Education Institutions: Autonomy and Accountability

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Grand Committee

[Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton (Lab)]

My Lords, I begin by saying how much I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard, in her analysis that local authority control no longer exists. I get so angry when people refer to schools needing local authority control. Control disappeared years ago. Local accountability, as the noble Baroness said, is important.

I refer to personal experience in education in Lancashire over a 20-year period as a councillor. It is often forgotten that all the great innovations subsequently claimed by all political parties—such as nursery education, a full year in reception class and education maintenance allowances—began as local authority initiatives, working accountably with the local community. I cite one example in Preston, which occurred because the tax arrangements meant that Skelmersdale suddenly lost Courtaulds to Spain. That was one of the initiatives that led to encouraging young people to stay on in full-time education and training as an alternative to going on to what many now agree were youth training schemes with no future. That is important.

I praise the many leaders of our Catholic and Anglican schools and Jewish leaders in Lancashire, and my noble friend Lord Patel of Blackburn, for developing in the early 1980s an education document about education for a multifaith, multicultural society that was totally agreed across the community. In the early days in Blackburn, we saw the BNP rising. The response was to bring people together rather than to let people divide us.

The noble Baroness referred to teacher innovation. I pay tribute to the late Lord Joseph, who said of the curriculum that there was no place for a politician to make a comment about which books teachers should use; I shall say no more on that.

He was also superb on political education. In a statement circulated to all Lancashire schools, he said that, when questioned by secondary school pupils, a teacher could say that they were a member of CND but should also say that other teachers or their parents or councillors might hold totally different views. Sir Keith took the view that education was an important process, and our best teachers recognised that.

In looking at accountability and the role of local authorities in the future, it is important that we recognise the importance of responding to the needs of the whole community and of the school. In particular, children facing problems should be able to draw on the range of local authority services, with a co-ordinated approach taken towards social and housing problems, which afflict the lives of our children.

My conversations with the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, go back over decades. I am sure that she will remember the local authority higher education funding body and the former Preston Polytechnic, now the University of Central Lancashire—I blow the trumpet for it at this stage—which developed the most diverse student intake of its time. It accepted people from all sections of society. It co-operated successfully with Lancaster University and the Open University, with students being able to switch between them for different modules or different years of their course. Perhaps an answer to the funding crisis now being faced by people going into higher education would be to look back at that sort of experience.

I have worries about accountability and judging schools. Like the noble Baroness, Lady Perry, I believe that HMI has a deep fund of experience which is invaluable in looking at how to help schools. London First gave us a very good example of heads from one school going into another school, of linking and pairing. In the early 1980s, which were not easy financially, we in Lancashire developed curriculum co-ordinators. A good individual teacher in a specific subject or year would be given supply cover to go and work with another teacher. That is the variation on the scheme that London First operates, but it costs money, because one has to have people able to leave their own class and go into another.

I worry about the local community becoming more fragmented. I worry that we may not have the balance of experience. I remember a Conservative county councillor—she was the aunt of the noble Lord, Lord Horam—being appalled when we were interviewing for a head teacher in a school in a very deprived area. Quite obviously, county councillor Mrs Horam was uneasy about the candidate who had been the most forthcoming. She had answered all the questions beautifully and, in despair, Marjorie turned to me and said, “Is there any other question you could ask?”. I grasped at the fact that that candidate had been on a course to identify gifted children. I asked, “Was it a good course? Was it useful—was it great?”. She answered, “It was a superb course and I learnt a lot from it, but it wouldn’t be useful in a school serving an area like this”. At that point Marjorie Horam put her pen down and we nailed her.

It is important that there is a thread of responsibility in making appointments and judgments about teachers, which must involve those with experience—like Marjorie, who knew that something was wrong—and be able to draw on that. Those children come from communities which have both very diverse problems and some very similar problems. In the middle of dealing with the problem of surplus places, which was a fraught experience, I had to talk to people about meeting the needs of all the children. I worry that we are in danger of continuing to provide schools where they are not needed, and not providing them where they are.