher in Carlisle. However, it would be only honest to admit that neither party in the coalition is yet clear what localism means in detail, in this sector and others, and what the balance between the role of local authorities and of more local communities, including parents and others, should be.

In his letter to council lead members sent on 26 May, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for education made it clear that the Government see strong local authorities as central to their plans to improve education. This Thursday, the Secretary of State will be speaking on this theme to the Local Government Association conference. He will confirm that we want to see local authorities acting as powerful champions of excellence, both in education and in wider children’s services, and that we want to see local government playing a strong strategic role, working with schools to drive up standards, supporting schools in working together to share expertise, and in promoting the spread of innovation for the benefit of all.

We want to see a smooth transition to the new school system and we are pursuing a genuine dialogue with local government and other partners to that end. We will therefore pursue further dialogue with representatives of local government about these and related issues over the coming weeks and months. It may be, as my noble friend Lord Greaves suggested, that the local authority develops more of a commissioning role along the lines envisioned by the party opposite in its 2005 White Paper. It may also be that some of the other ideas that he alludes to in his amendment should be explored further as part of the future shape of provision and the relationship between local authorities and schools. I assure my noble friend that the Secretary of State is committed to this dialogue; he will be pursuing it further on Thursday and will make a number of proposals as to how it should be taken further in the next weeks and months. I invite my noble friend Lord Greaves, with his considerable expertise in this field, and other noble Lords who have expressed interest, to help shape our thinking in this area so that we can, in time, come forward with the best possible proposals. On that basis, I urge my noble friend to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, I am delighted to support my noble friend's amendment. It may be late, but the contribution that support staff make to our country’s schools is worthy of significant attention. In Committee, I and the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, reminded noble Lords of the important role of support staff, and I am delighted to support my noble friend's analysis of the challenges that they face with a major expansion of the academies programme. This amendment provides a framework that is markedly different from the national negotiating body that the Minister referred to in Committee. When one looks at the contribution that the 123,000 new classroom assistants have made across the school system, it is important that we take all possible steps to maintain stability in the workforce. A framework such as this would contribute to that. In the past, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, eloquently said, support staff have been undervalued, and we should put in the work to create a new school support staff negotiating body. A lot of work and thought has gone into defining the roles and contribution that the staff make, and this could be a great support, particularly to small academies such as the primary academies that some noble Lords have been concerned to promote. I hope that the Minister will support this approach.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will forgive me if at this late stage I do not read out the whole of the 15-page brief that I have been given in reply. We are all conscious of the importance of support staff. From the anecdotal evidence that I have picked up both in Yorkshire and London, many classroom assistants and support staff working in maintained schools are working for remarkably low pay on part-time contracts that do not include lunch. Therefore, this is not simply a question about the transfer to academies: there is a broader question of how we all value the very useful contribution that they make. Having said that, and underlined the fact that it is not just a question of the conditions of support staff in schools that convert to academies, but that the problem exists across the board, I also emphasise that academies are intended to have freedoms over staff pay and conditions. That is precisely the point of freeing academies from the deeply complex, embedded structures of maintained schools across the country. Freedom in relation to pay and conditions has been a core freedom since the academies programme started under the previous Government, and indeed that was part of the reason why the previous Government set it up. It enables academies to establish pay and conditions which reflect their approach to the school day and to attract and appropriately reward innovative school leaders and practitioners.

As academies recruit good support staff, I urge them to value them as well, and perhaps to value them more than some maintained schools under local authority control do at present. Having said that, at this early hour, as it has just become, I urge the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am happy to confirm that this Government, like the previous Government, accept that academy schools are public authorities for the purposes of the Human Rights Act and that, consequently, they are under a duty to act compatibly with the convention rights in their dealings with parents, pupils and others. The Act does not spell out or list all possible public authorities. This is for an obvious reason: some private bodies also carry out limited public functions and, for the purposes of those public functions, they are also public authorities, but only in respect of those functions. It is not possible to identify all of them at all times. Nevertheless, when they are providing a public service—schooling—they are clearly public authorities.

