Schools Bill [HL]

Baroness Blower Excerpts

Committee stage & Lords Hansard - Part 1
Monday 13th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I must explain to the Committee that I am not able to give a firm date on that today, but as soon as I am able to, I will update the House.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

In the debate last week, I was delighted to commend the wisdom and clarity of the noble Viscount, Lord Eccles. If it is impossible for the Minister to say anything more about how this process is going to proceed, she may find herself with requests for any number of meetings with the noble Viscount, but also with any number of people from these Benches, because how we are proceeding does not really seem to be comprehensible or explicable. If we are actually interested in improving things for children and young people through the education system, there is something different we should be doing.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I apologise to the noble Baroness. I do not think there is much I can add beyond what I have already said, which is to underline that as soon as I can clarify further, I will.

Turning to Amendment 33, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Bristol for moving this amendment on behalf of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham. As she knows, the Government are a strong supporter of schools provided by the Church of England and by other religious bodies. We believe strongly that they bring great richness and diversity to our school system. That is why we have included measures in the Bill to ensure that statutory protections are in place for academy schools with a religious character, to ensure that their unique powers and freedoms are appropriately safeguarded. The power to designate a school with a religious character is already enshrined in existing legislation. I give a clear commitment that the Government will not use the powers in Clause 3 to affect the designation of academy schools with a religious character.

I appreciate that the right revered Prelate’s concern extends beyond the intentions and commitments of this Government. However, we are committed to ensuring that schools with a religious character remain an important element of our school system in the future. I offer my reassurance that we will give further consideration to ensuring that the powers in Clause 3 could not be used to undermine this.

On Amendment 34A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, I am willing to make a commitment on the Floor of the House to your Lordships that the Government will always undertake a full consultation with representatives from the sector prior to any regulations being laid which exercise the power in Clause 3. Those regulations will also be subject to the affirmative procedure.

On Amendment 35, in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox, by removing further education institutions from the scope of this power, we would lose the ability to make these adjustments in relation to 16 to 19 academies, with the possibility that we could introduce complexity to the regulatory framework rather than streamlining it. On that basis, I ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment and other noble Lords not to press theirs.

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[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, can the Minister clarify how special educational needs fits into this picture? I know the Government are currently looking at this area, but it is one that has led to the growth of legal firms to fight a way through the system. It is a failing system. I remind the Committee of my interests in special educational needs, and dyslexia in particular. With dyslexics, for instance, we are discovering that something like 80% of those on that spectrum are not identified within the school system. There is capacity here for a group that exists but we know is not even being spotted. Should we not have some capacity for dealing with the people with these sorts of problems, because we know they are going to come across? This also applies to all the spectrum of non-obvious conditions and hidden difficulties.

If the Minister cannot reply now, when we are looking at this, could she write to us about what the Government’s thinking on this sector is at the moment? It is yet another element when it comes to choosing a school or a school’s willingness to take on a pupil. We know there are people fighting this. As I said, if ever there was a definition of failure, it is that you need lawyers to get your rights. That has to be the classic case. Can the Minister give us an idea of the Government’s thinking about admissions? If you cannot get into a school because it has set criteria, regardless of any formal test or examination, it will change how things work. It will be very interesting to hear what the Minister says about government thinking on this, because it is another factor that will affect this whole process.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly enter this debate on Amendment 35A and the question of whether Clause 28 should stand part. There is a so-called route to school improvement that my noble friend Lady Morris mentioned: you change your intake. It is relatively quick and it is not painless at all for the school, but because of the way our systems work it can be done. But it is immoral and socially unjust. It is not the right way to do things.

The fact that, in a debate, we can even talk about “children whom no one else wants”—which I put in inverted commas, as my noble friend Lady Morris did—is frankly quite appalling, and that is why I am enthusiastic about this Clause 28 stand part debate. My noble friends Lords Hunt and Lord Grocott made excellent speeches, which I hope they will redeploy if we ever get a Second Reading of the Private Member’s Bill I introduced this morning, because they made all the relevant points. I will not repeat them, except to say that the comprehensive principle is essentially about levelling up, because if you have schools choosing parents and children, you have selection for some and rejection for others. Frankly, no education system ought to reject significant numbers of children; they should just not do it.

