Academies Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[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]

Debate between Lord Wallace of Saltaire and Baroness Morgan of Drefelin

Monday 28th June 2010 Lords Chamber

[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 ---

[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.