The noble Baroness will know that academies will be required to comply with all the duties in the Equality Act that apply to schools more generally with respect to disability, non-discrimination, reasonable adjustments and the like. It is quite correct that academies are not currently listed in Schedule 19. However, Schedule 19 will be updated before the duties come into force in 2011, and academies will be included in time for that. This will also deal with the suggestion in Amendment 81 that an academy should be a public authority for the purpose of the Equality Act. I regret that I do not have immediate information on the inclusion of independent schools. I hope that the noble Baroness will allow us to write to her on that issue.

[Baroness Williams of Crosby]

I am very grateful and, in view of that assurance, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

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[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with this amendment. Certainly, as regards independent schools, under the Charities Act a great deal of sharing of facilities is required. That is extremely effective. Academies will be very much in the same position. It would be interesting to know how this will work for them.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Greaves for his probing amendment and I am happy to provide the assurances that he seeks. Perhaps I may mention that the new Titus Salt School, the site of which he will know very well, has built a car park for its staff that is available for people who use Roberts Park at weekends. The noble Lord will know exactly where I am talking about.

The model funding agreement requires academies to be at the heart of their communities and to share their facilities with other schools and the wider community—for example, by making their sports facilities available for local groups to use. That will remain a requirement on academies. We therefore entirely agree with my noble friend that it is important for a school to be at the heart of its community and that it should, as far as possible, encourage the community to make use of school facilities in the evenings and at weekends. The place to impose obligations on an academy is through the academy arrangements—either the funding agreement or the terms and conditions of grant. We therefore resist the imposition of this in the Bill but entirely sympathise with the intentions of the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Whitaker and I have stood shoulder to shoulder in campaigns for good design in recent years and I am happy to join her in the field tonight. It is too much, no doubt, to ask that the magnificent £50 billion Building Schools for the Future programme should be continued, but it is essential that design standards should not be dropped in the school building that does continue. Presumably that will mainly be the construction of academies. Do the Government intend still to provide some funding to support the creation of fine new academy buildings, as their predecessor did? Will the Government at least maintain minimum design standards?

This matters very much. Children and staff in schools, like everyone else, should work in a good built environment. The benefits of that for their morale, spirit and performance are marked. Good design is practical and works better. Well designed schools, like well designed hospitals, hospices, railway stations and magistrates’ courts, are statements about the values we hold as a society, our attachment to civic values and the public realm and our commitment to sustainability, an important point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. There are important symbolisms in good design.

Good design is an expression of national self respect. It is a manifestation of the respect we have for our community. There is a noble tradition of design of school buildings and it is one which we must not lose. Our Victorian and Edwardian forebears took it as axiomatic that a school should be a proud statement on behalf of the community in its design. The school building programme launched after the Second World War by Ellen Wilkinson, as Secretary of State, led to a commitment in a number of local education authorities to good design in a modern idiom. The schools designed in Hertfordshire for the local education authority by Stirrat Johnson-Marshall were celebrated. He was an architect who was described as,

“Socratic in manner of discussion and intolerant of formality in any guise”,

which, I think, means that he sought to find out what people thought, to elicit their best ideas and to develop his designs accordingly, as good architects do. Equally, later in Hampshire, the schools designed by Colin Stansfield Smith were celebrated, and the local education authorities which committed themselves to a programme of high-quality design in school building were strongly and admirably supported by the ministry’s architecture and buildings department.