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[Lord Knight of Weymouth (Lab)]

I find myself leading on a whole series of groups: it is slightly challenging, jumping around. This one is about teachers, qualified teacher status and teachers’ pay. It amends Schedule 1, which is about the use of other education legislation, as set out in Clause 3. This would require academies to employ qualified teachers and be subject to Secretary of State guidance on teachers’ pay and conditions as they apply to maintained schools currently. Again, this goes very much to the question: if every school is going to be an academy, what is our vision for teachers, for teaching and for teachers’ pay and conditions?

We know from the evidence—it is really well documented—that good schools are good because they have high teacher quality, and teaching and learning are well led. In a way, it is like Governments—great Ministers well led by the Prime Minister; that is what a good Government might look like one day. If we agree with that evidence around teacher quality, and if we believe in the Government’s reforms of initial teacher training, the early careers framework and national professional qualifications, then we must think that the Government’s emphasis on all that is important and will raise quality. I have some arguments about the reforms of initial teacher training, but the Government are consistent in saying that the reason they want to reform initial teacher training, the reason they want to introduce the early careers framework and have done so, and the reason they have the series of professional qualifications is to raise teacher quality. They must believe in the qualification of teachers to have all that.

In the context of all schools becoming academies, I think parents would be really surprised if they found that this then meant that all schools were no longer subject to having to employ qualified teachers. It would be quite a surprise if that was in the newspapers or wherever it is they get their news. Parents expect their children to be taught by qualified teachers, and mostly that is the case. The vast majority of academies want to employ qualified teachers and do so, so I do not really understand why we would not translate, as we move maintained schools into becoming academies, the requirement that they should employ qualified teachers as well. Of course it is also true that maintained schools can employ unqualified teachers as instructors, so they still have that get-out if they really need it. Indeed, a very long time ago, I worked as an instructor at a sixth-form college in Basingstoke. For me, it is tricky, and I would be interested in any argument that came from others as to why we would not want qualified teachers in our schools.

Then I would argue, as I have sought to do with this amendment by replacing the get-out—on employing qualified teachers—with saying that academies should abide by national pay and conditions, that we should have a coherent labour market for all our teachers, the largest single profession in the world. A coherent labour market for them, working in publicly funded schools, would mean a consistent arrangement for pay and conditions so that they can plan their own careers and are not trapped in a single MAT employer that would have its own career structure and pay structure for them. They would be able to move about and develop their career and professional expertise on the basis of something that is predictable around the country.

For me, this is a no-brainer. I devote a huge amount of my time, pro-bono, to the academies movement, but this is something we need to get right. We should have a very clear policy of having qualified teachers, based on national pay and conditions. I beg to move.

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

I imagine it will come as no surprise that I support my noble friend Lord Knight. It seems to me that high teacher quality is obviously a critical issue in making sure that we have a well-functioning and successful education system. One of the problems by which we have been beset is that there is no coherence at the moment to the way pay and conditions work across the country—that is, across England.

At Second Reading I probably mentioned that if you are a female teacher, one of the difficulties you have in seeking to move is that you will have no idea what the arrangements are for maternity leave and maternity pay from one employer to another. While I entirely accept the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Nash—who is not in his place at the moment—that multi-academy trusts do seek to have a career structure within themselves, there are many reasons why individual teachers might choose to move, not just within the MAT but to a completely different part of the country. Of course, that might still be part of the same MAT, but that they might choose to move out of the MAT. Being able to have a predictable set of conditions and a predictable pay arrangement is critical.

One thing that has been noticeable over the years is that pay has become much less predictable because MATs have different arrangements. It is not so possible for teachers to be on permanent contracts and to know, for example, that they are in a position to get a mortgage. I imagine most noble Lords would believe that home ownership is something to which a teacher should reasonably be able to aspire, but in many cases it absolutely is not. A national, coherent set of pay and conditions therefore seems perfectly reasonable. I would add that that should be done on the basis of sectoral collective bargaining, but that is not in the amendment. I just like saying “sectoral collective bargaining” because it is the right way for us to run the system. I note, for example, that in Iceland there is no minimum wage because all wages in all sectors are based on sectoral collective bargaining—and that is not uncommon in other countries, too.

Finally, on the question of QTS, before I came into this House one of the things that I did was to work with colleagues in the European region of Education International, the global union federation for all education unions. The European region does not just cover the EU countries; it takes in a significant geographical area beyond that. When the arrangements came in that meant people could teach in England without QTS, it was a single thing that my colleagues in many other countries—including Scotland—were absolutely astounded should be happening in this country.