More recently, under the previous Government, we had the Building Schools for the Future programme. I shall mention two schools that were jewels in that programme. The Mossbourne Academy in Hackney was built in an area known as “murder mile” because of the gangland killings there. It replaced Hackney Downs comprehensive, a school which had gone so far down in the world that the tabloids described it as the worst comprehensive in England. The school reopened in 2004 in buildings designed by the Richard Rogers Partnership. The first intake of the new school consisted of children, nearly half of whom were eligible for free school meals and 30 per cent had special educational needs. They took their GCSEs in 2009 and achieved some of the best state school results in the country. The Mossbourne Academy topped the league tables in value added. That was, above all, due to the leadership of Sir Michael Wilshaw and first-rate teaching by his colleagues, but design, they acknowledge, was also an important factor—as was the case at the Westminster Academy, which my noble friend and I visited earlier this year. There, the architects Allford Hall Monaghan Morris were awarded the RIBA Sorrell Foundation Schools Award. This is an opportunity for this House to pay tribute to Sir John Sorrell and his wife Frances for their extraordinary generosity and creativity in their support through their foundation for good school design. The design of the Westminster Academy is beautiful and clever. As my noble friend said, the results in the new school soared by comparison with the results in the old school because pupils were treated with respect through design, and thus learnt to treat their school and neighbourhood with respect. The head teacher and her staff above all deserve the credit, but she insists that the quality and nature of the design of the school were crucial in making possible the curricular flexibility which, in turn, was key to the motivation and success of that school.

The Government want to impose the minimum bureaucratic burden on academies, and that is right. Good design cannot be promoted by regulation, but bad design can be averted. I hope that the Government will keep the minimum design standards that the DCSF pioneered in the public sector. I hope also that the Government will keep the engagement of CABE, which is not a quango to cull. It mobilises at negligible cost talented and expert people to illuminate and promote good practice in design. Here the leadership of Ministers is needed and, as elsewhere in education, leadership, aspiration and ambition are the magical ingredients. Only the best should be good enough for our schoolchildren, their teachers and the staff in our schools. We can afford the best. Good design costs no more than bad design. It is simply a matter of doing the job well. Indeed, good design costs less over the lifetime of the building.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I am tempted to answer that lengthy catalogue of good schools in London and close to London by giving examples of schools in Yorkshire and outside the south-east, because often in this House and even more in the national media we tend to focus on what happens in London, not in the rest of the country. One thing which disturbed me in recent years was when I visited a school in Yorkshire which appeared to have been built for a 25-year lifespan. Its sustainability was not good. Also a prison was built for a 25-year lifespan. That is part of what is wrong with current thinking about public buildings as a whole. I also went to a school last year which had been built within the past 10 years and had almost no worthwhile roof insulation. Sustainable standards are not very good in many of the new schools that have been built under the BSF programme. So let us not kid ourselves that the previous Government left us with an unsullied legacy of well designed, highly sustainable buildings of comparable quality to those wonderful Victorian school buildings now being replaced.

I appreciate the thinking behind the amendment, and I am conscious that behind it are stories about charter schools in the United States being put up in warehouses. We had some friends visiting us from New York this weekend who talked about some of the problems that they have run into there with people starting schools in unsuitable buildings. Of course, we wish the premises of all schools to meet the needs of their pupils, including those with disabilities. We are well aware that the quality of the built environment of the schools in which they are educated does affect their outcomes. However, sufficient protections are already in place to ensure that children at academies are as fully protected as those at maintained schools. All schools, including maintained and independent schools, are required to comply with the requirements of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which include a requirement to prepare and implement accessibility plans. These provide for the implementation of improvements to the school premises to accommodate existing and future disabled pupils within a reasonable period. The 1995 Act will be revoked by the Equality Act 2010, but the requirement for all schools to prepare and implement accessibility plans is replicated in the new Act.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Howarth of Newport]

Will the Minister confirm that the department will continue to keep in operation the minimum design standards that operate at present?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I have no reason to doubt that—and if I discover that it is not the case, I will of course write immediately to the noble Lord.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I interject briefly to seek reassurance on those minimum standards. I am reminded by this debate of a report some time ago about a head teacher of a new academy school that had been built without a playground. The head teacher reportedly said, “We don't need one, we will have them working very hard in school all day, thank you very much”. A paper presented to the British Psychological Society emphasised the value to children of having play breaks in the school day, and looked at how those play breaks had been squeezed over time. It would be reassuring to know that there is something in the minimum standards about a play area for children in every new school. If the Minister would write to me on that, I would appreciate it.

Academies Bill [HL]

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

If I might add another voice from the Back Benches: to try to guarantee to every parent that their child will have an ideally good school—what a wonderful thought that would be. People have been trying ever since the end of the Second World War to provide a good school for every child; successive Governments have not succeeded in doing so. There are still an awful lot of schools which fail an awful lot of children, so to try to put into legislation a promise to parents that they will have a good school for their child is really an absurd suggestion.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, when my children were at primary school I recall the primary head teacher telling me with great joy one day that there had been a very large package delivered in the school playground. They were not sure where it came from and had asked the police to inspect it. They had indeed blown it up; it was 400 pages of further instructions from the Department for Education. Of course, we agree with many of the aspirations set out in the proposed new schedule but, as the noble Baroness will have heard from behind the Front Bench, we are committed to giving schools more freedoms to get on with the job, with fewer detailed instructions taking less time away from teachers for teaching. What she is suggesting is very much the kind of approach that we want to move away from.

As my noble friend Baroness Walmsley and others have said, writing things down on paper and spending a long time negotiating them does not necessarily make them happen. We therefore share the aspirations but not the method. For most of us on this side of the Committee, part of what was wrong with education policy under the previous Government was the overdetailed instructions and prescriptions to schools, which we all know that teachers grew intensely to dislike. The aim of this Bill and of the Bills which will follow it—a larger Bill is promised for this autumn—is to free teachers to talk with parents and deal with pupils, and not to spend an immense amount of time with pieces of paper and negotiations. I therefore urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, of course I listened with great interest to the noble Lord’s contribution. The pupil and parent guarantees were actually about empowering parents and pupils so that they can ensure that, in partnership with their schools and their local authority or academy trust, they can get the things that they need for their children. It is about looking at the education service that this country provides from a bottom-up perspective—looking at it from the point of view of the parent and child and of what goes on in the classroom. If we think back to Second Reading, how chastened might the coalition Government perhaps have felt when my noble friend Lady Morris criticised them for focusing so much on structure? Here we have a chance for them, just for a moment, to think about one-to-one tuition, for example. What has happened to one-to-one tuition? We have gone from a situation where the Government were committed to guaranteeing it in statute, with a process through local government—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Earl of Listowel]

Again, I support what the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, has said. As far as I know, the best performing country, Finland, does not have league tables but relies on excellent teachers and trusts them to make the right decisions for children. As I recall, Finland also does not have exclusions, but has smaller, very mixed-ability classes.

Two things come to mind in this debate. The two amendments in the group are well related. There is the danger with academies that they will not be so well supported by, for instance, the good approach of having a child psychotherapist working regularly with teachers to talk about particular problematic children. That is a good approach, but it is easy to think that it is too expensive and a bit of a luxury and that an easier option would be to move a difficult child somewhere else. I have sympathy with both sides of the argument. Given that these things are already established, I would prefer to keep the status quo, because league tables have a perverse influence. I look forward to the Minister’s response. If he could say a little more about the plans for league tables and how they will be improved, that would be helpful.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lord Lucas said, this is a long-running problem. What we have heard from all around the Chamber this evening is that this matter concerns us all, across the parties, and that none of us is entirely sure that we have the complete and final answer. We are all aware that the early academies had an unusually high rate of exclusions. That was partly because they were going into the toughest areas and trying to reimpose discipline in schools that had lost control—there were special circumstances. I am happy to say that the figures have now come down.

We are also all aware that league tables have had a perverse effect not only on academies. I am well aware of one or two secondary schools in my part of Yorkshire of which it has been said that they have tried to avoid taking on difficult children from difficult areas precisely because of the impact that they knew it would have on their standing in league tables. I am afraid that I am unable to say anything specific about our plans on league tables; we will have to write to the noble Earl. As he will know, the question of how one can shape league tables to recognise the starting point as well as the output is being discussed, again across the parties and across the expert community, because it is recognised that league tables have had a perverse effect. We are engaged on this.

I will also say that these amendments were correctly grouped, because difficult children are often defined in all sorts of ways. I know little about the problems of educating children with autism, which is a low-incidence disability and special need. That also, in a sense, makes it easier for a school to say, “Let’s exclude that child. Let that child go somewhere else”. Therefore, there is an overlap. Children can be seen as difficult in a number of different ways.

On Amendment 72, I emphasise that academies are already required, through their funding arrangements, to take their fair share of challenging pupils through their involvement in local in-year fair access protocols. This will continue to be the case for all new academies, so they do not get out of this obligation. They should be free to co-operate with local partners in managing exclusions but, again, there is a question for the coalition of how one writes that down and in how much detail. The previous Labour Government were always in favour of prescribing everything in the most minute detail—usually twice a year, each time the name of the department or the Secretary of State changed. This, as the noble Baroness will of course admit, is a different approach.

Academies are regulated by their funding agreements, which require that they act in accordance with the law on exclusions as though the academy were a maintained school and that they have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance on exclusions, including in relation to any appeals process. I hope that that provides assurance that academies have to follow the law on exclusions in the same way as maintained schools.

I turn to the subject of low-incidence disabilities. We recognise that this is a continuing problem, especially where there are only a very small number of young people in a district with those particular needs. Again, partnerships among schools will clearly be the best way forward.

Academies’ funding for SEN is paid on a formula basis by the Young People’s Learning Agency. If a pupil with one of the different forms of low-incidence SEN attracts individually assigned resources as a top-up to the formula funding, the local authority will pay this from its schools budget and will continue to be responsible for monitoring the provision. If the academy fails to secure such provision, it will be in breach of its funding agreement and the YPLA can ultimately investigate following a complaint. Therefore, measures are already in train. I am not saying that they will entirely resolve the problem, just as under the previous Government a number of other measures did not entirely resolve the problem. We all recognise that this is one of the most difficult issues in education in England and we will all need to continue to monitor and to work with others—

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

Can the Minister explain how this will be monitored? He said that, if it is a low-incidence special educational need, the YPLA will be responsible for paying an extra premium in respect of that need. However, the YPLA is a payment agency, not an inspection agency. How will it monitor matters to ensure that needs are met in an academy?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am not sure that I can provide an instant answer on that. Particularly in relation to low-incidence disabilities, whether it is to do with deaf or autistic children or those with other needs, a specialist voluntary organisation will often also be doing its best to monitor the situation. Therefore, when I say “following a complaint”, very often the relevant specialist society will be doing its best to support the pupil and will make sure that the YPLA and the local authority are informed and concerned if the need falls short. However, we are looking to develop partnerships among schools. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, went a good deal wider than this and spoke about young people in care going beyond the education sector to the other local agencies that deal with difficult young people. That is the way in which we have to go forward. On that basis of reassurance, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Morgan of Drefelin]

My Lords, on this occasion and given the hour, I have set aside my 2,000-word speech. I shall think carefully about what the Minister has said. I, too, was concerned by the contribution of the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, and the idea that we can just leave the matter to trust. We know that, of the academies that exist, a very large number—I do not have the exact number to hand—currently take part in behaviour partnerships and they work. However, it is the ones that do not do so that I am worried about.

I shall read the report of the debate. It has been a good discussion and helpful in clarifying for me the Government’s position. I was concerned to hear the arguments put forward by my noble friend Lady Wilkins and was interested in the noble Lord’s response. However, again, we come down to the academy agreement. When we are talking about a change from the number of academies being in the hundreds to potentially all schools in the country being academies, we have to think much more ambitiously about how we can make these partnerships work.